"I mean, they pronounce their T's!"

One of the houses we looked at was in Valhalla. I wanted to live in Valhalla before I knew anything about it. Imagine! Valhalla! Instead of gnomes in the garden I could have had gods. We could have all lain in late on a Wednesday as tribute to Odin, bought a big sledgehammer and used it inappropriately in honour of Thor - it would have been great.

Unfortunately, the house wasn't very nice.

Also, the old man who lived there insisted in following us around explaining all the rooms to us. When we went into the bedroom, he actually said to Jules, "Come here, I've got something any woman would love." The fear on her face as I pushed her forward, heels slipping on the wooden floor was a joy to behold. The thing he kept in his bedroom that all women love turned out to be a closet, which was a bit of a let-down.

The other problem with house-selling-geezer was he didn't seem to like the English very much. Oblivious to our accents and our efforts to explain it was our birth-place he was criticizing he delivered a monologue on the World's problem that is England. He started by saying that his daughter had gone to live in England, "of all places!" then quickly upped his pace until he hit his peak by complaining in a tone of voice usually reserved for talking about goat-botherers and other sexual deviants, "I mean, they pronounce their T's!"

So we didn't buy that house.