I finally made contact with my mysterious landlady this morning (the wonderful Spencer Michael Consultancy, it emerges, had helpfully given me the wrong phone number). It appears that things have been sorted out, and we aren’t about to be evicted after all. Which is nice.
It would appear not, if this country’s news outlets are anything to go by. Sky News, in particular, in their desperate bid to fill airtime and webspace in the absence of actual facts will apparently happily run anything, no matter how unfounded or inconsistent (for example, their reports about the windows being blown out on the bus in Hackney were accompanied by… a photograph of the bus in Hackney with its windows intact).
Most of yesterday’s “reports” consisted of highly reliable “eyewitness accounts”, but sometimes Sky resorted to second hand accounts. For much of yesterday their website had something along the lines of “an eyewitness said that an Italian man who was on the train told her…” Well, that’s clearly a conclusive and reliable report, then. (I think this was the same person to utter the classic statement–later removed from the site–about there having been a small blast. Apparently it wasn’t enough to hurt anybody, but was enough to blow open the rucksack in which the device was located, and as a result “the man holding the rucksack looked rather dismayed”.)
By the time I got home, the networks had endured several hours of coverage with no new information, and as such were deep in the realms of speculation, reporting the news they wanted to report without letting anything as silly as the facts (or lack of them) get in the way.
Today the police seem to have shot a man dead on the tube at Stockwell. Bearing in mind the fact that they managed to arrest several people yesterday who weren’t in any way connected to the (attempted) bombings, you’d want to hope that they were mighty sure that they were shooting dead (five times) the right person on the tube at Stockwell, and not just targetting anyone with the wrong colour skin and heavy luggage in the wrong place at the wrong time.
(According to the BBC: “They brought in the air ambulance. They did everything they can to revive him. He died at the scene.” I dunno. Wouldn’t doing “everything [you] can to revive him” perhaps include not shooting him five times?)
Still no real developments regarding our imminent eviction. I’ve written some letters, but no one seems to want to talk to me about it.
I’ve been perusing the interwebs looking for information, but the best I’ve come up with are the various details out there on the agency I’ve been dealing with (and through whom our landlady purchased the property), The Spencer Michael Consultancy. For example, see here, here, and here).
Do you think it’s a bad thing if the top Google results for your company name are from Watchdog and the Advertising Standards Authority?
Perhaps that is why the company appears to have changed its name to “Property Investor Courses Ltd“. Or maybe that’s just a coincidence.
Oh look–they have some glowing case studies on their website about all the people who’ve made millions out of following their courses. This, for example, is one I selected entirely at random.
—– Original Message —–
From: *.**********@jamjobs.co.uk
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 3:08 PM
Subject: Technical Author * 4………… South Cumbria………
Hi,
I currently have available vacancies for 4 Technical Authors to join a leading international organisation. These are permanent roles based in South Cumbria
A leading international organisation are looking for 4 Technical Authors to review and evaluate existing Nuclear systems related procedures.
The successful candidates will have Authoring experience, ideally in the nuclear industry. Any engineering experience including control and instrumentation would be of benefit.
—snip—
“Nuclear systems related procedures“? “South Cumbria”? Surely that can mean only one thing.
Hmm. Perhaps not…
I went down the road for a haircut at lunchtime. As I was sitting in the chair in the middle of my cut an extremely stressed grey-haired woman in, I guess, her 50s, popped her head round the door and asked the bloke sitting nearest to it if she could borrow his phone.
“Could you call that number?” she asked, in an awfully posh voice, pointing to something written in her address book. “I’ve left my phone and my glasses at home and I can’t possibly read it. I’m parked just over there and I imagine I shall have to pay the most horrendous fine.”
The poor gentleman awaiting his haircut obligingly produced his mobile phone and passed it to her after dialing the number. Alas, the person we all later worked out to be her son that she was trying to contact (who appeared to work in the office building across the street) failed to answer his phone or his office direct line.
“Oh you daft boy!” she exclaimed angrily. “I don’t understand it. Why does everybody have to be so modern?”
I never did work out exactly what she meant by this, or exactly what her errant son had done to annoy her (although she did offer a tantalising clue by announcing to the rest of the equally bemused barbershop customers that she would “leave and not give them to him”, something that would, apparently, “show him”), but I just thought this was a wonderful line, and worth sharing.
When I left the barber some 15 minutes later she was still sitting waiting for him in her Smart car parked up in the street outside.
Still no progress getting in touch with the elusive landlady, but we’ve started the initial stage of flat hunting at least. So far that hasn’t amounted to much more than my idle work-avoidance interwebs browsing, and I’ve been casually wading through the barrage of identikit, exclamation heavy adverts stuffed with phrases like “Must be seen!” and “First to see will take!”
I’ve noticed some unusual stuff, though. One property (sadly I neglected to bookmark the ad) offered an “open flan” kitchen. I quite like the sound of that. Another one (this one) purports to have “1 bedroom 1 reception room 11 bathrooms”. Well, that’s “unusually spacious” indeed. I suppose I’d never have to wait for Sal to get out of there in the morning, but surely a tad excessive, even for us?
“At least it will make a good blog”, said Sal, on Friday night shortly after I had accidentally opened the letter intended for the woman we have been paying rent to for the privilege of living in our tiny space in Camden, only to discover that she hasn’t been paying the mortgage.
Actually, I’m not even sure that I can write a good blog about our discovery that our wonderful landlady is in arrears on her mortgage account to the tune of almost four thousand pounds. Assuming that our rent is enough to cover the cost of the mortgage (she’d be spectacularly stupid if it wasn’t, but you never know), then she has not paid for at least four of the five and a bit months we’ve been living there.
Understandably, perhaps, her building society are rather keen to get their money back, and as such they have instructed their solicitors to begin possession proceedings.
In the best case scenario, we will have to move at relatively short notice, with all the hassle and upheaval that entails. In the worst case, we could lose our deposit, and some of the rent we’ve paid to this woman.
There are no words to describe how angry this makes me*. Why, I wonder, should Sal and I have to pay for the mistakes of some stupid person who overstretched herself because she thought that purchasing buy-to-let properties at the top of a stagnant property market in an environment of rising interest rates was a good idea? Why should we have to suffer when the worst thing we’ve done is to pay our rent on time and keep the place tidy?
I’ve never actually had any real contact with our landlady before, as we acquired the flat through a managing agent, but it turns out that our only means of contacting her is through a mobile phone that appears to be permanently switched off and her postal address in Wales. I’ve already tried directory enquiries, and it appears that her landline is ex-directory (although 192.com is more than happy to provide me with her details from the electoral roll).
So I suppose we just have to go home and wait for the eviction notice to arrive.
Which is nice.
* Of course that’s not going to stop me from using these ones to try.
Leaving City Hall,
In a police convoy. Look!
There! It’s Tony Blair.
Indie columist
John Walsh, at lunch (the cafe,
Design Museum)
An eerie quiet and calm on the Northern Line this morning. At Camden Town I joined an almost empty Bank branch train that was sitting at the platform when I arrived at the station. There were, perhaps, three or four other people in my carriage, where normally there would be people standing in between the seats and I would be optimistically hoping to bag a seat at Euston. A few more people–predominantly men, for some reason–got on along the way, each brandishing his copy of Metro bearing the same grim scenes of destruction, but there were spare seats all the way. I don’t think I have ever caught a Northern Line train with so few people on it before.
Last night I walked home from the office. Google tells me this is 5.7 miles, but I made what I thought was surprisingly good time (1 hour and 20 minutes, if you’re interested). It was a strangely surreal experience, as I crossed the Thames and headed up through the city there were very few cars about but instead people walking everywhere around me. A few lucky souls carried A-Zs, but most were making do with their streetmap printouts held out before themselves as they negotiated unfamiliar streets.
The statement yesterday from those claiming responsibility for the attacks talked of the country being plunged into fear and chaos, but from what I saw this couldn’t be further from the truth. All the people I saw were remarkably calm. Some had obviously given up on (or decided to delay) the journey home and were ensconced in the city pubs. Others were just doing their best to get home however they could. The occasional siren could be heard in the distance, but mostly the city was strangely quiet.
A very sad day, but in many ways this changes nothing, and nor should it. I will still be catching the tube to work everyday, and so will the rest of London’s commuters, once the initial shock wears off. Anything else would be to give in. To let the terrorists win (to use a well-worn cliche). In fact, far from striking fear into the hearts of the city’s people, for the lucky majority not personally affected by the attacks, they almost have the opposite effect, as the stream of emails, phone calls and text messages from friends and family around the country and the world brings people closer together with the people they care about.
Walking over the river, across the city, around St Paul’s, and up towards Angel last night I was reminded why (whatever I might tell you if you asked me while squashed onto the Northern Line at 9am on a Monday morning) I love this city, love living in it, and intend to continue to do so for as long as Sal will let me.