Secret Agent: 'Keeping the office open for evening viewings is turning out to be one big antisocial move'

We've just finished a trial week of opening the office for evening appointments – a trial in every sense. It's one thing having to spend one's day in the company of estate agents; it's the mark of a very friendless individual indeed to be seen with them at night. Hence I was particularly relieved when, moments after our new hours were advertised on the website, the phone rang.

"Is it true?" barked a cocky posh bloke, the type to wear sunglasses on his head. Indoors.

"Is what true?" I snapped, irritably: we'd been given the afternoon off in lieu and rather than usefully spend it applying for a sensible job, I'd squandered it in front of Home and Away.

"That you're open till 10." I looked at the clock: it was only 6.45. "Yes."

He gave a little neigh. "That's wicked."

Suspecting that anyone who described house-buying as "wicked" possibly wasn't going to have the several hundred thousand pounds required to buy a property, I nevertheless felt obliged to register him. "Can I take your name?" "Ah, um, James."

"Surname?" "Um ... yah, it's um ... gosh, yah, Fotheringham." This sounded plausible enough, but the hesitation would have slightly perturbed me had I been the one who'd funded him all the way through public school.

"So," I continued, breezily, "what are you looking for?" He told me that he was in search of a three-bedroom house with development potential, but when we met up an hour later, I rather got the impression he was looking for a girlfriend: certainly his interest in the properties was distinctly minimal.

"This opening-in-the-evening lark," he said, after a cursory glance around the first house and a more lingering one at my chest, "a long-term plan of yours?" Concerned that this might be his indirect way of sounding me out for romantic availability, I got in quickly, "My husband hopes not."

Another neigh. "Yah, it's a bit antisocial isn't it? But pulls in the punters, I imagine."

"That's the idea," I replied, trying unsuccessfully to coax him towards the front door.

"Jolly inspired, if you ask me. So, talk me through the logistics." I assumed that this was his idea of a joke, but when he continued to press me, then looked genuinely interested as I talked about declining viewing figures, I realised he didn't need a property or a partner, but a personality.

"Where have you been?" Justin asked, enviously, when I finally escaped back to the office.

"Being hit on by the world's most boring man," I replied, then noticed he was filing floorplans alphabetically, and corrected myself, "second most boring."

"Seems our new initiative's creating quite a stir," my manager said, gleefully. "We'd better make sure the opposition don't nick it, eh?"

I nodded falteringly, as the socially unacceptable reality punched me where it hurt: I'd just spent my evening with an estate agent.