Crunch time

Far be it from me to be smug, but I must admit that the credit crunch has, thus far, been nothing but a delight for me. To start with, I managed to buy my flat at a time when, sure, prices were high - but I was able to get 5.5 times my salary as a mortgage loan. Had I left it a couple of months, I'd have been lucky to get 3.5 times my salary with a 10% downpayment and I would have been looking at studio flats with a splendid view of the A1. So, as far as timing is concerned, given that I couldn't have bought ten years ago when my flat was probably worth the same as a bottle of Panda Cola, I think I was pretty fortunate.

And now, today, I discover that those clever bank people have cut interest rates for the second time this year, meaning the monthly repayments on my not-remotely-fixed-rate mortgage (another stroke of serendipity) have been reduced by over 10% since I took it out. Not too shabby.

Of course, while the credit crisis has definitely made my life easier in one respect, I can't claim to be remotely relaxed about the situation - I think it's safe to say that now is not the ideal time to be employed in the City and there's a large part of me (approximately the size of my lower half) that worries that I will be made redundant in a matter of days, forced to sell my flatlet and forcibly removed into a hostel for other crunch victims. We'll huddle round the gas fire wearing fingerless gloves and deerstalker hats, tell stories about our shameful descent down the property ladder, reminisce about the good old days when we shopped in Ikea and B&Q, and try not to feel too humiliated by the 'Victim of Negative Equity' tattoos that have appeared overnight on our faces and financial records.

Still, who knows what's going to happen? For now, the flat's great, I'm loving almost all of it and I'll just cross my fingers that I get to stay for a little while longer. The plusses, FYI, are my carpet, my bathroom lights, my TV on demand, my commute and my Venetian blinds. The minuses are the unpleasantly scented drains that need fixing, the extent of the woodwork that I am yet to repaint, the cost of my Tesco's habit and my lack of chest of drawers, given that I have already filled both the fitted cupboards in my room and half filled the one in the spare room with my possessions. As discussed yesterday, a flatmate seems likely but it appears that I'll need to find one with no clothes. An ad for a nudist might attract the wrong kind of person though... I'll need to think this one through.