news
I have a new job. I start in 2 weeks. I'm by turns terrified and thrilled.
Hubby dearest is in Turkey for a week. My new job is party so thrilling because it will involve me travelling abroad (and not just sitting at home being a wifey poo, waiting to hear the beloved footsteps on the stairs.) However, hubby has trumped me, and gone off to an on-my-list place (Istanbul), while I serve out my work notice period balefully and unproductively.
I've been house hunting with a vengeance. If I have to make conversation with another estate agent, or see another shockingly crap quality property, or try to reconcile myself to a horrible kitchen because the bedroom has storage space, I shall scream. It turns out there's a reason why I've lived on or just off Fulham Palace Road for the last three and a half years - it's bloody nice. Homes are liveable, the river side is walkable, and food is run-out-and-grab-able. However now it seems prices are no longer affordable. So I've expanded my area of search to Baron's Court and West Kensington in the north, to Upper Richmond Road in the south.
I've also realised I don't like carpeting.
And at the end of the day, even if I find the perfect property (actually did, yesterday, and can't have it), it won't be mine. I'll be paying someone through my nose for the privelege of calling it home for a little while. And that won't mean much. As soon as the owner feels like flogging it off, or the UK government decides it doesn't want to renew my residence permit, I'll be cast out of my cosy future flat, of Fulham, of London, of Britain. Because I never really belonged. Even as I search for the perfect rental property, there's a sense of impending displacement. It's as if I can never stop looking, stop moving, backpack on my back, bean bag dragging in the dust. I can never settle down, because even as I picture myself making dal and sipping red wine on the quaint balcony outside a green tiled kitchen in a pretty fulham first floor flat, there are other forces slowly loosening my hold on the life I've adopted, prising me off, one finger at a time, from this thing I prize so much - my South West London Lifestyle.
I have no idea who this post is addressed to. They all usually are, either to friends, people who know me, or sometimes deliberately to people who don't know me, and often to myself. This one, I dunno. I dedicate it to the sweet and flustered, clearly wet behind the ears Foxton's agent in Putney, who once wanted to be an economist.
Hubby dearest is in Turkey for a week. My new job is party so thrilling because it will involve me travelling abroad (and not just sitting at home being a wifey poo, waiting to hear the beloved footsteps on the stairs.) However, hubby has trumped me, and gone off to an on-my-list place (Istanbul), while I serve out my work notice period balefully and unproductively.
I've been house hunting with a vengeance. If I have to make conversation with another estate agent, or see another shockingly crap quality property, or try to reconcile myself to a horrible kitchen because the bedroom has storage space, I shall scream. It turns out there's a reason why I've lived on or just off Fulham Palace Road for the last three and a half years - it's bloody nice. Homes are liveable, the river side is walkable, and food is run-out-and-grab-able. However now it seems prices are no longer affordable. So I've expanded my area of search to Baron's Court and West Kensington in the north, to Upper Richmond Road in the south.
I've also realised I don't like carpeting.
And at the end of the day, even if I find the perfect property (actually did, yesterday, and can't have it), it won't be mine. I'll be paying someone through my nose for the privelege of calling it home for a little while. And that won't mean much. As soon as the owner feels like flogging it off, or the UK government decides it doesn't want to renew my residence permit, I'll be cast out of my cosy future flat, of Fulham, of London, of Britain. Because I never really belonged. Even as I search for the perfect rental property, there's a sense of impending displacement. It's as if I can never stop looking, stop moving, backpack on my back, bean bag dragging in the dust. I can never settle down, because even as I picture myself making dal and sipping red wine on the quaint balcony outside a green tiled kitchen in a pretty fulham first floor flat, there are other forces slowly loosening my hold on the life I've adopted, prising me off, one finger at a time, from this thing I prize so much - my South West London Lifestyle.
I have no idea who this post is addressed to. They all usually are, either to friends, people who know me, or sometimes deliberately to people who don't know me, and often to myself. This one, I dunno. I dedicate it to the sweet and flustered, clearly wet behind the ears Foxton's agent in Putney, who once wanted to be an economist.
Comments
hope the new job brings the satisfaction you have been seeking. and may there be rootedness in all that globe trotting :-)
- busybee.