LONDON IS THE INTERNATIONAL PLACE TO BE, I have just found out. The local news reported on Sunday that more billionaires now live here than in any other city on earth. When I moved to London in 1996, Time magazine and other American publications were reporting that we were "swinging" again (presumably like we used to do in the 1960s) ~ that Britannia was again cool. In 1998, Madonna came here. She met her husband-to-be Guy Richie in 1999 and married him the next year.
Before I came here I did look into the possibility of migrating to New York City, but for a nobody like me who had only ever worked in menial office jobs the visa regulations were so forbidding that I didn't even bother (and I never have been the type of person who would wing it and live as an illegal alien!) But then I came here and found that everything I'd wanted of New York, London actually did better; I'm talking about dance clubs, theatre, museums, parks, art and culture in general. What London never has done as well as New York is self-promotion. I have always known far more about the "high society" of New York than I do here ~ perhaps because America has more celebrity names and, until recently, had far more famous billionaires than London ~ all of which made the city seem as glamorous to me as its sparkling skyline. The billionaires who have chosen London today comprise an international set, and most of them seem to come from Russia or Asia.
As a result, house prices at the top end are absolutely ludicrous, with properties going on the market with asking prices in excess of $100 million. Posh Spice and David Beckham recently moved back here into a £40 million ($67.3 million) double-fronted Kensington townhouse. In late 2012, a rather nondescript property on one of our "billionaires' rows" (Bishop's Avenue, Hampstead) went on the market for £100 million ($168.3 million) with the cheeky estate agents demanding £5000 ($8410.50) just for the brochure. And nobody was allowed a viewing without first purchasing said booklet.
So why of all places is London so internationally appealing?Well partly it has to do with so-called "non-dom" (non-domiciled) tax regulations, where if you come in and live here on earnings from businesses outside the UK you can get by paying no UK income tax at all! British immigration and visa requirements have always been more liberal (for example, the USA demand to know whether visa applicants have ever been arrested (not convicted of anything ~ just arrested!) Britain is far more laissez-faire and you'll only run into trouble if you've done prison for more than four years. We're geographically closer to much of the rest of the world than New York. The climate is milder (and contrary to myth it doesn't rain all the time!) British private schools are said to be among the best in the world (though the same cannot be said about the state sector). I suppose most cities are nice places to live when you have a net worth in nine figures. And London is a wonderful place. That said, I would really like to see the Big Apple for myself. Every time I see a film set there, I spend as much time focusing on the beautiful backdrop of New York City's streets than on the rest of the action. I suppose billionaires will always go where it's most convenient to be a billionaire and if that means London then so be it. But I have to say, if I ever did have £40 million to spend on a house, I'm not sure I would buy where everybody else does. (I'd actually rather have a large apartment with roof terrace than a house ~ wouldn't you?) Hmmm anyway. Anybody planning to become a billionaire in the near future is welcome to comment on whether they're most likely to opt for London or New York City as their primary place of residence and why... in the meantime, best of luck to all of you in your attempts to cross that pesky barrier dividing £999,999.99 from the crème de la crème of this wonderful world of ours! Illustrated: downdown Manhattan viewed from Central Park; the Beckhams' $67 million London mansion; $167 million house in London; One57 building in New York ~ the penthouse has already sold for $95 million; The Shard building in London with apartments for up to $83.6 million ~ and you don't even get a terrace!; One Hyde Park in London ~ not our prettiest development, but one of the smartest addresses in the metropolis and at least you get a balcony! Prices range from £3.6 million ($6,059,547.48) for a one-bed to £136 million for a penthouse (wouldn't you just love to take 2 and knock them together?!) ~ and by the way £136 million calculates to precisely $228,916,238.27 ~ do you think they'd accept $228916238.26??
I'VE JUST SEEN a leather 3-piece sofa I really like. Real leather. Just apply shoe polish to improve that dynamic sheen... Charity shop said they'd do it without the matching chairs for £95 ($145.93) (it's £195 ($299.54) with 2 matching leather armchairs...) I said I can't put down a deposit now. I spent my last 30p (46c) on a Spanish novel called El misterio de la cripta embrujada ("The Mystery of the Haunted Crypt") by Eduardo Mendoza. With the aid of my trusty Collins Spanish Dictionary and copious notebooks plus an entire pack of blue biros with which to copy out every single word I don't know or cannot guess ~which will be about 20,000 words!~... but when I've done this in German, my vocabulary expanded by leaps and bounds. I'm also looking out for the defunct and undeservedly out of print Penguin Book of Spanish Verse. + I also want the German and French versions. Poetry, they say, is the very best way of picking up a foreign language. Great for improving the vocabulario and nice and succinct. These Penguin books come complete with prose translations, so the need for three hulking great dictionaries is obviated.
Oh by the way did you know the Spanish word for "dark" is oscuro ~ as in obscure. Never knew that one...
Well I've just come back from visiting the nuthouse. Yet again. My mind is humming. Also the loud Scouse House I'm listening to isn't helping. I was in such a bad, paranoid, irritable mood this afternoon. Effing and blinding at every little thing. Depressed this morning. Hyper in the evening> at least Binky says I am. She says she can tell when I'm going into a "manic" one by the sudden addition of liberal sprinklings of the word Glodemer into my conversation. Glodemer being the name of our late doggie who had the sweetest nature of any doggie I have never known and looked like a seal with mottled silvery grey and black fur. I was absolutely gutted when she died of status epilepticus ~ constantly fitting out for hours and hours until her body just gave out. (This was all brought on by puppyhood distemper.) My parents kept saying they might have to have her put to sleep, but nature took its course before human intervention and she died under the cherry tree in our massive garden. A snow of white blossoms against infinite blue sky. The Japanese say cherry blossoms symbolize the all-too-terrible briefness of life. It was very sad. I felt much more upset over the death of this dog than any of my friends. Except one ("Lucky"). Can't believe Lucky went and died. She just keeled over and her organs failed one after another. Like a power blackout in a big city where you see block after block going dark. So she died. Anyway glodemer is my name for "cute". Japanese かわいい kawaii.
Binky is talking about my going into the emergency psycho clinic if I don't come down soon. I told her when I did go into ultra ultra hyperacute mania more than 2 years ago now, it took a good couple of weeks to get from where I am now (just moody) into extreme elevation with auditory and visual trippings and full-blown confusionality. I'm not anything like that now. It does sound like my carrier bags are whispering mysterious phrases at me as they rustle, but that's just me living out a children's book. Where deep in the enchanted forest trees have great gnarled faces and steam trains puff out exclamations like "Ready to go! Ready to go!" Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. I hear you call my name. And it feels like home.
That's Madonna, darling.
Eddy : "Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone."
Saffy : "That's lovely."
Eddy : "Yeah, I hear you call my name and it feels like home."
Saffy : "Who said that ?"
Eddy : "Its Madonna, darling."
I can't remember what else I was going to put. Oh yes the bed scandal! My Dad is trying to deliver me a bed and just as he was trying to text me a junk mail text came through offering "great deals on both, 3 for £20, 4 for £25..." which I promptly ignored (it having seemingly booted my Dad's text out of my phone) and so I missed the delivery. Of the actual mattress. Because I was two annoying minutes from my house. (I think it is a mystically self-inflating mattress malarky thingie...) Bloody ridiculous. My family are fretting that it might never get delivered and go pinging off into some hyper-conscious censorious vortex of hyperspace where all the missing full-stops congregate in a great H-bomb fusion of transcendently transmogrified unaccented unaccounted accumulated power. Something like that. You know, the space in the Twilight Zone where all the Missing Socks find their long-lost loves. You know: their Sock Partners... Something like that. But It Shall Come. It Will Be Delivered. All Shall Be Fine. Glodemer said so.
Well the weather here in London Town is still lovverly... I don't know. It felt horrid and cold this morning. But this afternoon FEEEEELLLS about 85F. I don't know that it is really that hot but it's such a fantastic evening. Charming as a Chelsea Bun, sweet as a Danish pastry. Curly as an Akita's tail...秋田犬 And just as Glodemer Furry.
Well I've got to go. Knowing my luck UPS are trying to deliver my dhinghy-bed RIGHT NOW!!!
I'VE CHANGED MY HAIR STYLE. The new one is slicked back with lots of mousse (courtesy of Poundland). I washed and moussed it in one of the mental hospital bathrooms when I was visiting Binky this afternoon. I really like the new style. It does make me look a bit public school (a public school in Britain means a very exclusive expensive posh one. I wish I COULD have gone to public school. A Level Japanese would have been right up my street... Ho hum. But anyway, the hair looks good. Quite dashing, if I say so myself. It's about as long as it can get and still count as "short". I'm looking out for a good barber who can "tidy it up" ie cut straggly bits off without really shortening it...
Yes Binky is STILL confined to a mental ward. Bloody hell ~ it's not as if everyone's raving mad. Mostly you can't tell the difference between nurse, patient, visitor and sundry NHS-floaty-through-type-person. But after a while the accumulated insanity does get to me. One lady who pulled most of her hair out and looked exceedingly confused before Christmas is still in there but sporting a healthy head of (short) hair (shorter than mine), wearing glasses, talking normally and looking pretty with it. I wonder when they'll let HER out... I noticed the coffee tables were littered with scraps of people's personal correspondence bearing details like "you are being kept here under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act because the doctors believe you need treatment and care for a mental disorder..."... ukh. My family say I should make some non-mental friends. But WHERE??! Everyone I know is mad or on drugs. Or both. What a life!!
I'VE FOUND OUT why I'm in rent arrears (paid 2/3 of the £50 ($77.73) off and about to pay the rest tomorrow, if the council insist... I was wondering how on earth I managed to get into arrears, having paid more than TEN WEEKS up front in advance... And it's because I had arrears from when I was in emergency accommodation, the council say it's written into our contracts that if we overpay rent for a new place they can take backrent to pay off another account. It's actually NOT written into anything I have signed and I intend to take them to task about this tomorrow. See if I can get 77 lovely US Dollars refunded to me. (Of course it won't be in dollars, it'll be pounds sterling but dollars sound so much more exciting...
My druggieworker was less than impressed with me after my testing positive for heroin and benzodiazepines. I promised her truthfully that I have NOT been pillpopping. The benzos were mixed into dodgy brown heroin. No wonder I'd been feeling so unaccountably sleepy after "using"... Sleeping during the day is just not my style, if I can at all help it. (It's depression that has made me sleep the most excessively. 19 or 20 hours a day, usually in two bursts, on my worst days. And if I try not to sleep so long I just end up dropping off in public places. And that really does make me feel like an old dosser. Depression is bad enough, without everyone thinking you're an old drunk to boot!
The weather here is still subtropical. I found a brochure of world and Asian cruses (would really like to go on one, now that I'm over 40 and OLD!... but why bother when the weather's so brilliant back home. I'm reading Freaky Dancing by Bez out of the Happy Mondays... A most interesting book, though I WISH the publishers would have translated his vernacular into normal spellings ...
WHOOO! What a gaff. It feels like enterin a cavernous, cold storage room at the meat factory. I'm half expectin to see rows of headless animal corpses hangin from massive hooks above the dance floor ~ an yes it was that cold back in pre-ecstasy days...
(The Hacienda was a legendary Northern ecstasy rave club... People still rave about having "been there" to this day...)
Anyway I've gotta go and get my beauty sleep for when I REPRIMAND THE COUNCIL OVER THEIR SHAMELESS THIEVERY TOMORROW MORNING!!
THE BLOODY COUNCIL (who are my landlord) have had the cheek to write to me saying I'm some pennies over £50 ($77.66) in rent arrears and that they're chucking me out on the street!! I phoned them up and said, "If I pay off this £50 next week, will you still want to chuck me out?" (No point paying it at all if they're booting me out anyway, is there?) But they said no. I won't get chucked out. So I rang my Support Worker in fury. He says they won't chuck me out either. Then I pored over my rent receipts and it turns out I'm about £2.50 ($3.88) in ADVANCE. No arrears at all. So I don't know where that £50 figure comes from at all. They did say a few weeks ago that housing benefit had failed to cough up £30 ($46.60) that they owe and had the cheek to tell ME to ring Housing Benefit to sort this out. How can I argue with whatever computer tells housing benefit how much to pay. No! If the council is paying the council and part of the council is in arrears, that's for the council to sort out. Not me! So I'm apparently not getting chucked out. (I'm not entirely sure though.)
I'VE JUST COME out of the mental hospital, visiting Binky and my head is ringing with the voices of craziness. Well, not so much utter madness. Just lots of women talking talking talking. Often at cross purposes.
Binky has no idea when she's getting out. I've been telling her she's entirely back to her normal self. Whereas she was having a psychotic episode a few weeks ago. Hearing the voices of the dead and everything.
TOMORROW I have another appointment to see the GP. Well I know which one NOT to ask for. The evil Dr Benderson. So I asked reception to tell me the name of a doctor in this massive practice I'm registered with (biggest dr's surgery I've ever joined ~ about 15 drs) which one is most interested in psychiatry. As I have to find myself a Consultant. (All these psychiatric meds they want me to take and I don't even have a psychiatrist!) Hopefully by tomorrow my notes WILL have appeared on screen and my entire life and existence won't be one Surreal Blank.
Anyway my back is a bit done in, so I need to see a dr just for that.
I'm terrified of doctors. Never know what they're going to think. I mean look at Binky ~ sane as a daisy and they still won't let her out!
My Spanish is coming along really well (unit 22 of 30). I'm keeping a Diario Secreto (yes it really is called that) in Español.
The local charity shop has just taken in a box full of books in French and Persian. So I raided the French. Got a hoary old (colour) coffee table book about Brittany, a book of verbs, and a book about culture all in French. And an ancient Spanish phrasebook. I can understand Spanish much better than I can speak it. (Nobody to speak it WITH!) Binky kept saying she wanted to learn French and I kept saying "why don't you do Spanish or Italian with me?" ... but no she still wants French. I warned her that the written language is fiendishly difficult ~ all those silent letters. I've "known" French for years and still don't know exactly what is and is not pronounced!
The weather here in London is charming. Picture postcard perfect.
Illustrated: the new King Willem of the Netherlands; a sapling in the snow (don't know why the idea for this came to me, but isn't it pretty?) no my secret Spanish diary is NOT pink!!
I WATCHED Margaret Thatcher's funeral live across the news channels. Interestingly CNBC didn't carry it, neither did Russia Today ~ but CCTV, the Chinese news channel had some pretty good commentary. In the end I switched off BBC World in favour of France 24 in English where the studio guests made some very insightful comments. (I did try the French version, which you can get on Hotbird but they were babbling on about Reagan's White House more than her so I switched over...)
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For
we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places.
I wish I could read like that to a group of international VIPs and a television audience numbering tens or hundreds of millions and remain so composed.
So typical of me to make some ridiculous statement and not explain it. "I love a good death" doesn't mean I'm glad Mrs Thatcher is dead, but that I like it the TV and press tributes to her life. I'm still very undecided about what to think about the woman. I was seven years old when she got into power, so during my teenage years for as far back as I could remember there had been Mrs Thatcher and the Queen and it felt like it was going to be that way for always.
I do think Margaret Thatcher was a great politician ~ but more important than this she was a truly great stateswoman who defended British interests abroad. Many foreigners, who didn't have to live with the effects of her domestic policies, looked on her with admiration. She was so obviously superior to her international counterparts (especially Ronald Reagan). She DID "get Britain working" ~ but also forced millions into long-term unemployment. She started hacking into the welfare state. Suddenly you had to pay for eyetests, dentistry and prescriptions (although you pay a flat-rate prescription charge (currently £7.20 ($10.99) ~ not the retail price of the drugs)). Then there was the vastly unpopular poll tax, replaced by the even more unfair council tax (the poll tax to fund local goverment was levied per person; with the council tax you are "jointly and severally liable" meaning if you share an address with fly-by-night types you are liable to get hammered for their council tax as well!)
There are many good politicians and great ones who make lousy statesmen (and women). Example: former (Labour) health secretary Patricia Hewitt, who was so obviously oily and slippery and yet totally rivetting to watch. I remember the time the BBC were interviewing her when her only response to a sticky question was how insulted hardworking doctors would be to hear such an impertinent enquiry. I thought she made a cheap shot there and I wasn't the only one to be totally unimpressed by her interview performance (which was usually fascinatingly flawless) or her lousy performance in high office.
Then of course there's Tony Blair. Amazingly charismatic at the beginning of his reign. And still able to be (apparently) disarmingly frank at the end of it. He gave every impression of being George Bush's lapdog and leading Britain into a war with Iraq that nobody I knew (and hardly anyone across the country) actually wanted. Or a war in Afghanistan that nobody understood. As of 2010 we were supposed to have lavished £20,000,000,000 ($30,492,453,118) on these escapades. And now the government's complaining it's running out of money!
Back to Margaret Thatcher: one of her greatest and most controversial legecies was that she allowed millions of people to buy their council houses and flats. Which I think would be a brilliant idea ~ if only local authorities had been required to replace all accommodation sold with new housing stock. Now we're in a situation where demand massively outstrips supply for public housing. The new Conservative-Liberal coalition are introducing a £14 ($21.34) a week "bedroom tax" where parents of grown-up children will be forced to pay extra for the now-empty bedroom. Which will undoubtedly cause a massive population cascade from 2 and 3-bed properties into single-bedroom flats. Leaving almost nothing left for vulnerable single people who would otherwise be in emergency accommodation. Or just sleeping on the streets. (Or in squats, like I used to do.) I was in temporary accommodation for about eight years before I finally got housed (and how that happened I have no idea. There was a process called "bidding", which I was told happened automatically, though you could somehow express an interest in particular properties. Anyway I got one I really like so I'm happy.
Other news about me: I'm still learning Spanish. Amazingly. I watch a Spanish-language Iranian TV channel on Hotbird called Hispan-TV. They do some quite good (overdubbed) dramas. I also get direct feeds from South America, eg Argentian president Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner's address to the nation. If I were in power I'd refuse interviews and do presidential-style videos too.
After the Spanish Linguaphone has been done and dusted (I'm still only on lesson 18 of 30) I would like to pick up some Italian too. But I'm terrified of getting the two languages mixed up. Just about every Spanish verb form (and there are loads of very complicated ones) seems to have its parallel in Italian (essentially the same thing, just spelled differently) and I know that if I don't really force Spanish grammar to seep into my very bones and my soul I'm just going to get hopelessly confused and not actually speak anything at all. While I only get four TV channels in Spanish, I get over 150 in Italian, including Rai 1, 2 i 3 i QVC Italia etc. Which means ample opportunity to practise. In my experience, apart from the close study of grammar, the major predictor of success in foreign language acquisition is PRACTICE. If you don't use it you'll lose it. So when I'm not tuned into Ethopian folk music all night I let them babble Spanish at me while I sleep. Somehow my befuddled brains dub this over into strangely mangled English. Which means I can't speak Spanish very well (because nothing like that happens with German or French telly). You see why I wanted Hotbird now? 1300 TV channels cannot be wrong!
Well I've gotta go. Binky is languishing in the mental hospital. For the FIFTH time in less than 12 months. And I have to bring cigarettes, scented candles, hair mousse etc etc etc etc etc before she flips her lid...
SO IN SUMMARY. YES MARGARET THATCHER WAS WONDERFUL (APART FROM MOST OF HER POLITCIES...)
VIDEO: Amanda Thatcher's reading at her grandmother's funeral...
(by the way, Amanda is only 19; "we are a grandmother" was her older brother Michael...)
I HAD a terrible problem with the bathroom sink. If you swooshed in enough water seemingly to go round the U-bend, then down a bit, it all backed up and said sink remained full for over half an hour. As water slowly, very very very slowly trickled out.
So I made up caustic soda in the right proportion. And that scared the crap out of me as the first time round I used a drinks can which went HOT as the Frightening Fizz did its sinister work. And then SMOKE CAME OUT!! But still no joy. I was supposed to leave it there for half an hour, but in half an hour it had trickled away and when I tried it again the sink was still as blocked as ever before.
Suffice it to say I used up the entire bottle of caustic soda, diluted in about five litres of water. Nothing seemed to change... Until...!
The next morning. Suddenly sink unblocked!
Now I'm living in guilty terror that no sewer rats were harmed in the "treatment" of this Unruly Drain. I'm so glad I didn't have to go as far as 96% sulphuric acid (strongest drain cleaner you can get ~ AVAILABLE OFF THE SHELF HERE! ~ caustic soda was scary, what with the heat and smoke, but Vitriol scares the shit out of me!
PS Ignore what I said last time: no sleep and emotional overwhelm-ment will do that to a person...
UKH AND I HAVE TO FIND A NEW GP. I REALLY DON'T WANT TO BUT I HAVE TO. TOLD OLD ONE I WAS MOVING HOUSE. AND IF I DON'T CONFIRM MY NEW ADDRESS I'LL NEVER GET ANY MAIL FROM THEM... (WHICH COULD BE IMPORTANT)...
Illustrated: caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) VERY SCARY STUFF. Not the brand I used. Mine was very cheap and nasty looking... (and about 100% pure!) if you don't believe that caustic soda goes hot on contact with water then I challenge you TRY IT YOURSELF!
OK: I'VE NOW OFFICIALLY MOVED HOUSE! 79 Pancake Towers, Walford, London E20 9LP. OK if I were an EastEnders character that would be my address, but they say you shouldn't give out too much personal info on your blog. Which means I'm pretty f*cked, what with my heroin confessions of yore and all... Well I'm TRYING not to use it. And not entirely succeeding. Hey and guess what? My mood, for the last several days has been almost entirely NORMAL. Not high as a kite, and not too depressed either.
I started keeping a mood diary, where I rate the highest and lowest I felt that day as well as various other factors such as manic feelings: racing thoughts, hyperkinesis, etc. It's something I'm supposed to fill in every day, though many days I don't. Takes about half a minute to scrawl out the answers, then every week or so, I plot my highs and lows on a graph. Very interesting. At the beginning of the year I was hypomanic and suicidally depressed on the same day for more than a week. A complete basket case. Then we see clear-cut euphoric hypomania with no depression. Then the hypomania declines and depression appears in a characteristic wedge shape. With me, the mania usually looks like a shark's fin (peaking very soon, then gradually declining, though you may see two or three sharks' fins in a row). The depression gets steadily worse day by day, hits an all-time low; then suddenly, the day after, I'm almost better. Interestingly the letter S for "suicidal" DISAPPEARS when the mood plummets past a certain point. Anyway the rest of these notebooks are full of the most drivellous rantings possible, usually composed while manic and to be honest I'd like to burn them. What I like the most about being hyper and high is that when I'm right up there, my old neurotic self almost entirely disappears. Also in depression beyond a certain extreme, I'm not neurotic either. But my normal boring personality is so insecure and neurotic I irritate the pants off myself, so what effect I have on other people I hesitate to guess at...
By the way, the whole point of the mood chart is to correspond one's state of mind with whatever shit life has thrown at you that week. Weirdly the news that I'd been offered permanent accommodation actually set off depression with suicidal ideation. I kept thinking of this flat and telling myself: Now I know where I'm going to die... (Which might well be true; because I ***should*** have lifetime tenure. And if I don't die in hospital, the odds are I WILL die at home. That's just statistics for ya. (But of course when I'm really desperate I fantasize about dying in other ways and places. Don't think I'd ever have the guts to put that into operation though...)
Binky is STILL CONFINED TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL for the FIFTH TIME IN LESS THAN A YEAR. I don't even know what is "wrong" with her. She seems completely "normal" to me... But! She was severely punished this morning for calling the doctor the C-word and isn't allowed outside. A 49-year old woman grounded for having borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia and being in a bad mood. Which has me running all over the place purchasing cigarettes, paying off her multiplicitous catalogue bills... etc. Being as my new place is two miles from the nuthouse I can't get there every day any more. Hey last Saturday we had an interesting ride in Manic Girl's car. Bloody hell. I had just remarked how "normal" Manic Girl appeared and why on earth were they keeping her in hospital for so long... Then we got in the car and I realized. I don't think I have ever whizzed through the sinuous streets of London at such extreme velocity. When we got to the post office, Manic Girl said "I used to work there but it was so boring I jacked it in and travelled the world for three months". I wish I could be that spontaneous, but I'm very cautious and boring at heart.
Of course I have heard back NOTHING in my great fight to get keys for all my doors and windows and non-Turkish satellite TV.
I'm living on cheese coleslaw sandwiches. It's that posh multigrain malted bread, so I feel most bourgeois nibbling on these whilst viewing Abu Dhabi TV (formerly sky 796 now you must tune to Astra 2 28.2 east 11662 or 11623MHz horizontal) or Horse and Country (Sky 280 not on Freesat) or The Peace Channel Urdu (Eurobird 1 28.5 east, transponder F1 upper, 12559.67 mHz horizontal (not on Freesat or Sky). Yeah I had a go at tuning my German TV box ~ the one that made me hit the roof when I tried to get Hotbird 13 east and was instead deluged with hundreds of irritating channels in BLOODY TURKISH ~ into the Sky/Freesat satellites at Astra 2 28.2 east. You get about 300 channels free-to-air, most of which aren't on Freesat, some of which aren't on Sky either. I do love my satellite television, hence this massive gripe with the council over negligently miswiring my Hotbird feed and giving me F*CKING TURKISH TELEVISION INSTEAD!! Don't get me wrong. I love most things Turkish: cheap under-the-counter tobacco, large lamb shish kebabs with all salad loads of garlic sauce bit of chili sauce for £5.50 and jewellery that is far nicer than anything else you'll find in the low-to-mid price range (though Indian jewellers are also good). But I DO NOT WANT TURKISH TELEVISION!!!
Ukh, all this ranting... am I going manic again? The mere fact that I think about mania, or remember what it's like at random points of the day, is often (weirdly enough) the first sign of its return. That and fantastic adrenaline rushes lasting hours on end, woven into the psychedelic fabric of life's rich tapestry...
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Bloody hell I'm hungry. I'm going to have to run to Iceland for something to shove in my sandwiches. Good job it's winter: because I have no fridge, I'm just stashing stuff out on the balcony. Where, by the way, a pair of pigeons keep mating. First thing in the morning and right in front of my face.
Righty-ho. Better leave it there. Hope y'all have a chirpy weekend...
(And if it can't be chirpy, then may it be chirrupy instead...)
I AM SO EXHAUSTED. I spent the afternoon trundling even more boxes along multiple landings, up and down lifts, to get to my "apartment" (as I like to call it; I mean, this puts me in company with the Queen, who also lives in an apartment (in Buckingham Palace...)). I'm SO GLAD I invested in this trundling trolley: it can hold three fully packed boxes at once. Saved me a hell of a lot of time and back trouble. That's probably the best-spent £20 of the entire year!
As for the television: the Freeview is appalling ~ so bad the BBC won't tune in ~ but a whole load of adult channels would. But I don't watch that anyway, I watch Freesat. CBS Drama, True Movies 1 etc aren't on Freeview. The Freesat signal is 100%. Then we come to foreign language TV and the council promised us two community dishes, one to be pointed at Turksat 42 east which seems to have services ONLY in Turkish (and possibly Kurdish) and comes through irritatingly loud and clear and Hotbird 13 east, which is mostly in Polish and Arabic but has a rag-tag selection in a host of languages including German, French, English, Tamil, Italian, Somali, Kurdish, Farsi, Romanian blah blah blah. It seems the bunglers at the council installed a system that can only route one foreign satellite at a time (so what happens in a household where a Turk is married to a Pole?) meaning the cable to my flat must be rerouted at rooftop level. I have a feeling I'm going to have fight on my hands to get anything done. But I've always won battles of the legalistic kind where, as in this case, I just have to point out that I'm paying (via a weekly service charge) for a service I don't get (Hotbird) and therefore my landlord (the borough council) are duty-bound to act. I may have led a mostly braindead life for the past decade-&-a-bit, but I can still fight for my rights. I also think it's execrable of them to have prioritised TV for just ONE national group over scores of others, but I won't make this point unless the fight gets really dirty.
Apart from that, once this place is done up it will look really nice. Presently I'm living with home-made curtains in the form of coloured bin-liners stuck to the windows and I made a beanbag-type thing out of three quilts on the floor. There is no furniture, no central heating (which isn't required even in this cold weather: I get so much heat from downstairs I never feel cold). The shower does work, because it's electric. I found the switch. The gas people have yet to send the promised top-up card. I'm thinking of doing the living room as a rhapsody in blue with blue carpet or lino against pale blue walls with dark blue furniture and chests of drawers etc painted blue. The colour blue makes me feel excessively happy, when I'm in the right mood... I just don't know how long I will have to wait to put any of this in operation...
Erm, there's nothing else to say. I'm just fed up of having to complain about so many points. Doors and windows left unlocked and no key provided, blah blah. I hate complaining (though I'm actually very good at it, when I put the complaint in writing, I'm normally good at pointing out my rights and their obligations. My head feels like it is turning to mush, what with STRESS over a million little things. And my body is exhausted. I keep getting dizzy spells (does that mean anything? I always thought it just meant you were weak and neurotic. Or at least, that if you told a doctor, that's what they'd think you were...) Anyway I have to go, this computer is running out of time...
I MOVED some of my stuff into this new flat yesterday. All the annoyingly clunky stuff: bookshelves, 5ft high +-shaped Ikea clothes drying rack, television, microwave.
I stayed the night with no curtains, no furniture. Just threw my clothes on the bare concrete floor and used them as a mattress. Thanks to the wonders of quetiapine, I slept nearly 12 hours straight.
Now I'm exhausted. And, to be honest, annoyed at having to report no fewer than SIX repairs, including one door (which fair enough opens to a 30ft drop) unlocked with no key, one window, opening to the landing unlocked with no key, terrible television reception and the Hotbird Euro-TV socket not working. (Though Turkish TV came through loud and clear, which pissed the living crap out of me. But I won't go on about THAT subject...) And blah blah blah blah blah blah.
I have checked the council's website and it appears I might be able to open the socket and rejiggle the satellite line-in myself...
Two thirds of my stuff is still lying in the old place. But I'm not sleeping there on principle.
When it is finally finished the place will look really nice. Now I have to go to buy coloured binbags to turn into makeshift blinds...
I'VE NOW got a gigantic heap of boxes in my living room (the old one). They are awaiting the time when my landlord's "henchman" says he can move them. I started moving in myself yesterday, thanks to my WonderTrundler, me and my trolley and my goods did the half-hour walk ourselves. Until we came to the stairs outside the flats (no wheelchair ramp) and clonk-clonk-TUNNNG!~~ something broke and suddenly the Trundler's not trundling any more. So I dug out the £19.99 receipt and thought about suing the shop and what I would do when they refused to replace these faulty goods. And I removed the missing part and bent it and bent it again and to cut a long story short, thanks to two McDonald's brown paper bags and lots of Chinese yellow parcel tape I think I've got the problem fixed. The landlord's man said he could probably move half my stuff today. If he does, I'm setting up home on the floor, on a pile of my clothes. (The only thing I brought was my clothes.) I had to see my support worker this morning to sort out electricity and gas. The electric people are giving me an appointment next week to get a key meter fitted. And gas are sending me a card that will wipe out the £16 arrears on their prepay meter. Ukh my brain has turned to mud yet again; I'm so tired. I was up at two a.m., then the Sonny and Cher story came on True Movies. And then I spent hours thinking "WHY HAVE I GOT SO MUCH STUFF??!!" I can't wait till this is OVER AND DONE WITH!!!
I SPENT NEARLY £20 ($31.45) trying to ring the Gas and electric people to get new accounts activated. The gas is already on pay-as-you-go meter, which is £16 ($25) in arrears, so they have to clear that by sending an engineer round. The electricity is already running, but I want the meter changed to pay-&-go. The phone call took so long that my free minutes, free credit and top-up credit were all eliminated before anything happened.
The old landlord's man kindly said he would move me. (Last time it was two mini-vans full of stuff. Gigantic clothes-drying racks, bookshelves, enough bedcovers and duvets to start a Turkish hareem, etc...) I said I'd be ready by Monday morning and he said OK. There's STILL repairs that need doing. There's a window opening on to the landing with no key, and it's unlocked. The back door (opening to a balcony 30ft up) is also unlocked with no key but it would take a pretty enterprising theif to get in by that one... Ukh and the shower doesn't work! Have to get one of those pluggy-into-the-taps ones from the pound shop. The television is surprisingly good, you get FOUR TV line-ins. Freeview, Freesat, Polish and Abyssinian. There are some German and French channels on the Polish satellite (very educational. Means you can watch exotic home shopping presentations at 4am and convince yourself you're not completely wasting your time. (Completely being the operative word.)) Do you think I need the front door lock changed? The door itself looks fairly secure. A Yale-type key to a dead-bolt with catches all the way up the doorframe. I had assumed the previous tenant was a disabled
old person, due to the sit-down shower, but on examination that shower is very old. And there are DSS letters on the floor for whoever lived there before. Last thing I need is hoardes of people banging on the door at all hours thinking this is still a crackhouse (well it could have been one). I'm too paranoid about home security. The front door keys I've got seem suspiciously unworn (as if somebody has kept hold of the old keys). Can you copy window lock keys? Do you think they might have kept the key to the bathroom window so they know it's break-in-able? Will the council fix it? He said they'd do the balcony door, but this was before I knew of the gaping security breach at the front. I've got the number of some tenancy support lady. I suppose I have to ring her on Monday. That's why I need to move in quick, because I need to be there for repair men, gas meter bods, paint deliveries etc. I'm starting to wonder whether lemon yellow was a wise choice but too late now... Well that's me. I'm off. Have a crazy weekend, kids...
I SIGNED a tenancy agreement this afternoon. So I'm now proud owner of one set of keys and three entry swipes. AND A ONE-BEDROOM FLAT! OK, I don't own it, the council do. But providing I behave myself I get lifetime tenure ~ and can even leave the tenancy in my will.
Someone was really upset with me this afternoon but I can't remember who... No they weren't. I just felt like they were. My brains turned to mud, from all this stress of NOT KNOWING HOW I WAS GOING TO MOVE. I was wondering about like a zombie, until this tenancy agreement got signed and I thought GOCHA! YOU CAN'T BACK OUT NOW!!
I actually got a really good flat. It's about as perfectly located as can be. About 12 mins from the main shops... And yet the area is restful and calm, and certainly does not feel like an inner city. I get my southerly satellite-dish-friendly aspect. But I don't get a bath. A bath, you see can be fixed; but you can't turn the block round if you're north-facing and you can't teleport it from nowheresville to somewhere decent. I'm literally 5 mins' walk from where I lived when I moved to London in the first place. The locality is very bourgeois indeed, if you just trot over the hill, you get to the "trendy" type of area, full of cafés and organic food shops, and little boutiques selling funky housewares and the unremarkable building to the left is a recording studio, where you pass minor rock stars on the street and EastEnders characters are drinking in the local pub... (Not like where I live now.)
So I invested £20 ($31.71) on a trolley for trundling gigantic oldfashioned television sets and heavy boxes. Because when I do move, it will probably be next to impossible getting a parking space right outside the flats and I'd far rather trundle than heave (getting old).
Then I rang my present landlord's Henchman "would you be able to move me..?" and he said YES. So I don't have to trawl through the shop windows for a Man & Van ~ who I'll be terrified of driving off in possession of all my electricals, or personal don't-want-to-keep-them-but-have-to-because-they're-legally-important-type papers...
I had to pick what colour paint I wanted. You could indicate up to four colours, so I went for three (from a very small and far too muted (for my taste) selection. The most garish thing they had was "lemon yellow" so I put in for two pots of that, plus one in some type of sludge blue... and I can't even remember what the last one was... might have been green. I gave magnolia and white a very wide berth indeed. Ideally I'd like my living room in duck egg blue, y'know greeny blue.
The illustrated shade is just a tad too light and about two shades further towards blue than I'd want. Hang on... Hey this is it! Turquoise. I had a thing about turquoise as a kid. My brother did too. Whenever somebody complimented his beautiful baby blue eyes he'd say, "They're not blue; they're turquoise!"Yes that shade there is precisely what I want. Nice and intense. And just the wrong side of "good taste" for my liking. The other colour I like is powder blue...
Something like this... Well I've yet to get to my flat today, as the signing process, plus the transfer-claim for housing benefit took over two hours. Then Binky wants a sleeve of 200 Polish Marlboros for £45 ($71.38 (I bet that seems expensive to you Americans, but the cigarettes I smoke cost £5.79 ($9.18) for 20 (Players superkings)) (but I break them into three and roll them complete with mini-filters, so I get 60 smokes for that money, which last me two days. I'm intending to give up smoking... one day. I'm sure my Baby Chirper won't like my always having a fag on...
Righto I have to go. I'm going to trundle my spare TV and Freeview box up to the new house (get my money's worth out of the trolley), take gas and electricity readings with my cigarette lighter-cum-torch (it has an LED flashlight at the bottom). Then tomorrow morning I have to contact my utilities suppliers and ask them to set up my account...
HELLO EVERYONE. I'm moving house! Tomorrow I sign a 12-month tenancy agreement on a one-bed council flat. It's in just about the nicest location I could ask for; not "inner city", yet close to everything. Providing all goes well and I'm not antisocial (never have been in the past) this will be transformed into a lifelong and permanent tenancy ~ I can even leave it to my next of kin. Far as I know, I get from tomorrow afternoon until next Monday to move all my stuff out of the old place and to get gas, electricity, etc turned on (I have no idea how to do this: at the present house the amenities were running anyhow).
Once they take the metal anti-squatter blinds off my windows, I'll have a much better idea of what's going on. Basically I'm moving into a completely unfurnished concrete box with no carpets, nothing. I'm not even sure the old tenants left the curtain rails up. So I'm in a flap about furniture: what to get from where and how. I did find a beautiful 3-seat beige sofa for £60 + £10 delivery but of course it's sold. The charity shop has another one just as big but nowhere near as nice and it's £10 MORE. I so hate second best I'd rather go elsewhere... if only I knew somewhere, ANYWHERE selling used furniture. Apart from food and essentials, I haven't really gone shopping in London EVER. I never had money for luxuries. (I never had a LIFE! (And then of course I ruined what life I had with Heroin)...)
Well I'm really excited to be moving and I so wish I could find a nice long sleep-on-able sofa like that one that has just been sold. Of course it's still there in the shop, staring me in the face. I can't bear to go in there and look at second best.
As for this ridiculous bath situation, nothing is happening about that, for now. I'm trying to fix the problem myself, by investing in stuff that SHOULD keep me properly clean in the shower. Many months ago I ended up shopping with Valium Marilyn for a new flannel (washcloth if you prefer) and NOWHERE we looked had them. Well yesterday I furnished myself not only with washcloths but a giant sponge + professional back-scrubber. I'm determined to get a grip on this ridiculous, embarrassing issue of "self-care". I have a psychiatric condition known as CBS ~ childish bathing syndrome (or nonbathing syndrome). With this £3.50 ($5.53) investment in professional accoutrements, I SHOULD be able to get and keep my rotting body fresh.
I think the council were just being picky when they said I wasn't even allowed to PAY to get a bath in until my tenancy goes permanent. I looked into the costs nonetheless and the nearest bathroom shop to me sells baths from £70 with installation costing very little. I have to come back with precise dimensions. The standard bath lengths are 120cm, 140cm and 160cm. Got a feeling mine's gonna have to be 120. I don't MIND paying I just want that bath PUT IN.
I'm very excited to be moving. To be getting a place of my own. Finally. Where PETS ARE ALLOWED. So I can have my Baby Chirper without fear of eviction.
Well I have to go soon. I'm exhausted because yesterday evening Binky had to go back into the mental hospital for the FIFTH TIME in 12 months. We rode there in a cab, 3 of us, including the support manager at the halfway house where Binky lives. She was very confused, talking about a very upsetting paranoid experience she keeps having. She had seen a psychiatrist that day, so it was arranged that she should present herself at the Emergency Clinic. At first the clinic were very accommodating: a ginger nurse fully au fait with the matter assured her she was being admitted with a 98% chance of going where she went last time, where she knows everyone.
Three hours passed and the evening shift appeared. When Binky eventually asked what was going on, the very surly African nurse who had control of the airlock-style door which we had to ask permission to be opened so we could go for cigarettes said through the plate glass (for there is no window, no hatch through which you can talk to the staff; they don't WANT to hear anything you have to say) "well you seem to have got a lot better than you were when you turned up here". On hearing which Binky flipped her lid. The new shift started saying they were waiting for assessment by the Home Treatment Team. Which they weren't, because the HTT had already stated that she needed to be admitted. But she still waited until well past 11:30 until the bed manager could come up with something.
I left at 9:15 on the pretext of shopping for takeaway. But I just couldn't handle the stress any more.
Talking of stress I don't know HOW I'm going to move into this new flat. My Mum is right in the middle of moving house herself. I rang my present landlord's henchman and asked whether he'd be willing to give me and my stuff a "lift" in his van and he said hopefully he could, that I should phone back tomorrow. It's up to his boss to say yes. They have no reason to help me... but hey, miracles do happen.
One last thing: DRUGS. HEROIN. I wanna keep the new place DRUG-FREE, which means no celebratory hit as soon as I'm all unpacked and free, leaning against my new front door. No drugs. Just the horrible methadone until the bitter end.
I think I'm going to be OK. Last week, it has to be said, I was feeling pretty horrible a lot of the time. For the last couple of days I've felt a lot better. I'm just really really tired and have to conserve my energy for house-moving. Wish me luck! ☺
PARROTLET TRICKS
This is the type of bird I want. A parrotlet is basically a posh lovebird...
DOES THE LAST POST SOUND COMPLETELY miserable? I don't know. Maybe I should take the nut-nut pills again. I just don't like them, mainly because they are ADDICTIVE. They make me "better" in that my moods are within narrower parameters and I am less paranoid. It does not make me any more motivated to do certain things that seem complex. But then again sometimes I do some of those things anyway. Other times they go undone for months... That's why I'm fretting over moving house. I know what I'm like. Stuff will end up lying around and nothing will be fitted, installed, unpacked, nothing. Yes anonymous like I said in my answer I agree with you, it is terrible to take state handouts. An American I know who lives here told me, long before I had a fancy label I could blare out as an excuse for my unmannered laziness that in America I would be living under a bridge. Only reason I'm not living under one here (or in a squat) is because the local council were kind enough to house me. The only problem was, by that time I had gone pretty ferral and found adapting back to normal living quite difficult. At one point my life involved a lot of sitting about on pavements asking for money, and using drugs in public toilets and abandoned buildings. One time I overdosed in a shopping centre and only woke up with the attendant banging on the door saying they were closing for the night. Of course it would be "more civilized" (ok, maybe not more civilized: but cheaper) to shoot junkies and mental patients by firing squad. I'm sure if they made it voluntary, loads would volunteer when feeling low. If you arranged it so the guns went off within 5 minutes of signing the papers, you'd have an excellent clear-up rate. My friend Binky thinks my going to live in a flat is the worst thing that can possibly happen "as you'll only render it unfit for human inhabitation". Well I'd like the chance to try (not to render it that way, I mean to actually succeed in becoming a human being again). Sometimes I am not sure I actually am human. Maybe I'm an alien impostor. From a sub-intelligent species. Who knows. As for the drug (singular) I did go back to it. I was trying to cure suicidal depression. The kind of thing where you sit around for hours staring into space, but then perk up and manage to act normal, until the act falters about half an hour in and ... back to staring blankly into walls. (Often I angle myself towards a television in this state, but I'm rarely actually watching it.) This is what happened at Binks's on Saturday. But yesterday I started feeling better. You see, it's all cyclical. That's why I say the firing squad should have little time for mind-changing: if you catch benefits scroungers at the lowest point of the cycle, you'll save the country millions. My old counsellor once said you can measure the civilization of a people by how they treat their sick. Well that makes Britain very civilized... America a bit less so (what with no NHS). Methadone is still a drug. I really want to get off that. And I want to get back what I lost: my attention span (still nowhere near as good as it once was); my edge. I was already OFF 'eroin (hadn't taken it in weeks (early 2011)) when I LOST these things. I lost them to mania of the psychotic variety, which tears your thoughts to shreds then whirls them up in the air in a cognitive cyclone. I lost all my money. (OK, the government's money.) Could barely keep it together to look after house keys. (OK, the local council's keys.) Of course the nut doctor told me I should have been in hospital... AFTER the event. My support worker who keeps asking whether I'm into a part time degree doesn't reckon I'm up to looking after a pet! The kind of pets I go for are ones that essentially look after themselves, apart from feeding and drinking. The sort you let out, then they return from their rambles to live perfectly happily in their own little world. A degree on the other hand requires all manner of attention that I have given to nothing for years. I tried Teach Yourself Japanese CDs yet again... but just don't seem to learn anything. When I try reading books I sometimes do get to the end, but with only a hazy idea of what went on between the covers. Fact is actually easier than fiction, for me. So this is the problem. When I give answers on the kinds of forms that assess one's day to day living, my answers sound terrible. I know someone who repeatedly told me to lie and exaggerate. The sad truth is, I didn't need to. I never claimed to be stupid. I just looked around at "ordinary people" (including ordinary crackheads and junkies) and they seemed to have skills I appeared to have lost. Wasn't my idea to call myself schizo. That one came from a doctor and I had no idea. Yes I heard voices saying "schizophrenia" but I just thought they were having a go. Never actually thought it could be true. [Hearing voices doesn't necessarily mean schizophrenia: clairaudient psychics hear voices; normal bipolar mania can make you hear voices. Crack can make you hear voices. Only mine never made themselves fully manifest until more than a year AFTER I had given it up.] I suppose I should say to Anonymous-type people: as for "schizophrenia" with bipolar, if I were making it up... bloody hell I would pick something a little less complicated. FOUR lists of symptoms to "satisfy". I have met people who said they faked psychosis, but it's always psychosis of the paranoid variety, where a person has some fable in their head that they believe. Mine was more like my mind and attention being shattered into a thousand pieces, seeing through each jointly and severally, all at the same time. Plus extreme swings of high manic energy to complete devastation. Sometimes both moods at once. That's how it felt.
And why the hell do the bastards who run this country make it so difficult to get hand-guns, poisons etc? That Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland uses 10,000mg of neat barbiturate in orange juice. But why can't I just by 10,000mg sodium amytal from Boots and do it myself? You see, Anonymous you should get on to the government. Make suicide easier. Then you'll get your wish. (The quicker a person can top themself before the impulse fades, the higher a success rate you will have.) I don't actually want to kill myself any more. Last week, some of the time, I did. I don't exactly know why. O yes and I've been window shopping for furniture. Found quite a nice sofa. 3 seats. Brown. For £62 (about $100). Brown goes really nice against blue walls and I'm painting mine blue. Have I answered every point here? Please somebody, give me an idea for a post, and I'll post it. Much easier that way. Staring into a white infinity, nothing but my own dolorous thoughts on screen ... I just end up ranting in a faintly ratty way... OK that it I'm off bye. Illustrated: yellow-capped pygmy parrot; council housing for lovebirds...
I WENT TO SEE the new flat I was offered. It is permanent accommodation, though initially you sign up for a year, to see whether or not you're an antisocial troublemaker. I have been in "emergency accommodation" ~ where you can get moved from one end of the borough at 24 hours' notice (or even out of the borough) ~ for about ten years.
We got shown into a bare totally unfurnished place ~ no carpets, no cooker. It was very gloomy, with iron sheets over the windows that only let in pinpoints of light.
Of course there was no bath. The one thing I said I really needed. The person before me must have been old or disabled, so they had a shower with a chair in it, that the man from the council said under no cirumstances would they change... except health grounds. So I have made an appointment with my GP. I can't believe I'm going to have to do this ~ spell out in detail some of the ridiculous problems I have had with "self care". But I have to. I ended up basically paying a friend to use his bath. Payment was made in the form of 3 litres of white cyder. The only way I have ever been able to keep and stay clean. I have lived without a bath for more than five years and am filthy dirty to prove it. I never feel clean after getting out of a shower. Even a silkwood-style shower just makes me red and sore ~ and still dirty.
Of course if I have to I'll just move in without a bath and stay dirty for a year, because you're not allowed to add any fixtures or fittings in that first year. And pay for the bath myself. Another option is just to drag a new or old bath up there and place it so the plug hole alligns with the shower plug hole. I could fill it up using the shower and just let the water run out. It wouldn't be plumbed in or grouted on to the wall, so I wouldn't be breaking any contract.
Apart from that the place is perfect. The area is green and restful. Much nicer than any other part of this borough. Iceland (the supermarket) is only 10 minutes away, which is good. Because for the first few weeks I would be living with microwave only ~ no cooker or fridge. What I really need to get is curtains. Make it look like someone's living there. Otherwise you get squatters breaking in.
Usually, people moving into unfurnished permanent housing are eligable for a community care grant to pay for the new place to get fitted out. But I'm ineligable, because I was working before I got sick, so I paid too many national insurance stamps. I'm on contribution-based ESA, with no top-up (have never been on income support). Maybe I could get funding from some charity, but it won't come from the council. But if I'd been a sponger all my life, I would get this grant.
Apart from this the place is perfect. I don't want to live anywhere else. I just want to move the hell out of where I am now as soon as possible. The council and my support worker seem to be really dragging their feet. I want to sign something as soon as I can, so they cannot u-turn their way out. I wouldn't put it past them to show me somewhere I really like then say I can't have it and have to live in some horrorsville with no right of appeal. That's why I want to sign the contract asap ~ to pin them down.
O I've got to go. I can't think about this. It's stressing the shit out of me. I'm really glad to be moving. NOW I JUST WANT TO MOVE.
It's no problem living in unfurnished accommodation. No worse than living in a squat. (Which I did before.) But they're doing everything they can to stall the issue. I'm sorry I don't trust anyone. It all feels like mind-games. I JUST WANT TO MOVE THE FUCK IN they can sort out baths etc afterwards. Now I have to go, Binky is hammering away at my phone wanting to know where I am because I'm supposed to be bringing round frozen Chinese food + MSG. Not in the mood for it, but said I'd do it.
Sorry if this sounds misable, petty, ungrateful etc etc. (I haven't got time to sit editing this for hours to make it sound nice.) I've been in a crappy mood for days. That's why I'm on ESA to start with ~ bipolar mood swings, paranoia etc.
Hope you have a nice weekend.
Illustrated: this is what British council flats usually look like (not my block)
As a result, house prices at the top end are absolutely ludicrous, with properties going on the market with asking prices in excess of $100 million. Posh Spice and David Beckham recently moved back here into a £40 million ($67.3 million) double-fronted Kensington townhouse. In late 2012, a rather nondescript property on one of our "billionaires' rows" (Bishop's Avenue, Hampstead) went on the market for £100 million ($168.3 million) with the cheeky estate agents demanding £5000 ($8410.50) just for the brochure. And nobody was allowed a viewing without first purchasing said booklet.
I suppose most cities are nice places to live when you have a net worth in nine figures. And London is a wonderful place. That said, I would really like to see the Big Apple for myself. Every time I see a film set there, I spend as much time focusing on the beautiful backdrop of New York City's streets than on the rest of the action. I suppose billionaires will always go where it's most convenient to be a billionaire and if that means London then so be it. But I have to say, if I ever did have £40 million to spend on a house, I'm not sure I would buy where everybody else does. (I'd actually rather have a large apartment with roof terrace than a house ~ wouldn't you?)
Hmmm anyway. Anybody planning to become a billionaire in the near future is welcome to comment on whether they're most likely to opt for London or New York City as their primary place of residence and why... in the meantime, best of luck to all of you in your attempts to cross that pesky barrier dividing £999,999.99 from the crème de la crème of this wonderful world of ours!
