The Londoners Life. October.
To be a Londoner. It’s strange thing. A kind of love hate relationship. The underground round here seems permanently closed. Most weekends at least. The chilling signs of doom proclaiming that fearful message. Replacement bus service. What this means is some bloke who doesn’t know where he’s going takes you on a long and slow mystery tour. You get to your station. Just four hours later. But you learn to accept these things. It’s part of being a Londoner. A bit like being a Satanist really. You know it’s crazy but it works for you. And as my out of town friends say. It’s a London thing.
A bit like the mad prices. I work on my tea and cake index. To judge an area, simply find a café and have tea and cake. If you’re in Hampstead or Chelsea say it’ll be the price of a full meal somewhere else. But then again the somewhere else could be a charming greasy spoon on a crack dealing run down sink estate. In the parade. Next to the launderette. Kebab Shop. And Pound Shop. Tea and jaffa cakes. Two quid mate. Oh and d’you need any blow? Gun perhaps? Alibi? Fake passport? Exotic snake? Very London.
My favourite recent experience was flat hunting. My old lease expired and they sold the building. And being London you get two months to vacate. How terribly reasonable. So I hit the estate agents. Rentals. The desperate home of lies. I can see why people hate estate agents. They don’t listen. And I met Richie. Smiling lying Richie. His accent indeterminate. Sharply dressed. Blackberry glued to ear. “I can find you exactly what you need”. So onto my fifth dank dark and damp lower ground floor flat (basement) with a handy bijou garden (with the look and feel of an abandoned child paupers grave) We went down the lower ground floor steps. The house from the outside resembling a poorly constructed mental asylum. I watched him enter. Then I followed. The damp smell almost making me gag. Richie? No expression. Constantly receiving texts. There was a stain on the floor. A large bloodstain. I looked at it. He didn’t. I turned sideways to enter the half size bathroom door. I looked at the bath. Ideal if you were a hobbit. He said. Compact and easy to clean. I pointed to the fact that the kitchen had a service hatch into the bedroom. Handy for midnight snacks he instantly answered. I thought of the bloodstain. I fancied adding another. His.
And of course the costs. Eye watering deposits. Security deposits. One months rent in advance. And then the paperwork. “It’s just a formality really. But we’ll need the following”. Bank Statement. Credit card Statement. Savings account statement. Mobile phone bill. Passport. Tax bill. Council tax bill from last property. Letter from an authorised person. Letter from another authorised person authorising the first one. Letter from the Doctor. Birth certificate. Car registration papers. School reports. Screenplay for an unfinished film. Plan for ending world poverty. Directions to Atlantis.
I looked at countless other places. Toilet in lounge place. Place without windows place. Top floor so high you looked down on aeroplanes place. Strangely decorated in mirrors everywhere place. Place that smelt of death place. Richie was replaced by Steve and Harrington. All congenital liars. And congenial liars too. Pleasant but ultimately in control. “You’ll have to act quick, we have ten more people looking at the place” And they did. I met one couple. We arrived at the same time. The girl who resembled an elk in a duvet cover looked at me suspiciously. Her partner a small man with receding legs grinned. “Lovely eh?” I looked at the rust covered windows. I smiled. “No it’s a rat hole”. His face brightened. “It’s perfect for us” he said without a hint of irony. She glared at me. I left them to it.
I found somewhere. Through a business colleague.
But this is London. Not a city but another country. Things work differently here. We have theatre. Art galleries. Clubs. Quick break down. Theatre can mean two women in black leotards in a room above a pub shouting in Czech as a Britney Spears CD plays at half speed. Art gallery can mean people with piercings and curious hair standing around in an old warehouse drinking cheap white wine as the walls appear to be hung with the daubing of a hyperactive chimp. Clubs. Well could be a basement so packed and hot and loud people are paying to leave. But it’s cosmopolitan. Apparently.
Next London life report: Important questions answered – Why are night buses like moving mental health communities? Are you getting into re-cycling difficulties? And why nobody you ever ask for directions ever lives in that area?
Phil Ryan.
