Moving story shows Joe was a DEL-ight
BACK in 2002 I had a lot of dogs and discovering skip mogul Joe Henshaw had a farm for sale I made an appointment to have a look at it with a view to buying the property.
“Come and see me up at farm at nine-o-clock on Saturday morning and you can have a look round he told me on the phone.”
I was up early that day and duly arrived for my appointment bang on nineo-clock.
“Oh, hello love, you’re early. What do you want?” asked Mrs Henshaw.
“I’ve got an appointment with Joe, to look around” I replied.
“What for?”
“To buy the farm,” I explained.
“Why, are we selling it?” “Didn’t you know?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. He often does stuff I don’t know about.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes I owned a Rolls Royce last week, by Friday it turned into a Ford Fiesta.”
“A bit like Cinderella?” I said a somewhat lost for words.
“Yes, you have to kiss an awful lot of frogs before you find a Prince,” she replied cheerfully.
“Can I have a look around, then?”
“You can but you won’t see Joe.”
“Why not?”
“He left at seven-o-clock to go to a truck show in Birmingham.”
In the event Mrs Henshaw showed me around the farm and said she would ask Joe to call me when he arrived home.
He did and asked me to go and see him immediately.
“Do you like the farm then?” he said on my arrival.
“Yes, I do.”
“What are you willing to pay for it?” Joe asked catching me completely off-guard.
I hummed and awed for a few minutes and then named a price.
“When would you like to move in?” he asked.
“How about the end of August?”
Jo spat on his hand, shook mine and said, “It’s a deal.”
Within 10 minutes of arriving I was on my way home.
Over the next few weeks my solicitor endeavoured to get all the contracts in order without receiving a single response from Joe.
Joe’s solicitor was more frustrated than mine as every attempt he made to pin Joe down was ignored.
In desperation I phoned Joe directly who told me not to worry ‘it will get done.’ In reality nothing happened. I was in the shower when the door bell rang. I hobbled downstairs with an enormous bath towel around me and opened the door to see Joe in a pair of polyester shorts and a massive big pair of work boots.
“Here’s your keys,” Joe said thrusting a bunch into my wet palm.
I was totally flabbergasted.
“What are they for?” I asked.
“For the farm.
“You said you wanted to move in at the end of August and a deal is a deal.”
“But…but we don’t have any contracts signed yet.”
“Just move in and let solicitors sort it out later.”
And off he went back to his truck surrounded by an unruly pack of noisy Jack Russells. It was the only house I ever moved into without signing anything.
That was Joe Henshaw Macclesfield’s very own Del Boy