He dismounted from the four-wheel-drive with the gleaming chrome bull bar, clearly needed in Dublin 8 to ward off stray bison roaming down Thomas Street. Or maybe his wife needs it for shopping in Dundrum.
He was a large bonhomie of a man, the kind who embraces you with his personality, especially when he is extracting moneys. I confirmed the address and he promptly flashed a measuring tape.
I followed him from room-to-room, holding the tape as he noted the numbers. Like a lot of jolly men, he had an easy line in patter: rugby, state of the nation, Heineken Cup, Munster Cup - a person of wide cultural interests for whom George Hook is relevant.
I held the tape, he noted the numbers, all the while checking against the figures on his clipboard.
"The walls and ceilings have not moved since you were last here," I said, helpfully, as he speedily confirmed the dimensions. I remembered him as the surveyor when I bought the apartment. Here he was again, appointed by the money lender (building society) to confirm - among other requirements - that the exterior of the building was intact and the interior walls still supported the ceilings.
As he noted the interior walls were on the inside of the exterior walls, I resisted the obvious remark about his masterful powers of logic. Since surveyors spend years in college to develop that kind of expertise, who am I to quibble? They also learn basic multiplication by looking learnedly at floors and ceilings, inputting a calculator, thereby demonstrating their genius in working out the square footage.
Years of study has also gifted them to recognise, by characteristics which elude the rest of us, the defining marks of a kitchen and what makes a bathroom different from, say, a livingroom.
All this heavy scholarship he carried lightly, as one immersed in Renaissance architecture, therefore writing in his report, that walls have a "light plaster rendering". Such perceptive professionals are retained by the money lender, sorry, building society. You, the borrower, pay the fee to certify the property has not collapsed, or been spirited away in the night as rubble on a builder's truck.
The survey goes to the lending committee of the building society, confirming the property was not a figment of their imagination, or indeed of yours, the borrower of the loan.
By re-mortgaging I have in mind to take some "equity" out of the increased value of the apartment, maybe to use for another property or to run away with one of those acrobatic Russian women I keep meeting on my travels, but whose shopping tastes are beyond my budget.
I'm tempted to write, under purpose of loan, "Russian fantasy" as it seems on the same level of veracity as "improvement to building". Such is the current state of cavalier lending, the money-lender does not really care what are my reasons for extra borrowing. As long as the sections are completed in black biro, the money will come down to me - once the surveyor had ticked his set of little boxes, certifying that the property is intact. In return, over say 20 years, I will pay back the money-lender about three times the amount borrowed.
Five years ago, the surveyor charged a fee of about €90, today it was €168. As I wrote the cheque, he told me happily he had done two other apartments in the block that morning: all three within the hour. How were they, I asked, Oh fine, he said, in good nick. Good to know there have been no serious landslides in Dublin 8 during the last few years, I said, but the humour eluded him. He is a man for whom time and traffic management is a doddle and I realised rather sadly, he is a man better equipped to run away with a high-maintenance Russian dancer.
Under the heading in the application that asks "purpose of loan", I'm going to write "donation to Benedictine Monastery in County Limerick".
