Will I have to forcibly flood my house to sell it?

‘Come on, let’s get a move on with filling in all the forms and we could have this done and dusted in three weeks!’ the estate agent bellowed at me down the phone.

‘Are you perhaps confusing the sale of my house with your Tesco delivery?’ I said. But in spite of myself, I took on board what the agent was saying, and I believed it was possible that in three weeks’ time I would be moving house. Nine weeks later, I wonder why I did that.

Perhaps it was because a terrible disorientation seems to descend when one is going through the moving business. The impending upheaval and ever more complex to-do list grows impossibly, and it starts to make one feel quite queasy, as though one were being tossed about on a rough sea.

It doesn’t help to have a spiky-haired fellow in a tight suit screaming down the phone at you, but by the time you are under offer you are too weak to argue.

I realise, of course, that the agent was giving me his standard pep talk to hurry me through all the form-filling because it has become a nightmare.