Send My Conscience Home in a Taxi

Hey, time for some real news. After four years and eight months, I'm moving out of this flat of mine - the famed Batchelor Pad.

As mentioned previously, me and my extremely silly girlfriend are moving in together.

I moved in here back in February of 2005(!), when I was breaking up with my then fiancée. I'd moved in with her - first time I'd ever lived with a partner - down in the southern suburbs. North Caulfield in fact. The southern suburbs didn't take, nor did the engagement for that matter!

So I needed a place, rather quickly, to move to. The rental market then wasn't as fucked as it is now, and I found this place on the internet on a Sunday, viewed it on the Monday, and then rented it on the Tuesday!

I always thought of this place as being temporary, until I found another partner and got on with my life. But... it didn't quite work that way. This is in fact the longest I've lived in one place since I moved out of home in 1993.

And of course who can forget the ill-advised two and a half year relationship with a certain bassoonist - that didn't really help the plan along.

Anyway, I've moved all my books, my stereo and various other random shit to the new place. I'll be out of here finally just after my birthday.

Lets see. Saturday I... OK, the early onset Alzheimer's is kicking in here... What the fuck did I do on Saturday? *gets out nerdphone/diary*

OK! In the morning we quickly looked at a house in Brunswick, although it was so far north it was about 20 metres from Coburg. Nice place, big bedrooms, new appliances. But only one bathroom, and the more I thought about the commute from there to my new office on St. Kilda Road, the less I liked the idea. It looked good mostly because it was available and they liked us... I'm prepared to be a bit fussy.

(Rent's have got "interesting" of late. When I shared in Northcote in 2000-2004, my rent was a bit over $400 a month. Then I moved into a two bedroom place with the then Fiance, and my rent was about $600 a month. When I moved from there to my current place, my rent was about $800 (it's gone up a bit since.) Now we're looking at three bedroom places to share, my rent is likely to be in the $680-700 region... Which is an increase of, what, about 75% per room over about four years... Something is well wrong here, maybe I should just buy a place! Or be a bit less fussy, but then, I don't want to move into somewhere which is worse than my flat...)

Saturday arvo I took my mother out to visit my grandmother (my father's mother, not hers) out in Doncaster. My grandmother is a bit deaf and a bit vague, but heck she's 96 so we can't complain!

Lets see, what else did I do? Ah, that's right, Deb and I went to a great housewarming in Ascot Vale. The house itself was cool - it was on an oddly shaped block, so some of the rooms were triangular! Like the little study, and the laundry and the bathroom. There was also a vaguely trapezoid pantry/room which was almost as big at the kitchen. Deb and I decided it was the coolest room in the house, so we decided to hang out in it.

The best part of the party - they fed us! I had ace soup and various other tasty treats. Which was nice since I hadn't had dinner.

Then we played table tennis on a hopelessly warped table tennis table, and discovered that we're both really really shit at table tennis! I also got to see some amusing family bickering between one of the housemates, her sister and her brother. I teased them all about that.

Deb was a bit grumpy, which is a change from her usual constantly chirpy mood. I thought it was actually good to see her in a different mood. And when I say grumpy, it was like seeing a hungry kitten! Kinda cute grumpy!

I think that was all I did on Saturday. Too damn busy!!!

Hey all... As you'll probably notice I blog in bursts when I have the time. I have the time, so expect a bunch of posts...

Once and former housemates Barbara, Richard and I are giving up looking till early January now. You might recall a few weeks back we found a great house just down the road from my current flat. We didn't get it, but it's still available... I gave them a call today - the idiots who own the place wanted a couple apparently. Damn it, Barbara and I should have pretended to be a couple for the sake of this! It was that good a house!!! Ewgh.

Anyway, I made my case again. I could, if I had to, sign a lease on Monday. The people living there now are moving no matter what, and breaking their lease, so they're quite happy to argue our case. We'll have to wait and see...

In the mean time, we have seen some EXTRAORDINARY SHIT HOLES.... Last weekend was a particularly fine one for seeing houses no human would possibly live in.

Exhibit A: A three bedroom flat in a converted warehouse in Collingwood. Looked good on paper... It got weird as soon as we walked in. The large main living area has a tiny triangular kitchen wedged in behind the front door. The was a bathroom behind it, which had a step cut into it so the door could open - the rest of the room was at a slightly higher level. Behind that a strange little rectangular room/cupboard which contained nothing but a large hot water heater. Beyond that, there was a "bedroom", which was tiny, had a step down into it, and widows which didn't open.

Upstairs was even weirder. The main "Bedroom" was an irregular shape, and had a kind of internal balcony which looked down on the living room. There was no windows, doors or partitions between it and the other area, hence no privacy whatsoever. Then we found a kind of - what do you call a hole in a floor that looks down on another area? - that looked down right onto the front door again with no glass or anything. You could sit in the bedroom and drop things on people's heads as they came in the door! The upstairs bathroom had a spa in it... There was another bedroom, down the back, the only thing I can remember about it was the skylight...

They wanted $550 a week for this piece of shit...

Exhibit B: Possibly the worst house I've ever seen - and I've seen some dives - in my house renting days. It looked fine in the pictures... The son of the dude who owned it turned up in a clapped out car still holding his mug of coffee...

Where to begin... this place looked like it was built in the 1920's. It had a lovely curved art deco exterior, for example. And, despite some additions out the back, didn't look like it had been renovated since!!! There was some really odd "period" features, such as an ancient AM radio built into a bookcase in the living room, some utterly bizarre light fixtures - sculpted from plaster - hanging from several ceilings. The kitchen and its hideous tiles dated from the seventies, about the only good thing about it being the cool retro wall-mounted dial telephone.

Now we move on to the smell... This place stank of damp. Most of the walls had yellow stains on them, starting at the carpet. The carpet had also seen better days, I think they'd attempted to steam clean it but it was still an interesting shade of brown in parts. And somewhat uneven. There was an ugly brick extension out the back in the overgrown back garden...

The guy said no one had lived there in two years... And no one will be living there any time soon, I can tell ya that mate! No matter what rent they're asking! Some of the other people looking at the place were openly laughing about it, and pointing out some of the more bizarre features to us and to each other. I can't believe they really expect to rent the place to anyone, ever. There'd probably be some mad keen renovator out there who'd drool over it if it ws for sale, but... Damn!!!

We shall have to keep looking...

Today I went and looked at a house for rent in Brunswick.

This is part of what I saw when I got there:

( Cut for scariness! )