[Previously in this series: Southend and an honest-to-God house]
Before I carry on, I feel I ought to state that the past five parts of this saga only covered six months of my life. Six months. No wonder I was cranky.
I moved into the mansion in early December. I put my own sheets on the bed, the couple of books I'd been carrying around on the shelf, my clothes on actual hangers in an actual wardrobe. I did the happiest food shop I've ever done in my life, whizzing down the aisles of the supermarket with a huge grin on my face, picking up anything that even slightly took my fancy, loving the Christmas music more than I had done in years. I had a shelf in the fridge, my own space in the cupboards. It was one of the happiest days I can remember.
The journey into work wasn't the easiest, but beyond that the place was a dream. We cooked things. We did clothes swaps. My friend and I went to dances together thrilled to have someone to come back with on the night bus. I bonded with one of my new flatmates over the Christmas decorations. We all went for drinks and did pub quizzes together. We had a tiny Judeo-pagan Christmas party. When I went home for the holidays, my friend sent me a message telling me she was really glad I'd moved in. The universe was finally being nice to me.
Of course it didn't last. How could it?
I'd been told before moving in that the landlady was trying to sell the house. I'd also been told that it had been on the market for quite some time and it wasn't anything to worry too much about. So I didn't really think about it at all. Maybe it would get sold in six months, a year, but I didn't need to worry about that now.
A month after I moved in, the landlady contacted us to tell us she was going to "pop by for a chat." My flatmate saw her later that same day, sent round a message headed "IMPORTANT" and gathered us all in the kitchen to tell us the place had been sold.
It's probably OK, she said. The landlady is nice and wants to make sure we'll be OK. She's chosen a buyer who's willing to take on the existing tenants, so we probably won't have to go anywhere. She'll send us notice to terminate our current contracts, and the new landlord will draw up fresh ones for us. I nodded and shushed the alarm bell in my head because it was fine, it had to be fine, there's no way I'd have to leave this place already because that would just be ridiculous.
We got an email from the woman who'd bought the flat. She told us that yay, she would take us on as tenants at the same rent we were currently paying. Only now it wouldn't include bills, thus pushing the overall cost well out of everyone's budget. We explained this to her, got a snotty email including the phrase "substantially below market value", and gave up.
Me, to everyone I knew: I have to move.
Everyone: What?!
Me: Flat's been sold.
Everyone: For FUCK'S sake!
Me: Yeah.
We decided to try looking for somewhere together, third flatmate having revised her instant hatred of me, as well as separately. We all independently went to view a place down the road, which had several spare rooms as well as a handy built-in Sexual Assault Tunnel with no lights in it, a kitchen that stank, one room we couldn't get into because there was a broken bed and a stack of wallpaper strippings in the way, and a room which contained nothing except a huge pile of cigarette butts.
"So... people smoke in here, then."
"Oh, no," said the twelve-year-old public schoolboy playing at being a landlord. "There's no smoking in this house."
The twelve-year-old public schoolboy upset my friend somewhat. "Who the fuck rents out a cesspit like that? Complete contempt for his tenants, that's what that is. Oh, you don't live here? With the scum? Live in Richmond, do you? See, this is what was wrong with Margaret Thatcher."
Shortly afterwards my friend found somewhere with one free room and decided to take it, leaving the other three of us to look together. We found a house in an area we weren't sure about with a landlady we weren't sure about, but it was clean and had a big kitchen and cost exactly what we were each paying currently. Also I was paying the most and would have the big pretty room with the sofa in it. We had a week until our notice ran out, and none of us wanted to be living in uncertainty anymore. We told the landlady we'd take it.
[in part seven: new house and more evidence of my truly terrible landlord karma]
Wednesday, 14 January 2015
Thursday, 8 January 2015
adventures in housing, part five
[Previously in this series: exploding guest houses and a large dose of FOR FUCK'S SAKE]
I ended up spending a month in Southend.
On the one hand, it's a long way away. The walk-bus-train-tube-tube-walk to work every morning was an adjustment I hadn't been quite prepared for, and I am singularly bad at mornings. Most of the time I would wake up about seven minutes before I needed to leave the house and would remain not really woken up for the rest of the day. I have songs on my iPod that take me straight back to sitting on a bus stop in Southend in the November drizzle, hoping that I was awake enough to spot the bus arriving and remember to get off it in the right place (I wasn't always). I did not end that month full of the joys of the suburbs and planning my own future as someone who would happily trade living in London for being able to buy an actual house.
On the other hand, I had a bed for an entire month. I had a room. I had somewhere to leave my things. I could eat actual dinner instead of takeaway or sandwiches in my office. I stopped ping-ponging between hair-trigger irritability, slightly manic hyperactive chirpiness and sullen depression and started acting like a human again. The aches in my back and shoulders faded, and I got some peace inside my own head. I didn't noticeably piss off either of my friends and I left their hospitality with relationships intact.
Living with a married couple was strange. It was like walking back into the same situation I'd just left, only now it wasn't mine. Of course, it wasn't exactly the same situation, since my friends are a functional couple who didn't spend entire evenings sitting on opposite sides of the room attempting to ignore each other, but occasionally I would watch them and remember when this was my life, when I couldn't really separate "my life" from "our life", and I knew his habits and preferences so well that they almost belonged to me. It was a confused nostalgia, a reminder that things weren't always the way they were at the end, and a kind of dreadful, frightened triumph at the thought that I could still be in this place, still living this familiarity that looked so comfortable from the outside but itched like crazy when I was wearing it. I envied the security while wanting to scratch it off my skin at the same time.
My friends are possibly exactly unlike me and my ex, which is why I'm now going to take a moment to say hi, Tom, everything is fine. You are the very best of all the friends and didn't accidentally cause me bad feelings by going about your life in your own house.
I continued to message people advertising rooms. I continued to go to viewings of what turned out to be tiny cesspits hidden away in alleys lined with drug dealers, with front doors that didn't lock and seven people crammed into two bedrooms, that the estate agents and landlords felt perfectly comfortable offering for rent at £160 per week.
"Very reasonable, we think."
"...um."
"The window will be replaced at some point with one that doesn't have a hole in it."
"That's nice."
"And don't worry about Susanne, she's just like that."
"...um."
"You won't find a lot in an area this accessible for this cheap a price."
"That does seem to be true, yes."
"So, are you interested?"
"Let me get back to you."
One morning I got a message from a friend. At the time she was a friend in the way that many people I've met through the dance scene are friends: connected on Facebook, would go and say hi and possibly give them a hug if I saw them, but not close enough to go out for dinner or email stupid videos to each other. She said there was a spare room coming up in her house in a few weeks and would I be interested?
I restrained myself from trying to leap directly through my laptop screen at her and said yes, yes I would be.
After rearranging several times to find some mutual free time in our clashing dance schedules, my friend met me at the closest station and took me to see the flat, which turned out to be a mansion flat with the most ridiculous huge fuck-off living room full of enormous sofas and giant mirrors and Sky TV. And it was cheaper than the drug den box room with Susanne who was just like that, don't worry. I thought perhaps I'd fallen into a mirage. I met the other two flatmates, one of whom was sweet and friendly and the other of whom seemed to dislike me on sight, but I was barely paying attention. Yes, I am going to live here. I am going to live here. I am going to live here.
I sent a "please let me live in your house" message the next day, and both the girls and the landlady accepted me. Shortly thereafter I left Southend, bought myself some bedding and took it and my suitcase to my new home.
[in part six: the mansion and FOR FUCK'S SAKE yet again]
I ended up spending a month in Southend.
On the one hand, it's a long way away. The walk-bus-train-tube-tube-walk to work every morning was an adjustment I hadn't been quite prepared for, and I am singularly bad at mornings. Most of the time I would wake up about seven minutes before I needed to leave the house and would remain not really woken up for the rest of the day. I have songs on my iPod that take me straight back to sitting on a bus stop in Southend in the November drizzle, hoping that I was awake enough to spot the bus arriving and remember to get off it in the right place (I wasn't always). I did not end that month full of the joys of the suburbs and planning my own future as someone who would happily trade living in London for being able to buy an actual house.
On the other hand, I had a bed for an entire month. I had a room. I had somewhere to leave my things. I could eat actual dinner instead of takeaway or sandwiches in my office. I stopped ping-ponging between hair-trigger irritability, slightly manic hyperactive chirpiness and sullen depression and started acting like a human again. The aches in my back and shoulders faded, and I got some peace inside my own head. I didn't noticeably piss off either of my friends and I left their hospitality with relationships intact.
Living with a married couple was strange. It was like walking back into the same situation I'd just left, only now it wasn't mine. Of course, it wasn't exactly the same situation, since my friends are a functional couple who didn't spend entire evenings sitting on opposite sides of the room attempting to ignore each other, but occasionally I would watch them and remember when this was my life, when I couldn't really separate "my life" from "our life", and I knew his habits and preferences so well that they almost belonged to me. It was a confused nostalgia, a reminder that things weren't always the way they were at the end, and a kind of dreadful, frightened triumph at the thought that I could still be in this place, still living this familiarity that looked so comfortable from the outside but itched like crazy when I was wearing it. I envied the security while wanting to scratch it off my skin at the same time.
My friends are possibly exactly unlike me and my ex, which is why I'm now going to take a moment to say hi, Tom, everything is fine. You are the very best of all the friends and didn't accidentally cause me bad feelings by going about your life in your own house.
I continued to message people advertising rooms. I continued to go to viewings of what turned out to be tiny cesspits hidden away in alleys lined with drug dealers, with front doors that didn't lock and seven people crammed into two bedrooms, that the estate agents and landlords felt perfectly comfortable offering for rent at £160 per week.
"Very reasonable, we think."
"...um."
"The window will be replaced at some point with one that doesn't have a hole in it."
"That's nice."
"And don't worry about Susanne, she's just like that."
"...um."
"You won't find a lot in an area this accessible for this cheap a price."
"That does seem to be true, yes."
"So, are you interested?"
"Let me get back to you."
One morning I got a message from a friend. At the time she was a friend in the way that many people I've met through the dance scene are friends: connected on Facebook, would go and say hi and possibly give them a hug if I saw them, but not close enough to go out for dinner or email stupid videos to each other. She said there was a spare room coming up in her house in a few weeks and would I be interested?
I restrained myself from trying to leap directly through my laptop screen at her and said yes, yes I would be.
After rearranging several times to find some mutual free time in our clashing dance schedules, my friend met me at the closest station and took me to see the flat, which turned out to be a mansion flat with the most ridiculous huge fuck-off living room full of enormous sofas and giant mirrors and Sky TV. And it was cheaper than the drug den box room with Susanne who was just like that, don't worry. I thought perhaps I'd fallen into a mirage. I met the other two flatmates, one of whom was sweet and friendly and the other of whom seemed to dislike me on sight, but I was barely paying attention. Yes, I am going to live here. I am going to live here. I am going to live here.
I sent a "please let me live in your house" message the next day, and both the girls and the landlady accepted me. Shortly thereafter I left Southend, bought myself some bedding and took it and my suitcase to my new home.
[in part six: the mansion and FOR FUCK'S SAKE yet again]
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