We have no intention of wasting your time or ours; we are not tyre kickers. As you know we have sold our farm, and are now looking for something to fall in love with. Our first inspection was more of a speed date rather than a full-blown courtship, given the constraints of your fallen tree damage and the awful weather. I did feel there was an easy rapport between us, which resulted in much conversation but probably hindered an in-depth inspection. Nevertheless, it did interest us enough to suggest another inspection, which I would think is a good thing."
This is the email received from our potential buyers following their first visit, word for word - well, almost word for word; being the pedant I am, I had to add a semicolon before "we are not tyre kickers" and hyphens between "full" and "blown" and "in" and "depth". And so a second inspection is set for 10 o'clock on Thursday, the 14th, barring another bushfire, a one-in-a-hundred-year flood, a sudden outbreak of corona virus at Nelligen, or - always a possibility - my getting cold feet.
I mean, it's been an amazing time in this place, with each day beautiful and perfect the next. I've lived here for twenty-seven YEARS (twenty for Padma), when for most - nay, ALL! - of my life I never managed more than twenty-seven MONTHS! And it couldn't have been my advancing (followed by old) age that made me stay on and on and on and on ...
Well, despite defying all rules of salesmanship and being brutally honest and straightforward, and painting a totally negative picture of all the things that are and potentially still could go wrong with "Riverbend", they are interested! What did I do wrong? Is my German-ness failing me?
