tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5467119.post2855170074973242703..comments2023-10-24T10:09:22.146+01:00Comments on The Yorkshire Ranter: no-one ever gets the truth from plastic manAlexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17153530634675543954noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5467119.post-89131146295225906102009-01-16T00:48:00.000+01:002009-01-16T00:48:00.000+01:00Two embarrassing mini tales. I bailed out of the U...Two embarrassing mini tales. <BR/><BR/>I bailed out of the UK for fifteen years after the the last crash. Lived in Kreuzburg just after the wall came down etc. <BR/><BR/>I had a job in the East and had to visit Frankfurt an Oder a lot. I was given the office (vintage) mini to commute in. I was working such long hours I fell asleep at the wheel, one early dawn motorway trip. The car hit the central reservation, bounced off and went sideways down into the opposite ditch. Luclkily it didn't turn over. I was taken to the local police Headquarters in Zossen, the former site of the military underground WWII command centre for Berlin, and later a STASI installation. <BR/><BR/>The Polizei, to my surprise, proved very sympathetic and helpful.<BR/><BR/>I came back last year to work as a consultant, to find the landscape so utterly changed I hardly recognised the place. <BR/><BR/>In a fit of madness I contacted Foxtons to see what the housing market was like. I was taxied about in one of the garish minis from one preposterously overpriced rabbit hutch to the other, all within sight of Canary Wharf. <BR/><BR/>The final straw was when we parked up beside an ex council flat being tarted up for a 300K sale. The agent was a bit reluctant to leave the car for long as he suspected some sort of vandalism problem involving the locals and his prominent target. <BR/><BR/>I said I didn't want to get out of the car either, because the whole thing depressed me so much. Spivs turning over council houses for cash was some kind of vision of Hell as far as I was concerned. He asked me whether I was looking for 'capital appreciation', or just somewhere to live. I said I just wanted a place that I would be happy to come home to after a hard days work. He did not seem to think that this was any kind of a description he could work with. He dropped me off at Canary Wharf and I never got to buy a house from them....BIBIAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com