Yesterday I mastered fire. Dear Diary! No longer will the superior abilites of Neanderthal man mock me so fervently.
Since acquiring this skill, I’ve watched far less television: the fire demands constant attention and is far more interesting to watch than Torchwood anyway. It seems as though the conveniences of central heating and gas fires developed in order for people to have more time to lay on their fat arses and watch the disgusting rubbish that the babble machine churns out. The Glass Teat undoubtedly distracts us from more natural and amazing things. Don’t watch that, watch this! I’m tempted more and more each day to move forward with my Walden IV plans, though I imagine that when things such as fire-lighting and the growing of vegetables are matters of survival that they become far less novel and wonderous.
“Soon my pet; Soon I will feed you the world!”
Our landlord is a big fat spacker. A couple of weeks ago, we heard via our letting agent that he is liquidising one of his other Glasgow properties. By this I do not mean he’s blending it up with some fruit and icecubes with the intent of drinking it in a fashion akin to that bloke who wanted to eat a Boeing 747. I don’t think this guy is capable of loving anything fullstop let alone an inanimate object to the point of wanting to ingest it. Rather I mean that he’s getting rid of his other property and as a result we’re inheriting some of his better items of furniture. At first we thought this would be fantastic as some of the furniture in our little loft conversion has certainly seen better days. We’ve always enjoyed the Bohemian charm of our shabby tables and chairs but we agreed that it would certainly be of practical and aesthetic advantage to replace some of it with any better stuff that might be going.
So we said that a new kettle and toaster would be nice (we previously had no toaster and the electric kettle was somewhat inefficient) and that we’d take a replacement sofa if the letting agents didn’t mind arranging for a van to collect and deliver. The landlord and the letting agents seemed to be happy with our requests and so things fell into motion.
A couple of days after making the initial requests and arrangements, we received a call from the agents telling us that the landlord had two sofas which were undoubtedly of a better quality to what was currently in place in our loft and that he would like us to have them both.
But there’s no room, of course. It’s a tiny flat and the positioning of furniture is dictated by where the walls slope in (with the shape of the roof), where window nooks exist and where the various wall-mounted heaters are positioned. Two sofas would be impossible to get in.
But the landlord insists that we take them. It’s his property we’re renting and it’s his sofas we’re talking about, you see.
It is at this point in the story I would like to mention that the landlord lives in New Zealand. Yes, he’s on the other side of the planet with no idea how strapped for space we are and no idea as to the condition of his sofas. He’s insane.
The condition of the sofas is the other problem. They’re fairly filthy and even after a day spent laundering the covers, it seems that I am allergic to the sodding things. I strongly suspect that the previous renter of the sofas was a dog owner. So all night I wheeze away, struggling to sleep and all day I continue to wheeze, unable to get any work done.
We spend a further day moving furniture around in order to try to accomodate the two massive sofas. We’ve now got them to almost fit but it still looks rubbish. It is difficult to get into the kitchen and one sofa is uncomfortably close to the aforementioned coal fire meaning that (a) it’s a fire hazard and (b) the sofas are white and will surely become covered in soot. I should also mention the clause in the contract which forbids us to move furniture around or else risk losing a portion of our deposit. And yet we had to move almost everything in order to accomodate these fucking things.
Yesterday we had a guy over from the letting agents (the owner no less) to see the current state of things and to whom we would explain our various concerns. I explained about my allergies, the kitchen being blocked, the fire hazard, the soot, the aesthetic and ergonomic crapness of it all, the fact that this was not what we’d signed up to and the fact that we’ve lost two days accommodating this nonsense. The guy didn’t really accept my arguments, instead commenting upon what a lovely flat this is and how nice we’d got it. A real charmer, he was.
So we’re looking for a new home. Which sucks, as we were both extremely happy with out little loft before this fucking sofa came along. Our first viewing of another flat is tomorrow afternoon.