Architecture and Morality

Roland the architect visited on Thursday. He arrived in a convertible BMW. I would guess that he expects us and our house to keep him in the manner to which he’s become accustomed. We walked him around the house and pointed out what we'd want changed. He nodded and smiled but gave very little away. He speaks when we've signed a contract perhaps. He did comment on the carpeted walls, that he had only previously seen similar things done for soundproofing. You do shudder to think what might have been happening in our house. We'll call a builder next.


Just before he arrived our neighbour Becky visited with a welcoming card and bottle of wine. I love it here. She thought Basil was a weird old man, rather than the sweet and lovely man described by Martin and Anne on the other side. The shared wall must give Becky a different level/type of knowledge.


I continued with the jungle/garden clearing today. Gardening can be relaxing and therapeutic but this isn't. Some innocent lives may have been lost in the 'Are you a flower or a weed?' decision making process. I love the garden though and could happily stare it rather than the tv. We have two squirrels that often appear in the garden and like to leap about the Wendy house roof and from it onto the trees and fences. If we spotted two rats I wouldn't be so charmed but there's probably little difference between them.

Cat Litter - 25th May 2009

I cut the grass four times over Saturday and Sunday each time with the blades a little lower and after the second time without the grass collecting box since that was only helping everything get clogged up and the mower need a regular few minutes rest. Looking at the photos taken in February it was evident that it's all gone a bit wild and needs more taming so i began defining the borders, trimming the bushes and weeding. This can be risky since what to the average human is an overgrown garden is a free toilet to the average cat. I also became aware that the roots of the climber i was tackling last week are actually about ten feet from the pergola. Like a boxer that's been counted out it drags itself along the soil until it finally has something to climb up.



I also finally cleared the blockage in the upstairs basin this morning. On Saturday i tried a Mr Muscle product which, contrary to advertising, had all the strength of an irate five year old girl. I returned from another visit to Homebase this morning armed with Caustic Soda. It has an ominous warning about wearing gloves and a face mask. I don't have these so i just wore a nervous expression. It also says it should be kept away from children and pets. It's a plague in a bottle. This cleared the blockage instantly, if not quicker. I thought the basin might dissolve as well.

Genes - 23rd May

Since, uniquely, I didn't have any work i began tackling the garden on Tuesday and Wednesday. My strategy was to start at the back door and work outwards. The climbing plant that is suppsed to be wrapped around a pergola is actually in the lean-to and damaging its already delicate construction. So, i removed that and then began to tackle the outdoors. The (unknown) climber is meant to climb but it just hangs and makes it difficult to walk around/under so it was severely cut back and will be trained to climb around the frame in the future. I also gathered the many plantless pots which were randomly scattered and found a roll of cine film in one. No porn. I don't have a projector but it appears to be a cartoon.

Today i prioritised the garden again rather than start proper work. I paid the second-hand lawnmower man, who is half a mile up the road, a visit. He flatteringly said i looked young and fit enough to have a mower that i just pushed. No electricity, no petrol, just raw muscle power. I told him he was deluded and i wanted something with an engine the size of my car at the very least. He had a Mountfield for £100 which seemed a good deal so i nipped home and checked the internet and that model was £329 brand new. Bargain. Only a fool would turn it down but instead this fool went and bought it. Had i bought a new one someone might have helped me put it into the car but instead they watched and commented on how surprisingly roomy the Peugeot 206 is. I clutched at my back and drove home. I lifted it out of the car, left it in the garage and satnav'd my way to Homebase. I use the Satnav constantly. Having only been here two weeks i'd never find anwhere and never find my way home again without it.

There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the organisation of the Homebase store. I wandered looking like a tool looking for a tool and then asked a little woman (employee) who, once she had found the first thing i wanted, i showed my list and she guided me around the store. Even there i need Satnav! So, i headed home with my trowel, loppers, rake etc and then set about mowing the lawn. The grass is long. It waves in the wind like a field of corn. Unsurprisingly, after only mowing three lengths (up, down, up again) the mower died. £100 for 15 minutes. Bargain!

I'm not a practical person. I try but the making, fixing, DIYing gene is not present in this body. So i rang my dad. He'd never encountered the problem i described but said i should try something which i did and it worked. I was Mowbile again. Now, that's a skill. My dad comes from a generation that makes things, fixes things, services his own car, that sort of thing. If he wanted a thingummajig he wouldn't go and buy one he'd buy some parts and make one. Life Coach Michael Neill tells a story about how, when he was a child, his father was able to fix all sorts of things and Michael felt inadequate and believed he'd never be so skilled. Now that he is the age his father was he has the skills dad had and his own son feels inadequate and lacking in skills. That hasn't happened to me. I have the same skill level i had when i was seven only now when DIY goes badly i can swear with a ferocity that is truly impressive.

I'm not truly without any skills though. I saw a client this week who told me he got someone to help him assemble an Ikea coffee table. How difficult could that be?? A top and four legs.

It must be seen to be believed - 19th May 2009

A visit from Marianna's colleagues, Hannah and Mel yesterday. They loved the house. People should visit regulalrly to stop me from just seeing it as a collection of light switches, wall sockets and toilets that don't work. It also clearly needs to be visited since Marianna had obviously described it but it clearly defies belief. Mel seemed to think we could ebay most of the fixtures and fittings.

Visits from architects have been arranged for next week.

Water Bed - 16th May 2009

I was very pleased with myself yesterday evening to have found the problem with the second floor toilet and returned it to working order. Well done me. Perhaps a new career in plumbing awaited me. Then we went to the theatre to see the rather disappointing ‘Dinner Ladies’. When we got home we discovered that the water from the cistern in the recently cured toilet had emptied itself through the floor onto the bed base in the room below. Another gift from Basil's daughters who must have been aware of the problems with it. The water was flowing down from the mirrored ceiling. Wouldn’t want that to be damaged. So, it’s like a hatrick with water flowing from the second floor into the first from the toilet and from the first to the ground floor from the shower. You have to laugh. Although I may not do so for several more years.

Today Marianna sorted out our clothes (in the dining room) and I destroyed the hundreds of shelves and worktops in the garage without unintentionally destroying the garage which I think is held up by the climbing plants that have gone a bit wild around it. We discovered the local council tip and made a couple of trips there with Marianna characteristically wanting to remove things from the skips. So, we have a new, slightly worn chair. This evening we are actually able to sit in the sitting room. And watch the tv. The aerial isn’t working but then neither are most of the lights or wall sockets so let’s not raise our hopes unrealistically.

Old Spice - 15th May 2009

Heavy rain in the night has revealed the religious significance of our garage roof. It’s very holy. We’ll need to change our plans about storing things in there.We’re sleeping in the loft conversion and are slightly disturbed by scratching noises above our heads. We’re hoping it’s birds in the chimney or guttering. Marianna describes the smell of the house as like an old people’s home; Bleach with an undercurrent of urine. Isn't that how they made 'Old Spice'?

Indoor Shower

I returned from the gym this morning to find Marianna making the first use of the shower in the house after over an hours worth of cleaning last night. But when we went downstairs we found that all of the water from the shower was not making its way down the street in a water pipe of some sort but was in the hallway, deeply soaked into the lush carpet. Buying a house neglected for decades seemed amusing a week ago but seems like a money pit at the moment. Still, there's no need to wash ourselves since we haven't located our clothes yet. Legendary former owner, Basil, didn't need clothes though. Perhaps we should embrace that spirit. I'm optimistic that the shower can be used so long as one of us is standing in the hall beneath the shower with a bucket.

It's a curious house; Why are the lights on the floor rather than the ceiling? Why are so many of the bulbs red? Why is the oven in the garage? Why does every cupboard and built-in wardrobe have a light bulb inside when some rooms don’t? Why are there four layers of curtain in the mirrored ceiling bedroom? Why does every shelf or window ledge have a perfectly cut sheet of glass on it? Why don’t the bathrooms have frosted glass? How long will it be before i think all of this is normal?

Of Sentimental Value

The sad thing about buying the house of someone recently deceased is how much of Basil and his personality is evident here. His daughters are clearly lovely people and chose to remove things of monetary value but leave behind anything of sentimental value. The Rolex in the kitchen cupboard doesn't count. Clearly Basil owned a very large furniture store in town. There are plans and designs for the latest of three stores in the garage. There are photographs of the different premises they occupied over the years, as well as designs for the letter heads and business cards. Today we found a box from Basil's time in the second world war containing hundreds of photographs of him and his friends in the regiment moving into Germany, his army pay book, letters from his school, him and his wife, Annie. I'd ask for nothing more than that when i go i'm treated with more respect than his daughters have treated him.

Swinging

Today i met Becky, the neighbour on the shared wall side. We met Martin from the other side before we'd even got the keys. Becky informed me that our house was, indeed, the centre for swinging, free love, wife swapping parties in the town in the sixties and seventies. Not a big surprise given the mirrored walls and ceilings and pink light bulbs. She said 'I'll tell you all about Basil when you've moved in and it's too late to escape back to your old house'. Is that the definition of ominous?

The Virgin Media engineer came on Tuesday. He wasn't the most socially skilled of people and he seemed particularly miserable but cheered up when he saw the carpets and that every toilet has a phone (or vice versa). He only found thirteen phone points. There are third world countries with less. He probably took his lifted mood and went off to give to charity. Or buy porn.

1 out of 3 isn't bad - 9th May 2009

We spent the day moving furniture from the old house to the new house. The state of the house of porn has come as bit of a shock. Probably as a result of looking at the photographs taken three months ago too often in my mind the amount of work it needed had diminished to be a little light painting and maybe some carpet removal. It now seems more like we've bought four walls and will get rid of everything in between. Actually, make that three walls since the rear wall is single brick and strong wind outisde will move furniture inside. It's a joy and sign of affluence though to have three toilets. But only one really works properly. And isn't it just typical that that's the one that doesn't have a telephone next to it.

Keys - 8th May 2009

In August 2008 my partner, Marianna, and I moved to Coventry. That’s not a nice sentence. Twelve years in a high security prison would be a nicer sentence. However, we went to Coventry for really good reasons. After several years of applications, interviews, rejection and disappointment Marianna’s brilliance had finally been recognised and she got a place on a Phd in Clinical Psychology course. In Coventry. I’d only been there once before. In 1999 when working for The Prison Service I’d been to Coventry on a training course, picked up some sort of stomach bug and spent a night with my head down the toilet. That was actually a highlight of a poor course. We were sad to leave Hull after two and half years. It may have a bad reputation but we both grew really fond of the place and it's distinctive character.


Our plan was to rent somewhere to live for six months, get to know the city and then buy somewhere. One day we drove the 140 miles from Hull, viewed four properties; two slums, one just too small and the one we said yes to. 24 hours after moving in, some weeks later, we went on holiday to Egypt for two weeks, leaving the house in complete chaos. After a month or so in Coventry we began house hunting. It became a hobby. That’s what we did with our weekends; house viewings. Dozens of them. After a while we began to specialise in the homes of the recently deceased. They have often left many of the houses original features intact and won’t have ruined it with their idea of good taste. We weren’t befriending particularly ill people or scanning obituary columns but we’d given up on every other type of house. I was also aware that the house was now in the hands of a grieving relative who might be open to a cheeky offer well below the asking price. In the end all of the houses had the same thing wrong with them; they were in Coventry. There isn’t really anything wrong with Coventry. I’ve been to Blackburn, Grimsby, Mansfield and Grays where the locals look like extras from a zombie movie but Coventry just seemed bland and unremarkable. It wasn’t the best band in the world on the main stage at the festival and it wasn’t even using the portaloo. It was queueing for the Portaloo. We narrowed our search to the nicest bit of Coventry; Earlsdon but still found nothing that really excited us although we were becoming less fussy and knew we’d need to plump for something soon. Then we tried looking outside of Coventry and tried Leamington Spa. We looked at three houses and would have happily bought two of them. The one we eventually made an offer on was a 1970’s time capsule but also had mirrors on every wall and some ceilings, carpet on the bathroom walls and many other unique features. We loved it even though the estate agent told us that few people got further than the entrance before deciding it wasn’t for them. We made our offer on February 11th and then began several months of nonsense from the mortgage provider, daughters of the deceased owner and the hopeless estate agents. The mortgage providers queried Marianna not being British and me being self-employed, they wanted a survey and then another one, the owner’s daughters wanted us to pay for furniture in the house they’d previously said they’d dump and the estate agents were hopeless throughout; “We’re trying to keep everyone happy” they said at one point. “You’re not making me remotely happy, so you’re failing on 50% of that” I told them. It was also a bit stressful that we’d never really unpacked from the move from Hull and from the day we made the offer Marianna began to pack those things we were using. I’d take a sip from a glass, put it down and when I returned to it it had been wrapped, labelled and boxed.


But finally it was ours and as arranged at 2pm on the 8th of May I went to the estate agents to collect the keys to the new house. Since the estate agents and owner’s daughters couldn’t have made this purchase more complex and stressful we felt a complaint would be appropriate. Why on earth should it take three months when there’s no chain and one party is dead? I asked the moronic female estate agent if they had a complaints procedure and she referred me to the moronic male estate agent.

Moron: What’s your complaint?

Me: I’d like to put it in writing.

Moron: Why can’t you just tell me?

Me: I’d like to do it formally and put it in writing. To whom should I address it?

Moron: Me. Why don’t you just tell me now?

Me: Is there a professional, governing body for estate agents?

Moron: Not really. You’d have to go through the directors of this company.

Then, as I turned to leave, he laughed and said 'Good luck with that'. I could see him shaking his head reflected in the glass panel of their doorway. Suddenly I empathised with all of the murderers I’ve met over the years. I resisted the overwhelming temptation to vent spleen with him or punch him. He should be pitied for his lack of intellect and because he's an estate agent. He should try spending his time engaging in a more socially acceptable pursuit, perhaps exposing himself in a local park.


I knew I wouldn’t make a complaint. If he was the person I was going to complain to he wouldn’t suddenly become competent and professional. I’m not a natural complainer anyway. If I order the fish and the waiter brings lamb I look on this as an opportunity for a new experience. The need for complaining disappeared because my friend Sorrell rang me just after I left with the keys and I had a good rant and a moan which is always more productive than an actual adult, assertive complaint.


I headed back to Coventry to collect Marianna and then to the van rental depot. Due to an accumulation of points on my licence the van was rented in Marianna’s name. It’s not easy to drive a big van and instantly maneuver a narrow exit. She stopped the van when she was so close to one of their brand new hire cars you could just slide a piece of paper between them. A member of staff re-positioned it so it was easier to get off the premises. We then loaded boxes and boxes and boxes into the van to deliver nine miles up the road.