Articles

04/06/2014

On Accommodation...

Mornink.

Did a lot of spade work yesterday and decided that being a bastard is sometimes required when the world tries to fuck you in the ass.

Basically I've stopped paying my rent here so in two weeks I can use the erstwhile rent money to pay for a deposit and rent up front on a new room.

The bonus is that firstly I'll have plenty of time to find somewhere new to stay and can move out easily before the deadline of early next month.

The bastard part is that once I've left, there's no way for my former landlady to reclaim said money so I don't intend to pay rent for this entire month.

I don't like being an asshole but both my landlady and her husband are employed, whereas I can't get hired to pack boxes in a factory ['bloody foreigners, coming over here, taking our jobs', racist meme or evidential truth as they're both Lithuanian], and besides, they can wait to be paid back rent [even though I have no intention of doing so] whereas my new landlord or lady will need paying upfront.

I loved staying where I am present. They were good enough people [except for their screaming little demon of a child] and the best leasers I've met since moving into London several years ago.

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My first three years, I think it was [I've never been good at keeping track of my own history, being more concerned with the present than the past, after all, the present is what is currently biting my ass], were spent in hostels, living alongside teenage travelers, who had zero respect for other people, and horrible human beings more like animals like sapient creatures.

Got offered sex by naked women several times [though I didn't accept because I wasn't attracted to them mentally, although physically the word 'supermodel' was tossed around quite easily], and bullied once or twice, which I dealt with easily as I've been bullied a lot in my life anyway.

Biggest issue there was bed availability. They don't let you just book a bed and it's yours. You to book almost daily, and if they're fully booked, you're boned, so for three years or so, sometimes I didn't have a bed to sleep in at night.

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After that I stayed with a Puerto Rican...maybe...who was a giant asshole with no kidneys that kept nagging me about nothing and trying to evict me for bullshit reasons as a kind of hobby.

Eventually got evicted from the room in a large house I was renting after he invited a bunch of new housemates in and then went on holiday without leaving anyone to mind the property, despite having a daughter who could and eventually did do it.

I complained after a week of the mess and the noise from the brand new teenage tenants who were traveling from America, and how the boiler had broken and we were I was cleaning and everyone was showering in frigid water.

He ignored my texts and calls for more than a month until I managed to get hold of his daughter's email address and she managed to arrange for repairs.

After he returned he evicted me.

I cleaned the house up after the other residents. I got the boiler repaired. I made sure it was still standing and in reasonable condition for the time he was absent. And he booted me out for giving a shit about the place.

Some time later I got into an argument with the council over receiving housing benefit I wasn't entitled to even though I was. They contacted him as it was regarding my time spent living in his house. He lied to them about me actually being employed whilst living there and cheating the fucking government out of charity.

One court tribunal later, which he didn't attend, just gave them a written statement of his testimony after the tribunal was advised by a claim inspector to trust his assertions [you've no idea how badly I wanted to find the cretin who claimed that and break them in half], and I was able to prove that his allegations were a load of crap. He could've got me a criminal record and a jail time if they had believed him though.

There's a reason his kidney's failed people; the universe was trying to prevent him from blighting other people's lives. At least that's my theory.

[I said when I started writing this blog that I wasn't going to write about my horrible history. I just realized my actions are calling me a liar, but for crying out loud, when will the punishment stop?]

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Then I stayed in an illegal sublet in a room in a two bed roomed flat, which was a] freezing cold [it was winter, snow on the pavement, and I didn't need to store things in the freezer], and b] had a gas heater in it which could've killed me in my sleep. Plus the rent was like fifty pounds over priced for the property.

It was illegal and overpriced because it was a council property rented to a tenant who sublet it, via her son, to my landlady who was also my flatmate. They would've been so epically boned if anyone found out. I've reported it since I left, because it's not right that someone should be making money off a council property like that, but I don't know if anyone has done anything about it.

Eventually I left that hellhole after three or four months because of a blow up argument with my sole flatmate over nothing very much, whereupon she turned into a psychotic bitch.

It's quite possible that I will never forget the argument we had over rent:
52 weeks per year, 12 months per year, 52 / 12 = 4.33 recurring, so £350.00, for example divided by 4.33 is 80.83, not 87.5, which is 350 / 4. And to work out daily rent at 350 per month, you times it by 12 months and then divide by 364 days to get 11.54.
This I remember because I was trying to work out how much I owed down to the day in rent so I could leave with all debts paid and my deposit back. Settle up, because I am honest and I expect the same. However, she insisted that I was wrong regardless of how I explained it. Either she was just trying to be evil or she didn't understand and said I was wrong regardless to save face.

Whatever really, in the past, but that kind of bullshit gets on my nerves.

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Then there was this place. My current landlady is nice and doesn't bother me at all. They're all Lithuanian like I said so they don't go out of their way to talk to me because they can hardly understand me [AND YET EMPLOYERS HIRE THEM...].

The room is a good size, the wifi is more or less always on, it's never cold, I pay a flat rate per week in rent which can be past due for a bit if required, the kitchen is spacious, I can use my flatmates knives and things, and never have to clean overmuch because there's four of them and they do it themselves.

Well, more or less. The kitchen is usually left in a clutter so I have to move things, but I do the same sometimes so that's OK. And their son never stops bloody screaming his dam head off, which is grossly annoying sometimes. But on the whole, this place was ideal.

But now I have to leave.

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I can be a bit picky over my next place as I've got just over a month to inspect and interview and consider, whilst also having the budget [see above regarding not paying this months rent] to pay for a large deposit which really opens up the options when you're looking for accommodation that'll accept those on housing benefit.

Some people lament the effort it takes to get onto the housing ladder due to property prices.

Personally I'm just looking for four walls, a floor, a ceiling, a bed, wifi, a fridge, and a toilet, plus housemates that I don't fantasize about justifiably killing.

Alright, so there are also those who don't even have the money to live indoors, but I do so using perfectly available social security funds so I don't understand why people do live rough really.

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My final thought for today is that I learned yesterday definitively that my mother is indeed dead because there was an ad about it in the town where she lived with my farther, brother and sister.

She was insane. Illogical. A hater of intelligence. A downer. Someone who would drag another person's moral and sense of self-worth down to her own level on instinct. A liar. Abusive. Chronically bloody ill. And probably responsible for how fucked up I am.

As a creator, not what I would've hoped for, in a mother.

Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld fantasy series of books, wrote his deceased characters as being very clear minded. Dead, spirits, no longer able to interact with the living world, and soon transitioned into their afterlife, which is whatever they think will happen.

For my sake I hope that the former happened and she saw the damage she caused and could regret it, and feel remorse for it.

For hers, because I am a fundamentally good man, I hope that if there is a next world that she isn't driven anymore by whatever it was that caused her to act the way she did to me.

Never loved her, never even liked her, or respected her, or wished her anything but vengeance for what she did to me, which I got, and I'm not sorry.

But I can still hope for peace now I've settled the score.