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Without Prejudice

I am the sort of person who likes to get on with things – no dilly-dallying or fannying about on the fence for me. Almost without realising it, I usually manage to end up in control of most situations – apart from those involving The Boyfriend, who is very much in possession of a mind of his own and will therefore not be controlled by me, or anyone else for that matter. But I digress. The current situation that I seem to have ended up in control of, is the acquisition of the freehold of the flat in Hastings belonging to Katy and I.

Months ago, in the summer, I attended a meeting in Eastbourne with a couple of fellow lessees regarding this matter. Although I’d been idly thinking that we really ought to try and acquire the freehold, I was by no means the one who started the ball rolling and I was overjoyed that the reins were, for once being held by someone else. Of the eight lessees, only three of us made this initial meeting and I nearly didn’t as a result of almost getting knocked out by some awful fat girls, bellies swinging threateningly over their hipsters, having a fight in the very chavvy pub where I was trying to phone for a taxi. I arrived at the meeting to discover that the two lessees present were both perfectly nice, but very much part of the new school of property development, that is, both of them saw it as a ‘sideline’. They were terribly enthusiastic about property, whereas I would nowadays rather stick pins in my eyes than even think about property developing.

“I slave away on the computer formulating and launching pointless emails into the ether”

We chatted about the freehold for an hour or so, by which time it had somehow come about that I – as the most experienced participant – would be organising the whole damn thing. How did that happen? Then, months down the line and many emails, phone calls and pointless conversations later, we agreed that, rather than going down the valuation route, we would pay what the freeholder was asking, as we’d save no time and very little money going down the tribunal route. All was agreed – even the lessees who live in Australia managed to respond with alacrity – and, last week, I instructed our solicitor to issue an offer letter to the freeholder. Then, this morning I received an email from one of the lessees, who’d decided – after 7 months – that we were perhaps paying too much and should get a formal valuation. Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh! What are these people on? They clearly sit around drinking Chenin Blanc, boring each other senseless with the worth of their portfolio, while I slave away on the computer formulating and launching pointless and for the most part, ignored emails into the ether.

Interestingly, all of the lessees bar two are men and it is the male contingent which has been the slowest to respond to my ever more crapulous missives, citing the arrival of ‘new babies’ as their excuse. Lord alone knows what would happen if they actually had to give birth to them too. I’m sure the whole property industry would implode.

So, this morning, before topping up my rapidly depleting karma at Yoga, I wearily phoned our solicitor to tell him to un-offer the offer he offered last week. Fortunately, the letter he had sent was ‘without prejudice’, meaning that the freeholder couldn’t rely on the contents. Let’s hope he’s not having a baby any time soon, or we’ll all be f****d.

Purple Christmas

Bloody Christmas is on its way again and I am not happy about it, I can tell you – well, at least from a financial point of view. My regular London job is no more and a freelance radio writing job I am working on is now not going on air until December, meaning I won’t get paid for it ‘til January at the earliest. Given that advertising agencies are usually very slow at paying – sometimes taking a minimum of 120 days – I will be lucky to see my money this side of March. Then my lodger announced he is moving out on the first of December, leaving me no time at all to get anyone in before Christmas. These two things alone have chopped my income in half at just the wrong time of year.

“I shall not attempt to describe the tenant, who seemed happy with his artistic endeavours”

One of the language schools offered me a Saudi student for a month, which would have tide me over quite nicely ‘til the New Year. The accommodation woman then immediately put me off by telling me that the guy was clearly used to having servants, as he was quite hard work and liked to be waited on hand and foot. I assured her that young people with that kind of attitude would certainly get a foot – but quite possibly where they least expected it. After a bit of a family conference, I politely declined the Language School’s offer as we all agreed that we’d rather have a miserable, poverty-stricken kind of Christmas than an affluent one with a spoilt stranger glaring at us over the dinner-table.

Fortunately, I may just be rescued by the fact that Katy and I are in the process of re-mortgaging our flat in Hastings in order to pay for the freehold, which we are purchasing along with our fellow lessees. I’m not really a re-mortgaging kind of gal, especially not to boost my own meagre income, but Katy has recently blown all her money on a holiday pre-fab in Norfolk and therefore needs a bit of spare cash. Because we own the Hastings property jointly, if one of us takes money out, then so must the other, or everything becomes really complicated. Even though the current mortgage is only a tiny £30,000 and the property is now worth over £100,000, it still makes me feel uncomfortable taking money out of it at this early stage. It is important, however, that we buy the freehold, as our lease is getting shorter and our freeholder more stubborn and greedy and the sooner we are rid of him, the better. Last year, for example, we were charged £35,000 for the painting of the exterior of the property. The freeholder didn’t share my sense of humour when I enquired whether it was going to be painted in 24 carat gold…

As far as the re-mortgage is concerned, the only stumbling-block I can forsee is that our flat – which has been rented out to ex-cons and people with ‘social issues’ for the past four years – currently looks like a pile of shite. In fact, a pile of shite would possibly be a more attractive place to live. I almost fell over when I went to see it recently and discovered that the current tenant had painted most of it dark purple and daubed what remained with religious slogans. I shall not attempt to describe the tenant who, bless him, seemed perfectly happy with his artistic endeavours. I only hope that whoever comes to survey the property is chronically colour-blind. Well, stranger things have happened…

The Boyfriend and I recently spent a whole weekend in Copenhagen where, by the last day, we hadn’t even eaten out once. Fortunately, on our last day, we managed to make up for it by going to the seaside at Koge (not pronounced how it’s spelt, I can tell you) and finding an ‘eat all you can’ Danish buffet at lunchtime. The Boyfriend, who has a famously disproportionate belly-to-eye ratio (his eyes being about 10 times bigger), ate more than the rest of the restaurant put together. When quizzed about his rather large appetite, The Boyfriend will get a guarded and slightly murderous look in his eye and claim that he was ‘born hungry’. This fact has been confirmed to me by his mother, who agrees that he was indeed born at dinnertime. He certainly got his money’s worth at the buffet – and mine too.

We spent the remainder of the day sitting in the rather gloomy and hideously overpriced Scala bar in the city centre with our luggage and downed a few final pints of Tuborg as we waited to leave for our flight. The Boyfriend’s lunchtime bonanza did nothing to curb his enthusiasm when the BA staff came round with ‘a light snack’ and he naturally had to have two of them.

“We were horrified to discover not one, but two Frenchmen in my bed”

We arrived back at Heathrow just in time to catch the 10.30pm coach back to Brighton and to bump into one of my ex-lodgers from years ago, who was getting the same coach, having spent the weekend away with his girlfriend. This lodger was one that I was especially fond of and, knowing him as he was four years ago, I was surprised that he’d managed to get it together to catch the bus, let alone go to a whole different country, so legendary was his confusion and lethargy of yesteryear.

By the time we arrived home at midnight, we were pretty exhausted and I was delighted to find the kitchen in immaculate order, which was probably down to my highly organised and house-proud son. Now that’s five words I never imagined I’d be able to put together in the same sentence. Unfortunately, upstairs lurked a slightly different story and when The Boyfriend flung open my bedroom door, we were horrified to discover not one, but two Frenchmen in my bed. While The Boyfriend stood there aghast, the charming bedfellows politely enquired how I had enjoyed my weekend in Denmark, to which I replied – through gritted teeth – that it had been lovely… up until now.

Once they were angrily despatched to the sofa in the living-room, I explained to The Boyfriend (who by now thought I was totally mad) that I had told the Frenchmen that they could have my room while I was away, that we were back on Sunday night and they had to be out by Sunday afternoon at the very latest. Furthermore, I’d told them that if they had trouble finding somewhere to stay, they could sleep on my sofa, but that they’d have to phone me and ask me first. They had done none of the above. I’m not sure where exactly the communication breakdown had occurred, but it had and in a fantastically irritating way. Once eventually in bed, The Boyfriend, still tutting and grumpy, said that he didn’t understand how I could spend so much money doing up Landlady Towers in order for it to still be – as he put it – a ‘tramp’s drop-in centre’. And do you know what? For once I have to agree with him…

I have just returned from a weekend in Denmark with The Boyfriend. Unfortunately, the day before we left, I went down with a stinking cold, which was really quite annoying as I hadn’t had one for four years. The Boyfriend, or course, in true man-flu fashion chose to have his cold last May on our trip to Greece, where he spent a great deal of time in bed, only managing to get up in order to watch an Arsenal/Chelsea match. Although I was determined not to let my cold ruin our trip, I thought my eardrums were going to explode as we came in to land. The Boyfriend suffers from extreme ear pressure when landing on airplanes, regardless of whether he has a cold or not, so we were both stone deaf when we arrived at Kastrup, which didn’t help with the confusing ticket-buying procedure that we had to negotiate in order to get into the city centre.

“By the time I’d unpacked my very small bag, the fridge was already stocked up and His Lordship was busy making salami and cheese toasties”

Things improved dramatically on arrival at our apartment, which looked just like an Ikea room-set and had everything one could wish for in a holiday let. The Boyfriend was delighted to find ample cooking facilities and I have never seen a man so overjoyed to discover a full set of cooking pots and a brand new frying pan, which still bore a price tag confirming its virgin status. Determined to christen the new frying pan, The Boyfriend immediately set off to the nearest Netto to stock up on provisions. By the time I’d unpacked my very small bag, the fridge was already stocked up and His Lordship was busy making salami and cheese toasties.

By our second day, we still hadn’t eaten out and, although we were determined to do so that very night, we got terribly waylaid by huge amounts of Tuborg lager (a blast from the past, for those of us who remember the 1970s) and ended up not eating anything at all. Much the worse for wear – Tuborg and Night Nurse are a cathartic, but not ideal combination – we went to bed at some ungodly hour and just managed to wake up in time to go back to the pub and watch the Arsenal/Man U game with a load of Danish blokes. Not my idea of the perfect holiday activity, I can tell you. Especially not when the Tuborg was £5 per pint and then they do that terrible thing of not filling it right to the top of the glass and leaving a huge frothy head on it. Because we were a little the worse for wear, we decided not to eat out that night either and The Boyfriend paid another visit to Netto and knocked up some chicken breasts in peppercorn sauce with sauté potatoes and green vegetables.

The following morning – our last day – I felt much better and decided to go for a jog in the nearby park. It was a clear, frosty day and no one was around because it was 8am on a Sunday morning. I was just admiring the fabulous autumnal colours of the trees, when a stern-looking young lady stepped out in front of me and said something firmly in Danish. I thought she’d said that running was forbidden, but told her I was English and didn’t understand. She then repeated in English that running was forbidden in the park, but I was allowed to walk, if I wanted. Kind of negates the whole point of going for a run, really and I found it very strange, and told her so. It reminded me of a time when, out running on a beach in Essaouira, Morocco, I was chased by a furious policeman on a camel. Don’t you just love foreign regulations?

The other evening, I had a few friends round for a curry. After we’d finished discussing how rubbish men are, the conversation turned to how noisy it is to live in Brighton. Especially at night and particularly if you are silly enough to live in central Brighton, as we all do. One of my colleagues from the supermarket had gone to bed early the other night in full anticipation of a long night of undisturbed sleep. What she actually got, was a night peppered with salsa music from the man downstairs, followed by her next door neighbours having a furious row, which culminated in many possessions being thrown, apparently at great force, through the window. Meanwhile, Disco Nikki, who had accidentally destroyed the light-pull in her bathroom had come out that night leaving her bathroom light and extractor fan on. She was rather concerned that her over-sensitive neighbours might complain. Another supermarket colleague who lives right next to Churchill Square is regularly kept awake by one of her neighbours vacuuming at 1am, which in my opinion is possibly one of the saddest things you can do at night.

“A colleague next to Churchill Square is kept awake by her neighbour vacuuming at 1am”

I’m lucky that my house has very thick walls, through which almost no sound can penetrate, but I have lived in some very badly sound-proofed flats in the past. One in East Dulwich, London had walls and floors so badly sound-proofed that one could hear the woman upstairs having a pee. On the upside, you had no need of a radio of your own as you could listen to hers. The worst flat by far was one in Brixton, where The Big Daughter, Big Son and I resided in the early 90s. Not only was it full of mice, but we were kept awake all night by a neighbour with learning difficulties, who enjoyed singing along in a desperately out of tune fashion to The Best of Rainbow or Fleetwood Mac. She sounded so happy that I could never muster up the anger to complain.

Anyway, regular readers will already be aware of my views on the night time noise emanating from late bars and the like. I have always said that if you don’t like it, move to a quieter spot, like Worthing or Lewes, for example – though the latter can apparently get rather noisy around bonfire night. Having lived just off the Saturday evening hell that is Western Road for over 12 years now, I have managed to develop a finely tuned capacity for selective hearing. I am never awoken by strangers fighting right outside my bedroom window, yet the sound of the Big Daughter, or Big Son unexpectedly entertaining a few friends can drive me crazy within seconds. I think this is maybe because I can’t bear the thought of any of my offspring having fun without inviting me. I am also often kept awake when The Boyfriend stays over, as he doesn’t sleep as easily as I do and lies there yawning really loudly, which drives me insane and when he’s not yawning, he’s snoring.

At the end of our curry night discussion, we had reached the conclusion that if we chose to live in a converted building in central Brighton, then that was our own fault. I then managed to stay up with The Big Son and Big Daughter making lots of noise until 5.30am, which would have been marvellous if the Small Daughter hadn’t got up at 8am the following day. Bah!

For the past seven years, I have been lucky enough to possess a dishwasher. Well, not the same dishwasher in that whole period obviously, because they are built to last only about two years before they go horribly wrong, flood the kitchen and cost an entire month’s salary to repair. That is, of course, if the solid gold-plated part (possibly encrusted with the finest diamonds and emeralds) is available in Europe at that particular moment, which it never is.

“My children might not have A-levels, or be bilingual, but they know how to wash up”

Strangely enough, I seem to go through dishwashers at roughly the same rate as I go through husbands, boyfriends, etc. Stranger still, both current Boyfriend and dishwasher have withstood the most erratic period of my life so far with few complaints. The current dishwasher makes very strange noises – something like a cement-mixer with jellybeans inside it – but still manages to complete a cycle without flooding the kitchen, or filling it with smoke. This is in spite of the fact that, for the entire past year it has been used by people who were incapable of emptying the kitchen bin, or flushing a toilet. I suspect that they were using it to clean only two mugs at a time and therefore, the dishwasher enjoyed something of a holiday during their occupancy.

I currently have two temporary lodgers, who are leaving next week. They are both 18-year-old boys, thoroughly charming and bilingual, but seemingly incapable of either using the dishwasher or washing dishes in the traditional manner to a satisfactory level. If they do actually manage to wash any cups or glasses, they leave them to drain the ‘right’ way up, so that the water still sits in them. My children might not have A-levels, or be bilingual (or even be capable of speaking proper English) but they know how to wash up.

It’s no wonder The Boyfriend can’t even look in my fridge without almost having a seizure. He is permanently on a kind of Nazi cuisine duty. As a chef who works at least 16 hours per day, one would imagine that he’d be sick of the sight of food on his days off. One would be entirely wrong. Last week, he had three days off. On the first day, he made a game pie with root vegetable mash. This was in spite of the fact that, the night before, he and I had drunk ridiculous amounts of alcohol and as a result failed to get up until 3pm.

On the second day, I popped round on my way back from yoga, to discover him gleefully hacking three baby chickens to pieces. Breasts and legs were being carefully assigned to separate Tupperware containers, while the precious carcasses had their own special container for stockmaking purposes. Meanwhile, his flatmate – also a chef – lay on the sofa in disbelief, unwilling to have anything to do with food on his day off. On the third day, I had to go to Hastings to get mine and Katy’s flat valued. The Boyfriend phoned at around 4pm – but not to see how, or indeed where I was – but to find out whether I’d washed his chef’s whites. I could hear something spluttering away in the background. It was confit duck, which was to be eaten before he went to play football at Waterhall.

I’m sure most 5-a-side teams aren’t nearly as posh. Which is probably why they always win…