Ahh the Lovely Rain.

I do love the tippity tippity tap of rain on the tin roof. There are no storms today driving Dog into some kind of mad fear frenzy, instead she is just lazing around enjoying the slow pace and trying to avoid the smell of the floor cleaner Stevie is sloshing about. See that's another advantage of the rain - no golf means the floors get a wash.

Anyway, rain at this time of the year is lovely. It's still cool enough to pull on a light sleeve and the humidity is not making your thighs stick together - not in a good way. Everything can do with a little dust wash off and because the colours here are always bright and vivid, it's cool to sit back and enjoy the grey, of the sky and the water. It's not at all depressing to me, although to be honest I never found the London greys miserable either.

The garden is about ready to punch out of its very brief hibernation and so is looking out at the rain like a long lost friend. Yeh you can almost see green stuff smiling.

We have put the Big House on the market again. It has taken 2 years for us to get over the bilge from real estate agents and so it's time to try again.

Stevie reckons we should expect no-one to come have a look-see in the rain, but that's a time I would like to go for a visit, cos I reckon if a place looks good in the rain, it must look bloody marvellous on fine days.

We have had the usual battle over semantics with the agent, and there has been some brief concern over the truthfulness of the final description, but perhaps punters take more than a third off when they read shit so a certain degree of hyperbole is in order.

Who knows what the truth is when it comes to selling property, the only thing I reckon you can know for sure is that someone is gonna have to love the place before they stump up the cash to move in.

It's not like when I bought my place in Brisbane all those years ago. The financial settlement via the divorce saw me with a chunk of change and I knew that I needed to buy a house or else I would be forced to rent a bigger flat to accommodate my ever growing shoe collection.

So I trawled the market.

Of course I couldn't afford what I had left so I needed to adjust my wish list.

When I first went to see my place, I thought, 'I fucking don't think so!' - it was small and a bit ugly. I ran from the yard.

Then after a month or so of seeing places suffering from damp and dingy, I went back for a second visit.

It was actually OK. Plenty big enough for my girl and me, and I could paint it any damn colour I liked and I could afford it, so I bought and we moved in and lived happily there for many years.

So maybe our buyer won't have to fall head over heels for this place. Maybe it will just have to 'do'.

And if you know of someone who wants to buy a 6 or 4 bedroom house with or without a study, maybe they should stop by for a  look or 2.

I am tossing up whether or not I should buy an orchid, cos that's about the extent of effort I want to spend dressing the place.

We are giving it 3 months.