Apparently this has been the wettest winter in 200 years. I’ve certainly been migraining more or less solidly since the August Bank Holiday, and the past couple of days of sunshine have been a welcome respite.
When I surface I take a look around at what is going on and hope to God there’s nothing I need to have done, need to be doing, should have done, ought to have done…
Yesterday I did a bit of paperwork. Not very exciting, but also, pleasingly, nothing too terrifying came to light.
In homing pigeon news, you may remember I’ve been trying to swap flats for the past several months. I fancied a move to Brighton, but it is so hard to get a bite. I tried to juggle a three way swap or two, but it really wasn’t happening, so I’ve gone back to my roots (or, you know, one of my roots) with a swap to Old St.
Home again, home again… jiggity jig.
As they say in Blade Runner.
It’s good because the location has a precise set of qualities. It’s not in the crazy of Hoxton etc, but it is walking distance to it, it’s central, but being just north of City, also quiet, and AND and it’s about 100 yards to the nearest swimming pool, the famous, and infamous, Ironmonger Row baths.
It is not an utter done deal, but both my swapee and I have filled in our respective forms and handed them in to our local authorities. Now we have to wait. They will want to come round and inspect, but there’s nothing for them to see in either flat, so unless something unforeseen happens, I will be moving early/mid April.
It’s not the same as Brighton, but it’s not a bad second best. And if and when I want to turn around again I will have a good bargaining chip of a flat. I’d have thought the Tottenham Riviera would be a good swap for a person from not London who needs to live in London but doesn’t want to be in it… but it seems that’s not how it works. When people move to London they largely want central.
So be it.
But in the meantime, my plan is to get swimming and lose the astounding TEN KILOS I have put on since moving here. And recover some aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness is kind of shit value because you have to keep it up, but living five floors up without a lift ought to do that on it’s own, so that’s a bargain right there.
Poppet, of course, won’t have the wonderland of bread to eat – the buffet laid out by the bird feeding public on the towpath – so she should become more svelte as well.
Only thing is, I want to get on with it now. I am itching to start filling boxes.
Elaine Axten - Writer 
I hope the switch goes through, and the weather cooperates enough so that throwing stuff into boxes..er packing…goes smoothly! Fingers crossed!
Thank you!
Yes… I JUST WANT TO PACK NOW though… *twiddles thumbs*
who saw the Nosferatu fingers coming out of the first picture? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NosferatuShadow.jpg
You did, you did!
I’ve meant to ask for a while, what does “swapping flats” involve? Being a New Yorker, I have no idea what it means to swap apartments with someone, why it has to be approved via inspection, and so on. Here we search for apartments without swapping with someone else.
Private rentals are the same here, but I live in public housing, which unless you do something to invalidate your lease means it’s possible to swap with someone else in public housing. These can be council owned or housing association. They are unfurnished and usually low rent. It was technically possible to do this pre internet, but as you might imagine, it’s now possible to look online and see photos uploaded by the tenant. This has led to some people really getting into staging their properties as if it was a market, but it is illegal to offer cash. Sometimes people use it to move cities, you can also go up or down a room. I am getting a more central two bed for a one bed with a garden. This is what I am giving up, so you can see, I had something to bargain with http://tottenhamriviera.tumblr.com
That’s wonderful how people can do that! I’ve never lived in public housing, so that may be possible here, too. Thanks for explaining.
The internet makes so many things so much more convenient.
It does. I remember going to the council offices to look at swapping, years ago, and all the swaps were in a binder. No photos, no real information except the address. Sometimes you’d see that there were two people hoping for a swap with what was obviously a problem neighbour in between! If you needed to swap cities I suppose you could have used it, but for just getting a place you’d prefer it was far too much like hard work. Even for moving cities, you probably wouldn’t use it, since it was easier then to get a transfer (housing associations and councils would make some sort of allowance for people needing to move for work or whatever, and would often offer you something in a quid pro quo arrangement with the other organisation). IDK if you even *could* get a transfer, now, because they’d probably just direct you to the swapping site.