Whoops – nearly three weeks since my last post. My excuse is that I’ve been working very hard (which was never part of my game plan!) (And the picture shows the view of Mt. Canigou that I saw every morning on my way to pick up the clients so I can hardly complain). Some clients were over to view the properties that I had been searching for on their behalf over the past few weeks and as usual it has been a packed and busy schedule for all of us.

Drawing up a Viewing Schedule is sometimes the hardest part about property-finding: ideally I like to show 4 properties per day as any more can cause information overload for the clients, I then have to decide whether to show my personal favourites at the beginning or the end, and then I like to make sure that the viewings are in a sensible order and that we are not zig-zagging up and down the region too much. These idealistic plans would be marvellous if it wasn’t for the fact that apart from having to work around the weekly public holidays and daily two hour lunch breaks you have to throw estate agents and vendors into the equation. I cannot count the number of times that I have met an agent outside a house and we cannot get in because he has forgotten the keys (luckily only twice with clients), and as for vendors, I think it would be nice if they would put out their cigarettes, turn the television off and lock up their enormous dogs (and small children!) before allowing visitors into their houses. Have they never seen ‘House Doctor’!

Luckily last week’s viewings seemed to run fairly smoothly – the weather was glorious, the clients were lovely, only one vendor was out and none of the agents had to chase a tow-truck up a street in an attempt to rescue his car (as I witnessed last year)! The only time I felt things were not going so well was on the very first day and was entirely my fault – we had stopped for lunch in a little square and the clients chose salad and I chose to have prawns. It was only after the meal when my plate was littered with heads and tails that they told me they were vegetarian....!