Not my new apartmentHouse hunting over the internet is a bit like computer dating. I have had a brief dalliance with the latter, with disappointing results, and after a few distasteful experiences gave up. With properties, like men, the photographs are always deceptive, and you have to be even more picky with property, as once you have signed away a large part of your life and your savings, you can’t get out of it very easily.
After about 10 viewings, you start to lose heart. This is the dangerous stage. This is where you must still be prepared to suspend disbelief, and go to each viewing with hope in your heart and a ballpoint pen in your pocket, ready to sign on the dotted line before anyone else does. By this time you have come to terms with the fact that you can’t have everything. What you really want is the property equivalent of George Clooney.
Despite having been a home-owner twice before, I threw myself back into the lion's den. My ideal property would be a spacious 2-bedroom in a quiet leafy street near the park, five minutes from a metro or tram, and within walking distance of shops and some good restaurants, in a whimsical recently renovated art deco house with brand new kitchen and bathroom, large south facing terrace, high ceilings, original wooden floors, and still be within my budget with enough left over to buy new curtains.
I soon realized that this was the equivalent of expecting to bump into George Clooney down the local pub, have him notice only you, and find he’s a really nice guy and easy to live with and worships the ground you walk on. You can dream about it, but it’s not going to happen. You have to sacrifice something. So I had to draw up a list of priorities - location, distance from work, the charm factor, initial investment required, renovations, upkeep costs, accessibility to shopping and transport, size, view, condition, noise levels, etc. (on reflection, this is not a bad checklist to use when choosing a man, either) - and decide what I could live without. This was made easier for me by the arrival a couple of months ago of a young couple in the flat upstairs with a hyper-active and insomniac two-year old Olympic hurdler. The charm of the old art-deco house with original wooden floorboards started to fade. Oh well, looks aren't everything.
The majority of properties I saw were either the equivalent of Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances (affordable, but run-down and requiring me to do a lot of work) or Sean Connery (old and well-maintained, but way out of my league). In the past, as with men, I have settled reluctantly for the former whilst gazing wistfully at the latter. You could say I have good taste beyond my means. Rather than drop my standards I raised my budget to about as high as I could go without robbing a bank. Well you might as well invest in property as anything else, hang the pension fund.
You will say I am taking this analogy too far when I tell you that I found an apartment that 90% matched my checklist on ... Valentine's Day! It's not quite got the come-to-bed eyes of George Clooney, but it's got everything I want short of the turret and private chapel, and JUST about falls within my budget, although the curtains will have to be from Ikea. And it's nicer inside than outside, which is also a good selling point in a man.
It has the added multiple advantages of being right opposite a launderette, so not only will I have 10 washers and tumble dryers at my disposal and therefore no need to fork out on a washing machine, but I will have a living Edward Hopper painting to look at when there's nothing on TV of an evening. Not to mention the single young men doing their smalls.
After about 10 viewings, you start to lose heart. This is the dangerous stage. This is where you must still be prepared to suspend disbelief, and go to each viewing with hope in your heart and a ballpoint pen in your pocket, ready to sign on the dotted line before anyone else does. By this time you have come to terms with the fact that you can’t have everything. What you really want is the property equivalent of George Clooney.
Despite having been a home-owner twice before, I threw myself back into the lion's den. My ideal property would be a spacious 2-bedroom in a quiet leafy street near the park, five minutes from a metro or tram, and within walking distance of shops and some good restaurants, in a whimsical recently renovated art deco house with brand new kitchen and bathroom, large south facing terrace, high ceilings, original wooden floors, and still be within my budget with enough left over to buy new curtains.
I soon realized that this was the equivalent of expecting to bump into George Clooney down the local pub, have him notice only you, and find he’s a really nice guy and easy to live with and worships the ground you walk on. You can dream about it, but it’s not going to happen. You have to sacrifice something. So I had to draw up a list of priorities - location, distance from work, the charm factor, initial investment required, renovations, upkeep costs, accessibility to shopping and transport, size, view, condition, noise levels, etc. (on reflection, this is not a bad checklist to use when choosing a man, either) - and decide what I could live without. This was made easier for me by the arrival a couple of months ago of a young couple in the flat upstairs with a hyper-active and insomniac two-year old Olympic hurdler. The charm of the old art-deco house with original wooden floorboards started to fade. Oh well, looks aren't everything.
The majority of properties I saw were either the equivalent of Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances (affordable, but run-down and requiring me to do a lot of work) or Sean Connery (old and well-maintained, but way out of my league). In the past, as with men, I have settled reluctantly for the former whilst gazing wistfully at the latter. You could say I have good taste beyond my means. Rather than drop my standards I raised my budget to about as high as I could go without robbing a bank. Well you might as well invest in property as anything else, hang the pension fund.You will say I am taking this analogy too far when I tell you that I found an apartment that 90% matched my checklist on ... Valentine's Day! It's not quite got the come-to-bed eyes of George Clooney, but it's got everything I want short of the turret and private chapel, and JUST about falls within my budget, although the curtains will have to be from Ikea. And it's nicer inside than outside, which is also a good selling point in a man.
It has the added multiple advantages of being right opposite a launderette, so not only will I have 10 washers and tumble dryers at my disposal and therefore no need to fork out on a washing machine, but I will have a living Edward Hopper painting to look at when there's nothing on TV of an evening. Not to mention the single young men doing their smalls.
21 comments:
I think you have to be an up-and-coming actress to get Clooney, but two bedrooms sounds like a good idea. There should be room for a lodger to pay rent and scare away the children.
Journée de la femme : Homage has to you Mesdames !
Mieux vaut un petit chez soi qu'un grand chez les autres .Simple to say!
Georges Clooney !! Quand il apparaît sur le petit écran Je zappe ,pour taquiner colombine ma chère et tendre qui me dit pourquoi ? Où Taj Mahal ?
Nul part , si au palais !
Non tu népalais (you are not ugly) ma biche! " ma biche c'est mon petit surnom "
Sur ce nous nous sommes réfugiés à la campagne , loin des laveries automatiques ,pas si bête le bougre !
Man, if that happened to Simon when he was at the laundromat I would have to go have a cold shower.
Guess if he left his clothes on he could at least do two things at once.
Personally I spend just a much time deciding where to put my pole, but as it was a choice in the top and bottom of the garden the wife told me to get a **** or get off the pan.
That was odd as I wasn't even on the toilet at the time.
I'm so glad you have found somewhere which sounds great. I love the Ed Hopper painting and the Taj which is incredibly in close-up.
Oddly, because I don't like him, I had an amorous dream about a middle aged Connery last night. We just danced, but it was really nice.
It sounds great! And you're spot on as always, Daphne: as with a man, it's best to avoid the overly roomy, largely vacant ones and concentrate on examples possessing a not unpleasing facade, room to expand and an intriguing attic.
How big's the chimney?
The Seinfeldian observation that apartments should be known as Together-ments says a great deal about this metaphorical hunt for the right place.
My wife would probably describe me as high maintenance but low overhead. The plumbing and electrical are in reasonable working order, and aside from a slight bulge in the middle, I am presentable enough when she is entertaining guests.
Of course everything/one always looks better when you are at a viewing and they are on display...
but you can never know what a place/person is REALLY like until you've lived 'there' for a while. Most of us fall into the nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there category.
GB, luckily there is room for a lodger, as mine seems to have taken root. He helped me move last time and two weeks later I found him asleep in a discarded cardboard box like the proverbial dormouse.
Crabtree, merci pour tes voeux. Je vois bien Mme Crabtree faisant la lessive a la riviere, esperons qu'aucuns des pecheurs locaux ressemble a Georges ...
Guru, you won't have any property worries, living on top of a pole as you do. Must be handy when you run out of vodka.
Pat, obviously you were unconsciously substituting Sir Sean for yer man who is also of the tartan persuasion. Just danced, yeah right!
Sam, with men and property, no sooner have we gels got the key than we want to start changing things. Apartments are much better than men in that they don't resist change. If I could have transformed Harold with a coat of Dulux, life would have been much simpler. Sadly, he was only improved by demolition.
Donn, you're telling me. Most of them I wouldn't even want to visit in person, just glance at in a magazine in their unadorned state and be horrified by the price tag. You sound rather like that Homo Simpson off the telly.
I am it "clown né "I do the laundry en caleçon !
If ever you want your bathroom mosaic-ing, just call me "Clooney" and I'll be there, ma biche.
Or like our brewery rep called it today, "crazy paving"!
Crabtree, il doit faire plus chaud la-bas qu'ici.
Krimo, I'm more into natural slate cladding at the moment. I knew I shouldn't have gone to the Belgian Ideal Home exhibition. What was your brewery rep doing in your bathroom? On second thoughts don't answer that ...
So, if I understand this correctly - you would rather live near a launderette than own a washing machine with a turbo-twin cycle that you could lean against.
Boo-hiss to the menopause (or pause button) !!
My ideal des res would be in walking distance of the River Thames and the Thames Barrier, if only to admire the views of Canary Wharf and the Millennium Dome. The lawn would be about 100 x 50 yards and have seating around the edge for all my friends. About 27,111 should do it.
Goth, female menopause is more like a stop button than a pause button. The only electrical appliance of interest is the thermostat. But at least women don't go out and buy themselves a motorbike and start dressing like someone half their age.
Gambo, is that all the Valley holds these days? A poor show after once being the biggest ground in the country. Would you settle for that nice Jacobean mansion at the top of Church Lane? I still have a sketch of Charlton House on my wall. I spent more of my youth in the library annexe than on the terraces.
Oh Daphne, you do stir memories. Did you know in a fit of cost-cutting in 1991 the council decided that Charlton residents no longer read books, and closed the library. After an outcry, a much smaller one was reluctantly opened at the other end of Charlton House, in the old Chapel.
I spent many cold wind swept days playing rugby for Shooters Hill Grammar in Hornfair Park, which used to be part of the grounds of the old Manor. No doubt you lusted after us through the library window!!
A Jamaican friend of mine went husband hunting the way you'd shop for a house or car. She even checked out fella's background, any gossip, hidden children.
Gambo, a Shooters Hill old boy! My Uncle (who reads this blog) was there back in the 1930's with Frankie Howerd. I used to know a few nice lads from your old alma mater, invited them to my 14th birthday party but the Valley Skins got there first and threw them out. I do hope you weren't one of them.
GG, welcome back. I wish I'd had your friend's good sense. I only found out about Harold and the regimental goat when it was too late.
That reminds me of one of the only bits of poetry my old dad knew:
Oh Grenadier do not gloat,
It was not you who shagged the goat;
It was the Coldstream, so supreme
Who shagged the goat on Purbright green.
Would I be correct in assuming that Harold was the Coldstreamer in question?
Gambo, this is for you - a love poem.
Bertie Mee said to Bill Shankly
Have you heard of the North Bank, Highbury?
Shanks said no, I don't think so,
But I've heard of the Charlton Boot Boys.
Lynx, Harold was in that regiment I can't name, but if I tell you they wear women's underwear I won't be breaching the Official Secrets Act.
The weather is superb, the dew made pearls ( le caleçon c’est une blague ! mais pas la lessive )
i'm besotted
The Taj Mahal can't be any one's apartment, I suppose, being the mausoleum that it is. :D
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