A Night In

Nightcap, anyone?

Hallo? What suppurating bollocks is this that I have just spied in The Times' property section? In a feature about how to sell a house I've found the following advice. Gird yourself, kraken lovers: "If conventional viewings aren't drumming up business...you might want to consider offering potential buyers an overnight stay." 

Excuse me? You might want to what? Allow complete strangers to stay in your house overnight in the hope that they'll stump up the cash to buy the thing? Fuck me. That has to be the most spectacularly wanky piece of advice I have ever, ever heard. Perhaps, as this piece appeared in The Times, it's aimed at the toffs who have a few empty wings on their country estate and can afford to send the staff in to bully the potential buyers into, well, buying. Otherwise, who in the fuck is actually going to do this?

Moving house is a complete and utter bastard. I find the effort of having to keep seven rooms tidy and synchronised with the smell of fresh coffee so grinding that I'd rather live in a tramp's trouserleg. So the thought of opening my house up to any ole knob end who fancies a free night out would be the equivalent of removing my own kidneys with a chipped hockey stick. Un-frigging-thinkable. 

Jesus, if it took this sort of activity to sell my house I'd take it off the market and get on with stabbing to death the neighbours. Living in the centre of a terrorised Damascus couldn't be as bad as resorting to allowing strangers to fart in your fresh sheets in the hope that you could move to a fancier postcode.

As with other semi-hysterical advice on how to flog a house, this is equally as grim. No, I don't want to get rid of the kids or conjure up the smell of baked bread or repaint the front bloody door. What I want is for potential buyers to have a modicum of intelligence, foresight and imagination and to understand that it's the house they're buying, not my fucking book collection. And if, to do this, I have to treat them to an overnight stay I'd rather sell my frigging soul.