Just a quick update on the housing situation, which is pretty bleak and doesn’t look like it’ll be changing anytime soon. After weeks of a small number of calls most of which were either estate agents or people who didn’t understand what the words “six month let only” means, I shifted the Loot advert into the “Short lets” section on Monday. Result? An almost instant phone call from a girl who sounded pretty keen on at least looking at the flat, and then kindly neglected to call back. Otherwise, it’s been so quiet you can virtually see the tumbleweeds drifting past. The flat is now also being advertised by the Estate Agents, which may (or may not) be an advantage. We’re also still waiting for the bathroom heater, and a collection of other problems to be fixed, but the Landlord, in his infinite wisdom, was active enough to put the electricity bill through the door, an act which almost had me marching into his shop uttering pithy epithets along the line of “Is this a fucking joke?” before I thought better of it. Keeping this situation amicable is probably sensible in the long term, but I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to do it. Living in a flat with no stuff isn’t exactly pleasent for the mind or the soul, and I’m hoping beyond hope that something will happen soon to help us out of this situation.

Once again- if there’s anyone out there who knows of someone who wants a flat for six months, or just knows of a good way of publicising it, let me know. Eternal gratitude awaits…

And here, if anyone wants to look, is the Loot ad for our flat.

Here’s hoping for some good news soon…

I’ve almost got to the point where I can’t remember when my life didn’t involve cleaning, polishing and putting things in cardboard boxes. The current status is that half of our stuff has gone down to Hampshire, and hopefully Julian (George’s brother- and my brother-in-law, which is still taking some time to sink into my head) will be back with the van this Wednesday for all the extraneous stuff that is currently lurking under the stairs. George’s Mum also came up on Thursday, stayed the night, and helped us do a gigantic blitz on the house with the result that it’s almost time to tell the Estate Agents that it’s time to start showing it to people. Getting used to the bare walls, the new structure of the furniture, and the general insane cleanliness of everything is going to take a while, and I’m trying not to scream my head off with stress at the prospect that we might be like this for a while, depending on how the whole ‘replacement’ things go. There’s a friend of Julian’s who might be a possibility- but it’s one of those possibilities that sounds suspiciously too-good-to-be-true, so I’m trying not to get too jazzed up about it.

Trouble is, our first explorations in the world of advertising the flat haven’t been massively succesful. We’ve had one person who left a message saying she was actually interested in looking at the flat, but she refused to answer her phone when I called, and didn’t call back. Apart from that, it’s been mainly Estate Agents, and the occasional confused person who hasn’t been able to understand that the whole “This flat is available as either a 2 bedroom or a 1 bedroom with lounge” equation means that there won’t be a lounge if you rent it as a two-bed. I’m suspecting something may have gone wrong with the publication of the Loot ad- we haven’t had a single call in the last forty eight hours, which is exceedingly strange. I’ll look into it on Monday- we need this to be as visible as possible.

On a suggestion from fjm I targeted the ‘Cotton Room’ at the British Library, which has a noticeboard, and this involved me signing up for a Reader’s Pass and actually visiting the place for the first time. Huge, expansive, and not good for my vertigo, with various walkways and a central collumn of big-scale books that occasionally had my head swimming. Nevertheless, I tracked down the right room, and pinned up a note. Don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I think being pro-active is the only thing that’s going to stop me from going mad over the next few weeks.

Another aspect to this whole situation which is both fantastic and potentially a source of galactic-level frustration is that George’s brother Toby is moving out of his house in Hampshire on November 1st- and George’s parents are going to try and hold onto it and pay the rent until we can get down there and get settled. Now, obviously, this isn’t the kind of situation that they’ll be able to do forever, and certainly not until the end of June 2007. It’s a massive weight off my mind knowing we have somewhere to go, but it’s a new problem that there may only be a limited window. I think, at the moment, I’d give anything just for a clue of exactly how long this is going to take. Stress has been swimming through my head for a while, I’m having trouble sleeping, and the only thing I really want to happen is to get this place sorted. I’ve had enough now- we’ve done our bit, all we want to do is hand over the controls to someone else and just leave. I do believe that if we could get someone to the point of looking at the place, they’d be very likely to say yes- it is a big, roomy flat. It’s just not somewhere we want to be anymore.

So, if anyone reading this knows of anyone looking for a one double-bedroomed flat (or a two double-bedroomed flat without a lounge) in Zone 3 for six months, at £800pcm (excluding bills), and which is available virtually immediately, please drop me a line. And if anyone knows of any other ways of advertising, publicising, or generally spreading the word, I’d be extremely grateful.

A few things have happenned to me which haven’t been House related, but I’m buggered if I can think of them for the moment…

(More interesting, less housing-related blogging will resume shortly…)

I don’t need to be told that I don’t handle stress very well. The one thing that really drives me up the wall is uncertainty- a world where there are a thousand possibilities, and most of them very, very bad. Once I find out what the situation is, it’s almost always nowhere as horrible as I expected, and everything goes back to something resembling normal. Up until then, it’s like having an anvil of fear dangling from my neck, a knot of stress that simply doesn’t want to unclench, a feeling in my chest that, to be honest, can’t be terribly healthy. I did, at least, not let my stress tell me what to do this week. If I had, I’d have insisted to George that we wait and see, and maybe something’ll turn up- instead, I said yes, let’s do something active, and we’ve ended up somewhere interesting as a result.

Basically, we have a go-ahead to move forward with our plan for obtaining a replacement to move in and let us out of the rest of the contract. We move most of our stuff out within the next two weeks, and then live a somewhat spartan existence until we find someone who wants to move in. And then- bang- we’re gone. It may be that simple, it may be more complicated, but the important thing is- we’re doing it. We’re actually going to try. So, if you know of anyone who’s looking for a flat for six months- a Zone 3 two-level maisonette flat with a double bedroom, washing machine and a good-sized lounge that’s close to the tube and buses, for £800 per calendar month (the price is going up- a part of the deal we can’t avoid, and one that should have affected us, if the landlord hadn’t actually forgotten to raise the rent)- then let me know. And, if you know of any good ways of spreading the word, feel free to let me know. Word of mouth is a good thing.

Was going to write more, but my fingers are aching, so rest is in store. More details soon…