Dawn had to get the house looking presentable as it went up for sale on Friday. It’s a bizarre time because your house becomes less yours and more public space as people come to view it. Similarly, looking at houses, you often feel like an intruder.
As part of the legal process you have to do an ID check. As I bet you know, trying to prove who you are can be difficult. It wanted a photo ID; a passport or driving licence but post-stroke I have neither. So I took it upon myself to upload my blue badge parking card, it being the only govt photo ID I have. Not that it said that’d be OK but It seemed to work.
Incidentally, I looked up how to get a Citizen Card as ID to get around all this and, like it’s 1960, you are required to provide a ‘reference’ from a contactable ‘professional’ like a doctor who can confirm your ID. How ludicrous. What’s a ‘professional’ and why are they more trustworthy than anyone else? Haven't they heard of the serial killers who are doctors? They even ring them up! My doctor wouldn’t know me from a dog and who knows a ‘professional’? Do people who sell records not count? They do it for a living, after all, but you know they don’t mean such people. It’s so old-fashioned dating back to when we were kids and bank managers and headmasters were looked up to as responsible members of an assumed elite and thus trustworthy. Ridiculous.
It doesn’t help that last week I bleached my hair because it hides the grey but also because I don’t want to grow old gracefully. So I look like the brother of the un-bleached man. Trying to prove who you are quickly descends into a Kafkaesque nightmare. You end up feeling a bit guilty, as if you are trying to be someone else.
So all of this is a bit weird. Of course I’m me, who else would I be and why? Maybe I’m just pretending to be crippled and spent 3 and a half months in hospital in order to perpetrate an elaborate fraud.
Part of me just thinks selling a house should be done over a handshake and all this legal rubbish is just over complicating things. But what do I know, I’m just an old Ten Years After fan and the modern world seems complex and silly
