Today, by no means as a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that
my hostess is an incomprehensible hag with vinegar on her tongue and sand in
her crevices, I began searching for an apartment. I’m not looking for anything
fancy, just a place to plant the flag, put my feet up and watch David Attenborough
(not Jacques Costeau, get bored of all the water, what about the other animals
Jack, you water Nazi? Fascism runs in the family, clearly. Although at least Pierre,
who was somewhere while Jacques fannied about, kept it quiet. Bloody Richard Attenborough
was everywhere, living off his brother’s fame. What did he ever do except play
Santa?).
But it seems my moderate aspirations are the insane delusions
of a feckless dreamer. For the average London price here you would barely get
enough room for a cat, let alone to swing one. The cat would also possibly
need to sublet. The first place I visited had an entire kitchen painted by a
backwards 5 year old and the man I thought was the landlord was in fact aiming
to be my future roommate; the tour of the flat took roughly 11 steps and I was
quick to hot foot it once I realised I was paying for a fold out camping stool
to lie on in the corner of this man’s bedroom. I’m surprised it didn’t have a
bowl next to it. I am the cat who sleeps by himself, thank you very much.
The next joint seemed better but the fellow was rather
shifty and it turns out he’s subletting a subletted sublet, the mind boggles; You’re waiting for a train.. Well
listen, I told him, I’m not here to be jollied around just to have the real
landlord turn up and throw me out on my ear. You can play no pranks with
Skimbleshanks. I marched out once again but truth be told the whole affair was beginning
to get to me rather. Doesn’t help that you can’t just pop into a place and get
some tea, it’s all café au lait if you s’il vous plait; coffee is so…so…self-righteous,
don’t you think? I’m not wholly against the stuff it’s just that tea should be
the bread and butter drink and the fact that it’s like a rare novelty over here
frankly takes the biscuit.
At the final place of the day, I found myself being interviewed
by a smug Swiss girl who, in all her attempted kooky charm, took great pains to
explain to me how she’d made her dress herself. It looked like she’d glued bits
of curtain to her very recently jettisoned training bra. I matched the inanity
of her questions with a disinterested vagueness and I think she mistook this for
philosophical chic; by god she was cracking onto me by the end of it, flexing
her new found puberty right in my bloody face. I escaped, for the third time
that day, by a whisker.
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