NUDGE IT

Sure, I’ve always wanted people to come to this website because they were curious to see which house was up for sale this week. Building an audience is part of the job. I want you to buy one of the places teased below, of course I do, or tell your friends about it, and I also want you to call when it’s time for your next move. That’s just the most obvious of truths.

But what’s also true is that it’s a mighty unexpected spot I find myself in. After all, I don’t think anyone wakes up thinking, ‘What I’d really like is to end up a middle-aged real estate agent.’ And yet here I am.

I like the work, and do it decently. But I look in the mirror sometimes and it’s that old Talking Heads chestnut that soundtracks the reflection: “And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile …. And you may ask yourself, “Well, How did I get here?”” I’m pretty shocked at where I’ve come to rest, and can never quite tell whether I’m pleased or disappointed. A measure of both, I suppose, which is how life goes for all of us.

One thing I did at the beginning of this career was swear that I wasn’t going to hide who I was, just to flog some semi-detached out behind the mall. I’m opinionated and I’m both quiet and loud. I like punk music and hot food. I lean pretty hard left in my politics and some of what I see in real estate makes me decidedly uncomfortable. I haven’t much enjoyed the last couple of years, to be honest, and I fear that good housing is inaccessible to far too many. In my own neighbourhood I worry that rising house prices are also driving rents astronomically high, and forcing good people to the city’s more distant margins. It’s complicated out there.

Which is a long-winded way of saying, there is a lot going on. Often I seek my escapes from all that noise in exciting new music, or drives north, or some brilliant take-out eaten alone on a sunsplashed park bench. Lately I’m blown away by the writing of Rachel Kushner, and (for the umpteenth time) the paintings of Gerhard Richter. I despair at the world whenever I finish the newspaper and yet on Saturday mornings I watch football (soccer) as if it’s all that matters. It’s a balancing act, wouldn’t you agree?

Tonight I was listening to Sleaford Mods. They’re a long-time favourite, a Nottingham post-punk band (but also not a punk band at all, in my opinion), and the song here is a recent one. The video probably won’t send shivers up your spine the way it did mine when I watched it for the first time, but it brings me no small measure of solace when the world threatens to rise up like a grey sea and inundate the people and places I love.