I can't believe that three months have gone by since my last post and I am STILL no closer to snaring a property. Because 'snaring' is what it feels like. I feel I am a cowgirl in an urban jungle, racing around whirling my lasso in the hope that I will at last entrap some bricks and mortar.
I have had one or two in my grasp. Two weeks ago, I made a trip to East Finchley and viewed three properties. One was a top floor two-bedder in a purpose-built block far up the high street, almost by the North Circular but not within hearing distance. The flat was in a nice little modern enclave, neatly planted with shrubs and well-kept. The communal garden was an exposed patch of land, like a field. There wasn't a tree or a bench or a shady corner. I couldn't imagine sprawling on the grass with a book while the sun beat down on me - then remembering I had left my phone in my flat on the top floor.
It had electric heating. No radiators to dry one's clothes over. No room for a tumble dryer in the very small kitchen. Only one cupboard, most of which was taken up by a large hot water cylinder. It had a loft for storage, but I couldn't imagine myself scrambling up into it every time I wanted my art equipment, or a coat. For that was another thing. No built-in wardrobes. No room for a coat and shoe cupboard in the narrow hallway. It was just too... minimalist.
Flat number two was an even more modern one in Lancaster Road, even closer to the North Circular. The route to it was down an unkempt street full of litter. The apartment had been rented out and it had an air of impermanence, like a holiday flat. The tiny balcony faced east and held a pot in which one poor, wind-blasted plant was doing its best to survive, bent double like a poor old withered crone with osteoporosis. The view was uninspiring, over a weedy concrete wasteland. You could hear the North Circ traffic. It made me feel utterly depressed and I was glad to climb back into the agent's car and leave it behind.
Property 3 was a ground floor flat in a purpose built block on East End Road. The rooms were all good sizes, apart from yet another poky kitchen, but the room I would have had to work in had traffic flashing past the window. I couldn't have sat there writing book chapters, losing myself in an imaginary word, while the corner of my eye was picking up flashes from wing mirrors and reflections from windscreens and the gawping faces of passengers on the 143 bus.
There was an odd thing about that flat, I call it 'the case of the missing door'. I distinctly remember that there was a door from either the living room or the main bedroom which led directly out onto the communal garden, which was well-tended and leafy. I had imagined myself placing a planter on either side of the door, with a couple of lavender bushes in them to attract passing butterflies. Yet, even though I have studied the floor plan and photos on the agents' website with a forensic eye, I can see no sign of that door.
Did I imagine it? Or did I just hope there was one? Or was my soul trying to tell me I couldn't live anywhere where I couldn't walk out into a garden?
At the back of my mind, a project had been lurking. A pretty amazing but very scruffy house close to where I am living now. Five minutes from the tube, but impossible to park. Not that that would have worried me, as I don't drive, but I do have visitors... and I would have needed builders with white vans! I kept putting off making an offer but this morning, sitting in this room with my paltry electric radiator switched up to max and the temperature struggling to reach 59 degrees F (and it's not even winter yet and last December, I ended up in hospital with pneumonia), I made the decision. I would buy it and live in it without doing any work until the Spring, but be warm and happy, mistress of my own boiler.
I reached for the phone and made the call.
The house had gone.
