Boom or Bust

                                                                                             

John tightens his grip on the gritty shaft of the chisel and tenses his arm. The club hammer in his right hand swings down striking the head of the chisel driving it deep into the old mortar joint. Giving the chisel a sharp downward tap to release it, he pulls it free and places it further along the joint. Another blow and the mortar split loosening the stone. Using the chisel as a lever he loosens it further and jumps sharply back cursing as it falls, raising a cloud of arid lime dust and narrowly missing his foot. Smiling inside the dust mask, I grab one end and we hoisted it into the barrow. Groaning inwardly, I lift the handles of the barrow and head outside while John stretches then bends to tackle the next block.

John is a physical education teacher with a body to match. I met him when I got the post of school Secretary at St Mark’s.  He has wide set hazel eyes in an open face, a kind of cute nose that is slightly bent and a grin that is infectious. I was totally smitten and surprised to find that the feeling was mutual. That he could fancy me, Jean Wilson the girl who on a good day her best friend describes as bubbly and on a bad one as a bitch. Problem is I’m redheaded with green eyes, a button nose, freckles and have a habit of speaking my mind.

We ran into each other on my first day, literally, and as he bent to help me to my feet I stared up into those dreamy eyes and turned from a feisty redhead into wobbling mass of blancmange. Words formed and reformed in my head making senseless sentences that had I manage to utter, would have made me look a total idiot.

‘Sorry,’ was all I managed in the end.

‘No, it was my fault, are you OK?’

‘Fine thanks, but it really was my fault.’

‘No, I should have looked where I was going.’

‘No, I should have looked where I was going.’

If I had not recovered my senses, God knows how long we would have continued with this game of verbal ping-pong.

‘My name’s Jean, Jean Wilson, I’m the new Secretary.’ I blurted out.

‘Hi, I’m John Pearson, Phys, Ed, teacher.’

And that was it, we made a date for the following night and I moved into his rented flat two weeks later, talk about high-speed romance. Within six months we had taken out a joint mortgage on a rundown semi. With a lot of hard work and one or two mistakes we did it up and found to our surprise we had both enjoyed the challenge. It took us two years of callus forming, nail breaking work, but it was worth all the hard graft. We had the house valued and found that with the booming market and the improvements it was now worth nearly double what we had paid.

We loved that old house and what we had achieved, but we had decide at the very beginning that it was only the first step to a larger property. So we began to search for one with a garden, preferably on the edge of town and finally found a decent sized detached with three bedrooms. Like the others we looked at, the price was on the high side, but it was just what we wanted and hey, if you do not take a risk you get nowhere in this world. Besides we were both young and had just proved that property was money in the bank. We sold the old house and bought the new with a mortgage that stretched us to the very limit of our finances.

Luckily the new house did not need as much work, which was just as well, since just about everything we earned went towards paying the mortgage. Things were so tight for the first twelve months that we practically starved. No nights out with the girls for me and none with the boys for John, as to weekends away with romantic candle lit dinners, they were exchanged for nights in and beans on toast.

The lack of funds meant that our plans for the house were put on hold and for the first time since we met, we had no major building project to occupy our spare time. So we slowed down, began sorting out the garden, which took hard work, but little cash and began to take leisurely woodland walks. Long summer nights made us feel as if we were in different world, gone the smells of wet cement and diesel fuel, replaced by that of ripening hay and flowering hedgerow. The clattering rattles of a spinning cement mixer silenced, and in its place an evensong of summer birds.

Happy with our home, our new leisurely pace of life and the neighbourhood, we decided to stay put and we did, for all of 18 idyllic months. But as property prices continued to rise we began dreaming of owning a cottage deep in the countryside. So we re-mortgaged the house increasing the monthly payment to a belt tightening degree and bought a tumbled down cottage that cost more that selling price of our first house and that was when everything went wrong.

Inflation rose to 15% and the bottom fell out of the property market. Despite cancelling everything we could, we still could not afford the monthly mortgage repayments. To stave off the building society, we put the house on the market and ended up selling it purely to clear the debt. We’d lost all the equity we’d built up, but were lucky. At least we had a broken down caravan parked next to a tumbled down wreck of a cottage, while others had lost everything they owned.

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