It must have been around 1972 that I bought my first new car.

In those days it was still necessary to drive quite sedately for the first 500 or so miles, when the oils and filters would have to be changed, then a second 500 miles slightly less gently but certainly not boy-racer.

This formula was known as ‘running-in’ and it was suggested that it was necessary with British made cars because tolerances in engine manufacture were so desperately poor that there would often be shards of metal scraped off the cylinders, not to mention lumps scythed from the big ends floating in the oil, after just a few miles!

If you bought a performance car (especially from British Leyland) and, if you lived only a mile or two from work, running-in could take months and enormous self-control to hold back the speed. As is obvious from the briefest sight of me, self-control of any sort is way down my agenda.

This is why I collected my new car on New Year’s Day 1972 and promptly drove it to the Highlands of Scotland. Wanting something to do the following day (Scotland has a SECOND Bank Holiday on 2nd January it transpired), I thought I’d try skiing, an activity never tasted before and certainly never again.

This hateful experience left me with the need to do something else to fill in the time before the thunderer was ready for the return journey.

My Google Box thingy tells me there are about 115 whisky distilleries currently operating in Scotland today, so probably 25% more than in the seventies.

What are the chances, therefore, that the one I happened to pass, and decided to visit, produced a magnificent blend with a name hitherto only used about me – Big T! Should you wish to sample a case, I’m taking orders – with a generous 20% mark up by the way. A chap’s got to fund the cirrhosis op somehow.

Should you be wondering if there is a property connection lurking in the above mentioned diatribe, well – not really.

Except that I find it harder and harder to think of anything to write of as the weeks go on, and it’s only after copious amounts of Big T that Big T comes up with anything at all.

It also tends to blot out, for a while at least, constantly being assaulted  by Hoopla asking me if I’d been wowed today, and Mightmove’s equally fatuous enquiry as to whether they had made my happy.

What did make me happy last week was an unusual present brought in for one of my sons following a completion.

In a pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself when fighting for the instruction, he added to the inevitable over-valuation the comment “what a fabulous shirt that is, Sir,” looking at a particularly hideous Hawaiian job. Client retorts with “If you can sell Acacia Towers for that – you can have it off my back!”

Son did soon after and client was good as his word (unusual in itself). It would have been slightly less embarrassing, however, if client had packaged it, rather than taking it off in reception with the, by now anticipated: “With a fee like that you certainly have got the shirt off my back!”

A few drams of Big T have also served to dull the pain caused by those t…..s at First Utility who have STILL not sorted out that electricity and gas closing account – must be a year now!

It also takes at least a bottle to cope with the latest verbal fisticuffs twixt Hoopla and still OnTheParquet over claimed hits and palpable hits. Dear Lord, can one cope with this for another year? Let’s get Ian Springutt and Albert Hall into the ring at that Estate Agency boxing night and sort it out once and for all – I’d happily MC/ referee/ cold sponge/ spit-pail/ towel-flap or whatever!

What a crowd would turn up – unique visitors all, both portals are sure to tell us.

Finally for this week, dear friends, yet another sale looking rocky due to mortgage problems necessitating a last-minute change of lender (well, so the proposed purchaser ‘says’!), but his further explanation did appear to hold a grain of truth: “We’re changing the lenders because they’re just too slow and doing everything by letter.” Yes, you’ve guessed it – Post Office Mortgages.

Have a great weekend my dear fellow agents –

Big (slightly pissed) T,

not so much run-in as run-out now

Big T and THAT whisky

A very remarkable shirt, don’t you think?