300-year-old toilets

Last night, in a wild and crazy rampage through the television remote, I stumbled across a reality show on Seven 2 called Escape to the Country, which appeared to be about a pompous real estate agent in rural England who was trying to market overpriced country manor houses to prospective buyers who were apparently oblivious to the British real estate flea market.

The host/real estate bloke - let’s call him DICK - irritated me within seconds, but I decided to stay with it because I do love the British countryside and thought he couldn't possibly be in every scene of the program.

With the way real estate gurus bang on about it, you'd think buying and existing in a house or mansion dating back to the eighteenth century was the most obvious, practical and inexpensive decision you'll every make.  I am thinking this is not the case at all.

I'm sure having a 300-year-old peasant sweat-stained wooden beam in your living room makes for enthralling tête-à-têtes with your chattering class connections, but isn’t it a bit creepy?  I get creeped out by things like that. You’d probably get ghosts of centuries old cockroaches haunting your garbage bins. It’s very interesting that residences that once housed peasant and minimum wage-type workers are now sought after by the well-to-do.

I've always loved the look of thatched cottages in England; perhaps swayed by their old-world charm and prettiness. While they tempt you from the front private grounds, how does one think they look from the inside? Shit, that’s how. The are fairly squat and the ceilings are low, perhaps no higher than six foot; you could certainly never invite basketballers or giraffes around for a spot of Devonshire Tea. And how does the plumbing and toilet flushing go on a 300-year-old house? Dubiously, I’d say.

But still, people love their old houses. People love houses, actually. For years, at least since 2006, people have decided that they want to live in houses. This enlightenment may have occurred a few years earlier, I don't know; I'm not a real estate expert. But I do live in a house, and I have done so since at least 2006.  I imagine people like to buy old houses for all the charm of having a backed-up toilet, burst water pipes and termites.

And for some unfathomable reason, people like to ask over-ambitious, manic men and women with fake smiles and nauseating one liners to show them around properties that may or may not be even in the ballpark of their price range.

Last night's episode featured a stoic couple from Berlin, who remained perpetually concerned that the interiors of each of the five bedroom McMansions they were shown did not have enough room "for all their furnitures" and their "wardrobes". They are German, okay. Germans need many wardrobes.

DICK had been briefed by the Germans on what they were looking for; which was a dwelling in the countryside away from the rat race but not too far away as they had to drive their Audi to London every day. So what did the DICK do? He found houses that were about 100 miles away from London. Yep, that's what the Germans want; a 200 mile roundtrip every day. I got the feeling that DICK had some houses he couldn't sell through his real estate dealings in the real world so he tried to flog them off to the Germans. What a dick is DICK.