annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Working through housing shit - of little interest Another frustrating day of home-hunting. The flat I looked at was horrid - I assumed it was the whole ground floor, but some fucker has managed to squeeze two so-called one bedroom flats out of it. The bedroom was OK, but the other room included the kitchen and if I'd put my sofa and table in it you'd have had to stand sideways to squeeze between them. Today's near miss was in the same road as my friends M&S, in a terrace so gorgeous and unusual I've googled it and have learned that it was built in 1870, in the Italianate style. Aw maaaaan. I want to live there. Again it had the big rooms, high ceilings, fabulous windows, manageable rent. But it was on the second floor (third in American). I don't know why I got stuck on it - most agents have some kind of list and I'd spent the whole day dismissing anything above or below ground floor without noticing anything else about them. I decided it was because I'd done enough, long since and now I should stop and go home, but I almost cried about having to say that one was 'no good'. And what pisses me off is that the two near misses haven't made it to the internet on any of the lettings pages - I've been in the office before they got that far. None of the agents have contacted me with any flats, though I've now been signed up with some for over a week and when I call in they have ones I've not heard of. There's a two mile stretch of road through the city that has dozens of letting agents strung along it. It's taken me six hours over two days to call in on them all. Some are national chains, some are ramshackle independent operations - any of them may or may not have my flat. In one place there was an older guy on the phone and a younger woman who invited me to sit but then said they had nothing to suit. As we were going through my spiel the guy started listening and butted in to mention tenants who were moving out of here in December and here in January. "Hassle me," said the woman. "Keep calling to make sure I remember you." But there's another road with a great long stretch of them too, that I haven't even looked at. Monday I shall do that. I viewed a one bedroom house as well. Fuck me. That was even smaller than the flat I'd seen. Space. I've got one to look at tomorrow - it's terrible - I started writing this three hours ago and keep thinking of different things to google in this search and each one throws up more and more, none of them of a decent size on the ground floor for a decent rent. In the past I would have gambled. I still have a few (a very few, few enough to be declared and discounted by the benefits mob) thousand quid. I could say to myself, fuck this. I deserve to live in a decent place - I'm not going to live like a student again, now am I going to squeeze myself into a shoebox. I'll pay the extra few hundred (gulp) it will take to live somewhere decent and I'll just fucking have to find a way of keeping going. I commit to the belief that I live in a nice home and make it happen. Maybe I go two bedroom and (illegally) let out a room to a nice serious post-grad student, or take in language students for five days at a time. Oh God, it's 1.50 and I've just found a place and sent an email. Tow bedrooms - fuck it, eh. 10:08 p.m. - 27.10.11 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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