Why do people say "we've got a bit of bad news for you" when they mean "a hell of a lot of bad news"? It doesn't help to have the severity of the bad news undersold.

It's a bit like the time I went to a gig and was told "It's probably not quite your usual crowd". Probably? Not quite? They bloody hated me and everything I stood for. Here they are. They were a bunch of pensioners who had absolutely no reason to value what I do on stage, as it simply wasn't for them. There was no point sugar coating it, and I was wasting my time. I believe I was also doing it for free. Well done me.

I had to pull out "the emergency joke" which can never be a good thing!

Anyway, I think the reason people sugar coat bad news is that they don't want to be seen to be delivering it. Nobody likes to be negative or likes to be associated with anything negative, unless they're actually evil: "What's that Adolf? you just hope people will like you? Brilliant. Why don't you write a book about it? You could make it a follow up to your book about toasting marshmallows with some scouts - mein campfire - but what could you call it?"

Anyway, I had a call from my estate agent. Well, I'd had many calls. One call had been one where they said "We've got some tenants for you, but there may be an issue." It turned out the issue was that this nice couple and their child, none of whom smoked, might want to pay me above my asking price so they could have a three year tenancy. I was quite surprised and said that would probably be ok... probably? I nearly ran home in delight, and I was on the M4 at the time - not a good moment to bail out of the car.

The latter call was more the "there's a little bit of bad news". The news was that the tenants weren't moving in. Oh, and the holding deposit they paid is refundable... meaning it's a bit of a one-way deal. Note to self: if bored, go and put down holding deposits on people's properties and then withdraw them after a couple of weeks - it's a good way to make landlords lose money on their rent.

The reason that the couple couldn't move in? The wife was just diagnosed as terminally ill, which meant that the family could no longer afford to move in.

Whoah.

A little bit of bad news?

How does that even work? Sure, I'm going to lose a month or two's rent, which is a fair old bit of bad news... but someone's going to die.

Estate agents - the perfect liars.

Anyway, today I had a little bit of good news and hopefully nobody will get a fatal disease between now and June 15th when they move in!