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.

Hard Graph

And once again, I thank my lucky stars that I have a job that currently allows me some time to myself during the working day. I have spent the vast portion of this afternoon creating a scale model of my kitchen in Excel, printing it out and then cutting out tiny Ikea wall and base units and arranging them on the paper floor. Of course, the difference between the model and reality is about as great as the difference between Mumbai and Montana and I will head off to Croydon's Ikea tomorrow, confident in the knowledge that there isn't a hope in hell that the units I purchase will actually fit when it comes to installing them in a few weeks time. Once again, I simply do not understand how people are meant to do this without professional assistance - or at least someone who speaks intermediate Swedish. But I soldier on nonetheless: my limited options mean that complaining is futile at best. And really, it's all very exciting indeed. Who'd have thought I'd ever be buying a kitchen? Hilarious. Tomorrow: we shop.

Question Time

And so it's back to the old routine, after eleven consecutive days off work, the longest I've had away from the office since my trip to Croatia and Montenegro last May. I must say, the alarm going off at 6.45am today was a fairly confusing moment for me, but all in all, it's good to be back - 2008 is full of potential in many ways and I'm excited to see what it brings.

I have been super-efficient today which is always reaffirming to the (significant) control freak portion of my persona. Sadly I was forced to reprimand my mother briefly this afternoon but I'm hoping she'll forgive my terse tones under the circumstances. Living with one's parents is always slightly risky and my experience has been fairly typical. Arriving home after a night out is akin to extreme rendition, where every last detail is squeezed out of my pulped corpse by my mother, whose soft speaking voice disguises an iron interrogation drive that could prise Mafia secrets out of a Godfather like vomit from a bulimic. Since I've bought the flat, however, her tenaciousness has leaped to new heights and she now expects to be told about every new development, however minor. Today I laughingly said, 'Mum, you can't want to know everything! It's so boring! I mean, you can't possibly want to know that I spoke to British Gas and they're going to send me a New Homeowner Pack?' But she nodded enthusiastically at me and then looked hurt and panicked as she confronted the vast number of similarly fascinating titbits she may have missed.

The sheer quantity of people to call is hilarious. How anyone without a lot of time on their hands and an unofficial PhD in Admin and Efficiency (Hons) is able to coordinate this process is beyond me. Thankfully, I am fully stocked with computers at work and home, a pad of graph paper, a lifetime's practice at writing Things To Do lists, several clear plastic wallets for important documents, a selection of pop-a-point pencils, a landline and a mobile and the patience of a Saint. And gradually, it's all starting to come together, right now, over me. Or something.

I got the key, I got the secret...

Ignoring the obvious syntactical errors in my title, the sentiment should ring out loud and clear: I have now collected the keys to my new flat/life from the over-styled estate agent who was working as part of a skeleton staff this morning and I am now, officially, a property owner. This is momentous.

Like all other massive life experiences that I have been through thus far, with the possible exception of Disneyworld, it has been nothing like I expected. For a start, the first thing I did when I got inside my new front door was burst into tears. Then I sat down and methodically wrote 'Not Known At This Address - Return To Sender' on an assortment of approximately eighty letters to an unexpected variety of recipients. Feeling a bit calmer, I made myself stand up and kiss every major wall; a workmate recommended this practice and actually, having not kissed anything much since approximately July, I did feel a close bond beginning to form. Then my parents arrived and we drank champagne.

Now it's much later. I'm back home, the rain is pounding on the Velux like gravel and the prospect of moving is dangling appealingly in my future. Sadly I don't think it will be for several weeks/months but the prospect is there, all the same, and I feel extremely fortunate.

All this in spite of the fact that, late last night, I found out thanks to Facebook that my ex is now seeing someone else and has been spending Christmas in the Cayman Islands. Such a combination of news items is not recommended at the best of times, but after several glasses of Cava the feeling of my lungs being hoovered out of body through my solar plexus was perhaps more pronounced. Sure, I don't know the full story, but to be honest, the headlines were enough. I was lucky enough to have Sara to look after me, ply me with Rescue Remedy, put me to sleep in her daughter's bed and set me on my way with Weetabix this morning.

Thus it was that entering my first flat for the first time had the slightly unexpected flavour of steely determination rather than unbridled joy - but ultimately, I'm awesome and lucky in so many ways and that's all that matters.

Irritation, Satisfaction and Happiness

What annoyed me today was the eight year old on the bus who was determined to impress his father by swinging on the handles that dangled from the ceiling. Sadly the miniature attention-seeker could barely reach the loops and simultaneously touch the floor with his feet, which meant that every time the bus jolted, he lost all control and swung helplessly into the indescribably patient woman sitting nearby. His father was as effective as the rhythm method, repeatedly calling his son to heel in a lacklustre fashion that merely served to underline his pathetic failure as a role model and create crystal-clear images of his future, sitting alone in a moth-eaten old people's home while his selfish, boundary-less offspring tries to wow the ladies by hanging from handrails on the tube.

What satisfied me today was our office Christmas lunch at the Coq D'Argent. It began as a civilised gathering and ended riotously with discussions of sex on stairlifts and a rowdy game of the enduringly popular 'Shag, Marry or Cliff'. Unexpected and thorougly enjoyable.

What thrilled me today was that, at approximately 2pm this afternoon, I exchanged on my flat purchase, 46 days after I saw it on the first and only afternoon that I went house-hunting. I complete on the 27th December and, once I have removed every morsel of decoration that currently exists therein and replaced it with something different, tasteful and massively reduced in price, I will move in. Poverty beckons. And Kim: you may now get excited.

Back from near-death

Once again, many apologies for my protracted absence this week – I have been feeling fairly off colour and not up to my usual riotous banter. To be honest, I am still not quite on colour, whatever that might involve, but duty calls and my fans are impatient. Plus, I have so much to tell, the backlog is becoming unmanageable.

It all started on Monday, when I left work early and came home in the freezing afternoon to prepare for Eva’s wedding. With a slightly tragic level of excitement about a mid-afternoon bath, I turned on the taps and then scampered upstairs to perform some minor follicular operations. Sadly, my faithful laptop beckoned me so persuasively that I became sucked into the internet, fully aware that the hot:cold ratio downstairs would almost certainly be negatively affected as a result of my dilly-dallying. Eventually, I tore myself away and galloped down the stairs as delicately as possible. Tentatively, I inserted my hand beneath the Badedas bubbles, dreading the catastrophic lukewarm sensation that would tell me that I had over-run the hot water and it had now run out. But lukewarm it was. Cursing, I told myself to remain calm. Surely in a few moments, the hot would be back and I could bathe in heat. Patiently, I waited for at least five minutes, and sure enough, the hot tap was hot once more. For around nine seconds. I repeated this process, conscious that the clock was ticking and that I needed to leave home in around forty minutes – and that a small towel would not be quite enough in the way of garments. But when the next hot blast also failed all-too-soon, I knew I had no alternative but to enter the tepidness. Already cold, physically and psychologically, the sensation was akin to stepping into the North Sea in January. My goosebumps were painful. I sat down, determined to stay positive, but sadly, this maturity didn’t last long and only seconds later I was frantically running the still-cold hot tap, determined that the boiler would kick into action eventually and knowing that every second I let it run cold was merely making my liquid surroundings even less pleasant. The gargantuan waste of water added moral quandaries to my predicament: could I get out or should I stay in and suffer? Feeling sure that I’d learned my lesson, I scrambled out as quickly as I could and prepared for the wedding at lightning speed.

The marriage was beautiful, fairy-lit and musically stunning. Eva was gorgeous in royal blue, Pete’s speech was hilarious in all the right ways and none of the wrong ones. I sat next to two lovely boys at dinner, both married, both fathers – but entertaining none the less. Celebrity count was excellent – although this started a row when I jokingly accused one of my friends of filming the ‘supergroup’ on stage in order to upload it to YouTube. He took this as a serious and massively offensive slur on the nature of his friendship with the bride and groom and this quickly spiralled into an argument fuelled by far too much delicious wine on my part. Something about being at a party with school friends from two years above me while having a row with a boy I used to fancy when I was in my teens – it all took me back a decade or so. I suddenly felt like I was back at the Feathers ball in the Hammersmith Palais – although thankfully my fashion sense has progressed beyond a £10 black lycra minidress and black lace-up Palladium shoes. Wince. In my drunken excitement, I also managed to set my mum’s coral red pashmina on fire with a tea-light during the canapés section of the evening. I was devastated but I was sitting next to one of the judges from Britain’s Next Top Model and became strangely embarrassed that I hadn’t even managed to make it to dinner without falling into the ‘major liability’ category, so I wafted away the smell and hid the irreparable shawl down the back of my chair. And mum: I’m so sorry. I’ll replace it. Seriously.

On Tuesday, disaster struck when what I had thought was a hangover became a life-threateningly serious virus (read: cold). I went to work as normal but found myself shivering pathetically, sweating profusely and all sorts of other very attractive things. I went to bed early that night, slept all day on Wednesday and most of last night and woke up feeling slightly more human this morning. The highlight of the illness has to be the hallucino-esque dreams I had last night, one of which must have involved an old man. I woke up in the middle of it, in my pitch-black bedroom, and thought that the old man was lying in bed next to me. This didn’t strike me as particularly unexpected – but then I realised that his face didn’t look quite right. ‘Hang on,’ I thought to myself. ‘That’s not the old man – that’s a mask! Someone is trying to make it look like the old man is in my bed! They’ve put a Spitting Image style floppy rubber mask of his face here!’ I picked it up to toss it away – and suddenly I realised with a flush of embarrassment that it was, in fact, my cushion. The corner had bent to create the effect of a long, beaked nose – and my hyper-active, cold-fuelled imagination had done the rest.

And now it’s Thursday – I’ve stumbled through work, still feeling fairly sorry for myself – and yet there is good progress with the flat, which is finally picking up pace after a terrifying 48 hours where no one could get hold of the vendor and I thought he had evaporated or been arrested for paedophilia. Fingers crossed for some concrete positive developments tomorrow. Until then…

The saga continues...

Seasoned property buyers won't now be surprised to learn that 'my' flat is now back on. Apparently the girl went away last night to think things through, came back with her maximum offer this morning and it wasn't as high as mine had been yesterday. So I won. My survey went ahead this afternoon and apparently it was all fairly smooth. I have now found a solicitor and all in all, things are looking positive. BUT it really is a long way off yet so no congratulations yet please - and yes Kim, that includes you. Hold your horses, control your ponies, rein in your mules - we can party like it's 1999 but not until I have le clé dans ma main.

Goodness. It's been quite a week. I'm off.

Yoghurt: it could be worse

Seasoned property hunters will not be remotely surprised to learn that my flat fell through. It was all a bit smooth and too good to be true thus far. I'm surprisingly upbeat about it - in fact, I momentarily felt quite glamorous and hardcore as I actually attempted a gazump this afternoon. Admittedly, it was an unsuccessful gazump, in that I was immediately and conclusively gazumped back, but still, I briefly gazumped and that felt fairly exciting.

A propos of my Ray LaMontagne = yoghurt comment, I have since learned that Emily and I didn't know how lucky we were. Miss Robinson emailed me an article yesterday explaining that Ray is famously shy, rarely gives interviews and has even been known to perform in the dark. There we were, shuffling impatiently in our seats and slating him for not providing comic relief between songs, and little did we know that we should have been thanking our lucky stars we could even see the stage. This refusal to engage with his audience may be because he is not, as Emily put it, 'much of a looker', but I think it's more likely to do with some sort of passionate belief in the strength of his songs and a reticence to detract from them with gimmicks. Part of me admires Ray's musical integrity and part of me thinks if it's only about the songs, I'd rather save my money, listen to the CD and go see someone else live who actually wants to put on a show. The latter part of me is about as big as my thighs; the former part is about the size of my epiglottis.

Cusp of news

Having been on the verge of bursting yesterday with so many things to write about, it appears my creative juices have evaporated. I took Monday to Wednesday off work this week to look for flats and clearly, when I'm not going to the City and back on public transport every day, my pool of ideas becomes shallow and filled with leaves.

I've been in bed a lot, which has been lovely but uninspiring. Today I went for a bike ride and took a nice picture of some deer, look:


Other than that, I bought a flat at 09:04am. But there are so many nightmare survey / mortgage / solicitor hurdles ahead that no one is allowed to get excited. Believe me, when the time comes, you'll know about it.

A summary of recent events

Too much to write and not enough time or space...

I could write virtual reams, for example, about The Wizard, a man I sat opposite on the tube on Sunday who had a deep groove between his tortured eyes, an immaculate black curled moustache, a pointed goatee and was wearing lederhosen braces affixed to black leather trousers over pointy long boots.

Or I could bemoan the madman outside Hammersmith bus station last night who stood directly in front of me, facing away, on the almost-empty pavement and then took three deliberate steps backwards, causing me to have to jump out of the way to avoid being ploughed down. I selected an alternative standing point but he then came and stood in front of me again and did exactly the same thing - two further times. I took refuge inside, leaving him mumbling to himself, and forced myself to pity him rather than punch him.

Alternatively, I could cover my Saturday night at length - fireworks with Sara at Alexandra Palace followed by one of the coolest and most fun parties I can remember, featuring stripped walls, bare floorboards, a bath in the garden, lethal fireworks, bad hoedown dancing, a comedy writer who was genuinely funny, many glasses of different white wines, precisely three people I'd met before and several more with whom I'd now happily spend eternity.

I'd like to mention Ray LaMontagne, who has the voice of a husky angel but the on-stage vibrance of a yoghurt. I was glad to have gone but in terms of live experiences, he certainly suffered from being seen in such close temporal proximity to Rufus last week.

And I should certainly document my first day's flat-hunting yesterday, when I visited several properties I'd rather die than visit again and one property I have already mentally purchased and decorated. The most interesting experience was flat number two. I was still trying to keep an open mind but spirits were low as we approached the edges of the estate - washing hanging outside every flat which I find inexplicably depressing, a couple of broken windows and several clamped cars wasn't the most welcoming sight. We climbed the concrete steps to the first floor and knocked on the door to no response, so Emma, my friendly estate agent, unlocked it with her set of keys. As we entered, the smell hit us like a guitar in the face: the place reeked of a potent combo of marijuana and microwaved munchies. The air was thick with stale pot smoke and we soon found its source: a friendly middle aged couple monging on the sofa in the 'reception room' (read: den of iniquity) watching what appeared to be a Jamaican soap opera at top volume. The entire flat was mouldy and damp and irredeemably hideous; the only money that seemed to have been spent on its contents had clearly gone on white goods as there was a large and pristine fridge-freezer in each of the bedrooms, the den of iniquity and the kitchen. I wouldn't live there if you paid me but if you need anything chilled, I can pass on the address.

Grasping the bottom rung

An ambiguous blog title but an unambiguous excitement - I have been given a provisional mortgage offer and am ready to start house hunting. I couldn't sleep last night: I feel elated and nervous and under-confident and fool-hardy. Today I have been looking online in earnest. It's a strange sensation - something I always envisaged I would do eventually is actually happening. Now. It's nothing like I imagined: I'm looking on my own to buy on my own, funding it on my own and, amazingly, it feels absolutely fanfuckingtastic.

Better still, after a wait of several months, I'm going to the Hammersmith Apollo tonight to see the god of modernity, Rufus Wainwright, strut his funky gay stuff. Emily C-A and I are sitting in row 7 of the circle but have convinced ourselves that we might be able to turn him if we are glamorous enough and the spotlight comes our way. Wish me luck.