My Fall In London

 

  When a ten day return ticket to London turns into three months of home improvements, what is that called? A working vacation? What do you call it when you leave your family to live alone in an abandoned flat in a strange city for three months? Homeless? What do you call someone who chooses to live in an empty city flat with no phone, radio, internet, TV, or friends and family. A Recluse?

  The longer version of this rant has been lost in a rush of wrong button taps but, to make a long story short, I returned to hearth and home [and family] after three months with a remarkably changed point of view. Unlike the last 15 years, the long list of tasks, responsibilities, and impossible missions all had relevance somewhere far away. When I returned, I felt light, and free; able to stand up straight. Normally, I'm bent double by the burden of expected labor. Not to mention accomplished labor. In london it was especially serious since I was deprived of my support team, tools, car, and beloved internet. At least I could speak the language. [aside Theoretically: The cheerful greeting in London today is a strongly accented version of "Are you alright?" Alarmed, I fought the reaction to pat myself down, checking before replying "Bene! Tu?" It's a foreign land wherever I set down these days and I fear the damage is beginning to show. If they ask if I'm alright I think to myself that what's wrong has begun to manifest itself]

   On the twelfth of July our London tenants of five years wrote to tell us that they were moving on. My

initial reaction was to do what we usually did: dust off the old advertisement, raise the rent and reel in some new tenants. We could do all this by email. The unfinished business in Italy made me think that I couldn't possibly stop and go off to london. I put up all the regular arguments: "what about the plumbing? what about the kids science homework? how's Isolde going to get to the bus? who's going to supply the winter firewood? In fact, who's going to start the fires? and what about the car tires? And the bicycles?" etc. It was a desperate argument. Time had taken its toll on the London flat and not being there to see it, we had no real idea of how it looked. We had paid for repairs and addressed any complaints from the tenants during their time there, but nine months ago a fire raged in the apartment above, taking away the roof. Our beloved London flat was soaked by the fire department. The tenants had run for the exits at the moment the lease expired. Who could blame them?

   Who you gonna call? Me. Mighty Mouse is on his way. I flew into London on the eighteenth of August. By blind luck, I was able to stay at a friend’s house half an hour away for the first week. Plenty of time, I thought, to set everything straight. I bought a ten day ticket just in case.

   My first impression of our beloved London apartment was not a good one. For the past ten years or so what little money spilled over from the rent of our apartment we poured into our Italian derelict. It was like a siphon. The forces of physics sucked money out of areas of abundance to areas of want. Until we reached an equilibrium. In other words, our beloved London flat slowly became a derelict just like our Italian house. Only worse because I hadn't been there to fix the door hinges and Alex wasn't there to cook without oil. It slowly turned into a revolting tenement. The ground floor flat has a nice little private garden in the back and a narrow entrance garden. We’ve always considered these outdoor spaces precious and fun to care for. Plants and flowers thrive in the abundant English rainfall. Now, walking down the lane, I could spot our flat from some distance. The front "hedge" was so profound, it forced one to move over on the sidewalk. I had to duck to one side to find the door. It also protected burglars who had earlier breached the front windows and made off with lots of Apple computers belonging to the tenants. But even this didn't encourage them to pick up the hedge clipper. Inside, my owner’s

pride was spoiled by damaged plaster, peeling wallpaper, broken light switches, grimy walls and doors, filthy floors: everything either soiled with layers of oily cake, or broken, or worse. The kitchen clearly served three independent couples who obviously shared neither sugar nor cleaning. I found a pair of scanty pink underpants behind the cooker. The back garden had overgrown the outbuilding, covered an abandoned bicycle and Weber grill, obscured the overflowing drains, crowded a small table and chairs, and left a tiny patch to perch a folding clothes dryer. The quote from professionals to clear this microscopic urban garden was 800 pounds sterling!

   The fight with the insurance company over the fire damage had begun in Italy long before I left. They asked for quotes. We asked for quotes. The contractors asked for access. The tenants asked for repairs. The contractors couldn't get in. The tenants couldn't quit work [or play]. The insurance company low-balled. The contractors drifted away. Meanwhile the flat upstairs was fully renovated, the roof rebuilt, and the flat sold! Then the tenants finally announced they'd had enough. Bye-bye. The siphon dried up. Mighty Mouse is on his way. In London the insurance fight continued. I wasn't allowed to touch anything because the damage was the evidence. One week wait turned into two. Two turned into three, but I had plenty to do.

  First thing: the garden. Bushes, hedges, trees. Swinging a chainsaw made quick work of it but, dam! Dam London! A mountain of prunings can't just become a romantic bonfire. Garden waste must be bagged in bin liners. It's got to be reduced to toothpicks and crammed into plastic bags. Hundreds of them. But each house is only allowed five per week. For me that meant about 30 weeks, not counting the time required to reduce my trees to Toothpicks. And no heavy wood allowed. I had a problem. Solution: distribute my bin liners of prunings up and down the street in the middle of the night before the morning collection, and friends in London came to the rescue taking the sawn wood for their fireplace.

   I'm swipe-typing from a mobile gadget. Functioning well beyond my sell-by date. I'm doing it from a pub in London. And if you're a beer drinker, well, it doesn't get any better. But pretty soon I've got to go back to the flat on Wix's Lane, dig my sleeping bag out of the closet and find a clear space to lie down. With the tenants gone, I move in and can stay on the job 24-7. You might think three months in London in a "free" flat would be a dream get-a-way. No kids, no wife(!), nothing to do but prowl around and get acquainted with this remarkable city. But that would be the fantasy of a young, single man in a foreign port. Sitting in a noisy pub, alone, at a ripe old age, surrounded by people one third my age with full spectrum hearing isn't pleasant. I can’t understand a word they are saying. And a flat with no phone, no TV, no radio, no Wi-Fi, no life, no love, along with the responsibility for the family's biggest investment ignored for ten years, no! It's horrible. London is crowded. London is reluctant to tear down old (historic?!) buildings and build sensible roads. OK, fine! Old buildings are charming. There's a good mass transit system. Bikes rule, and driving a car is seriously discouraged. But what's left is too many old buildings and no way to get in and fix them. Add to that a gigantic international financial services industry with tons of employees, and all the people that are needed to support them: the restaurant's, mechanics, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, etc, and everybody fighting for a medieval housing inventory. You've got a London-sized problem. It's a seller's market. The rent a property owner can charge is... outrageous. criminal. Oh! There's some new housing all right. There's a new

tower on the south bank full of flats that cost a million a piece. It's been built with money from overseas as pure speculation. At night three quarters of it is dark. Uninhabited. For the investors their money is safer in an empty, million pound flat than any bank account. The condition of the properties that people like you and I might rent can be equally outrageous. The rent-paying public has been pummelled into accepting the shabby chic of cramp and damp. The disparity between rich and poor is greater than anywhere else in the civilized world. In the area around Oxford Circus life expectancy is near 90. Half an hour to the east, life expectancy drops by 25 years. And we've pummelled our tenants. Brutally. Luckily Clapham Common has always been considered desirable, but Wix’s Lane has limited parking, the street is only wide enough for one car to pass although it is a two way street. The living room of the flat is now called a bedroom because living rooms in London are now for the upper one percent. Many living rooms have been cut into two bedrooms and many apartments have been cut into two flats. A bedroom in Clapham will cost between 500 and 800 pounds sterling per month in a shared flat. Ours is still one apartment but what used to be one living room, one bedroom and a nursery is now three double bedrooms. London is crowded and expensive.

  The insurance company fight took longer than the garden clean-up so I started a kitchen clean-up and renovation. This led to IKEA, my idea of hell to which I am irresistibly drawn. Kind of like Donald Trump turned into a retail store. And that led to a deadline when my new kitchen would be delivered. The insurance company finally agreed to more money but their contractors refused to take the job. Guess who was left to deal with the mold, the blocked drains, the shorting electrics, and the ceilings caving in? Not to mention the problem of finding a builder, plasterer, plumber, and electrician who might not be wintering in the Caribbean. Without word of mouth you've got no hope, because as the owners prey on the tenants, the workers prey on the owners. Builders and tradesmen circle London like killer whales. None of them live in London. They live outside the city perimeter and sweep in on steep, "call-out" charges, not to mention parking fees. From Italy I had found a successful Irish builder by word of mouth and I felt smug. I felt that I had cracked the syndicate, but the quote after our interview left me reeling. His electrician’s quote alone gobbled up our entire insurance award. Thinking a quick trip to the pub was my only comfort, I bumped into some young guys wearing electrical tool belts tramping in and out of a neighbor’s house. After work, they came around; and after some careful testing with real instruments (unlike my Irish builder’s electrician) they gave me the bad news with a grave face. It was 20% of the original quote and I had found my electricians. And through them I found Adrian who they played football with every Thursday.

  So we introduced Adrian into the story. The side of his van says "Adrian Construction.
Word of Mouth" Adrian is Romanian. And so are his workers. They work for half the cost of a Brit. Cash. Adrian was willing to put off a much more wealthy client for a few days. Adrian wanted the work, he had the guys to do it. And he could do it for less. A lot less. Adrian Construction left me with new ceilings, plaster and paint as well as taking away an entire truck load of tenant rubbish and kitchen demolition.

  That left me with the job of re-plumbing the kitchen, installing the cabinets, cooker, fridge, dishwasher and sink, cleaning up the whole mess, and finding new tenants.

  So we introduce "Brexit" into the story. British exit from the EU. Meaning, for most UK citizens, a way to avoid a flood of people who don't look English, speak English all that well, or behave in an English manner. Theory holds that these non-English are costing the country loads in medical and education entitlements while stealing all the jobs, but a careful look demonstrates that it's the English themselves who are gaming the social services while the industrious immigrants are eager to work and are doing it for less. The large majority hold permits, live frugally and pay taxes. They don't want to get in trouble. It's the prevailing refrain all over the west but I'll refrain from a descent into statistics, politics and economics.

 Once the many formalities are untangled and Britain leaves the European Union, Adrian and his guys may have to go.

  And so may I. And the citizens will have it all back and be great again. And most of them won’t be able to pay for it and the wealth and life expectancy disparities will widen.

  But it's a nice place to visit. Now that my rant is over and I can look back with some pride at our little London flat; I can reflect on my many walks around the London streets at night.  I celebrated my birthday with fish and chips. I helped Thomasina get started in an English grammar school. I visited Alex's mother often, met Caroline's guy Jamie, saw Ramsgate, got to celebrate Scarlett’s birthday with a drink at the Ritz [thanks Jamie!]. I got to watch London dress itself first in Halloween gore, then Guy Fawlks explosions and finally Christmas lights. I watched the skateboard artists on Clapham Common, pantomime under the Eye, and anti-war protestors under Nelson’s column. Thomasina and I were swept along by the Zombie March. And Pat Sonnino and Dick Wayman took me out to dinner. And I returned to Italy and my family after three months to a warm reception.