One of the things that intrigue me about French mores is the lack of salesmanship in selling houses. Photos invariably focus upon squalid piles of ironing, or decaying junk in the backyard. A similar insouciance is only too apparent in the accompanying blurbs, where hackneyed phrases succeed one another with dismaying regularity.
Of these feeble formulae, one is regarded as a particular selling point: "aperçu mer", or sea view. Usually one would need a neck with the length of a giraffe's and the 360° flexibility of a common pigeon's to glimpse the pollution-hazed postage stamp of blue, kilometres away behind the concrete jungle.
In our case, however, there is an "aperçu mer" (and indeed an "aperçu montagne"). And what is more, no buildings can be built to block them. But I speak too soon. In the last few days, various, very large objects have blocked the view.
The first is the motoryacht "A" (comes even before "Aardvark", in superyacht listings, geddit?). To give you an idea of scale, that's a full-sized lighthouse in front of it, just below the silvery funnels.
The other is a massive crane, which waddled into position the day before yesterday, in preparation for two years of noise and dust, as they build an underground (underwater?) carpark next to the port, just on the other side of the ramparts.
I saw a fair few closeups of piss-splashed toilets, boilers and overflowing bins when we were house hunting.
RépondreSupprimerDitto hackneyed phrases, full of Random Unnecessary Capitalisation ***punctuation*** and S P A C I N G, rubbi'sh grammar and poor speling (even on the advert for the £18,500 per week "ambassadorial residence" on Frognal, for which you might imagine they'd have gone to the expense of running a spellchecker). My favourite though was the accidental honesty in an advert for a 'specious' flat.
RépondreSupprimerI forgot, also the 8.8 square metre (!!!) studio where the toilet and kitchenette were clearly covered in "DANGER DO NOT USE" stickers.
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