The Other Side of Hell

Three weeks ago my family moved to a new home and how happy we are to have gotten away from the previous flat, previous landlord and previous lettings agents. In my old blog I alluded to problems, and although I have tried to focus away from them more in this blog, I think the whole story deserves a post to itself; especially now we have received our deposit back and no longer have any ties to the place.

In began really in April 2012 (more than eighteen months ago now incredibly), when we discovered water leaking into our bedroom and wetting the carpet. A plumber was called around after a couple of days and the problem was found to be a leak from the shower cubicle and it was arranged that work would be done to fix it in early May whilst we were away in Sweden sorting out details for our forthcoming wedding.

We didn't know it at the time but our landlord himself attempted the fix - a man who I wouldn't have described as "handy" beforehand, let alone afterwards.

We thought that was the matter dealt with and continued on to our wedding, honeymoon and afterwards without any premonition of what was to come. At the end of August 2012 however we had a knock on the door from our neighbour in the flat below complaining that water was coming from our flat and into his. I duly went down with him and it was indeed pouring in. We called the landlord, who from now on I will call 'S'.

In his usual way S gave us a contact number so that we actually arranged from someone to look at it, and wouldn't even have seen it for himself if it wasn't for my wife's insistence that this was actually something quite serious. He had to check in his diary. Nevertheless in early September an inspection was made, and the conclusion: water leaking from the shower cubicle, bathroom floor rotten and moldy, damp and mold between the two layers of linoleum on the bathroom floor and the possibility of dry rot.

In brief it then took more than two months for any work to start. In order to allow us to stay in the flat and to be able to wash, some plastic sheeting was put up, but mold began to grow and after a few weeks it looked like this:

 While the rest of the bathroom looked like this:

During this time the S failed to give reasonable notice of coming around either for quotes or to 'drop something off', he also failed to take the threat to health of the mold seriously, despite my wife being both asthmatic and pregnant. [Her pregnancy notes would later say that she was exposed to a toxic substance for two months].

The bathroom constantly stank like an old garden shed, my wife developed a nasty asthma cough, something she hasn't had for years, and I developed headaches and nausea. The smell eventually started creeping into the bedroom and we had to move the mattress into the living room otherwise we couldn't sleep. We asked S if we could move out, his response: "If you want to default on the contract it needs to be discussed."

We should probably have pressed the matter of his failure to make repairs further at the time, but even after calling Shelter and the council's Environmental Health Department all they could say was that for no date to be yet set for work to start was 'arguably' too long, but they could do nothing since the landlord was "technically doing something". It did have the desired effect however and work was begun on the problem within a week.

However, when we returned two weeks later, the professional clean promised by the landlord hadn't happened and neither did our shower work. We also found exposed wiring, a kitkat wrapper discarded on our bed, and the following newspaper placed under some of our own belongings in the bookcase:

This was the exposed wiring in the bathroom:

Our own hoover had been used by the builders to clear up some of their dust, without our permission I might add.

We complained of course, and the builders returned the next day to deal with the shower which had an air lock. However S claimed that the mold build-up had been due to our lack of cleaning, which he proved by claiming that he had also seen hair in the shower and some coffee stains in our bin. Our feelings of sickness he put down to dust mites. Oh and he couldn't believe that we would be offended by a national newspaper being left in our bookcase.

He made no comment to our response that cleaning the shower would only have resulted in further water leaks into the flat below, and that it would have been an odd coincidence for dust mites to have affected us only when there was mold in the flat and not at any other time. We did however hope that it would be an end to the matter, but then the ineptitude of the builders he had hired, which first showed itself in not checking for an airlock in the shower, manifested itself once more.

Three weeks later the new hot water tank stopped working. We had no hot water. After two days one of the original contractors got it going again, claiming it had tripped because we had both economy 7 thermostats on at the same time. Two days later it stopped again and we knew for certain this time that it was nothing that we had done. S still blamed us however and we had to wait a further three weeks (over christmas and new year) without hot water for anyone to come again.

This time a different electrician came, took one look and proclaimed that the thermostats had been set too high. The industry standard, he told us, is 60 degrees; these were set at 80 degrees and it was no wonder they had tripped out. He reset them, but no apology from S was forthcoming. Immediately following the water warming enough for us to be able to shower, a new problem showed itself.

This time we had no cold water coming into the shower. Even on it's lowest setting the water came out quite hot and it took the landlord six weeks to get anyone around to fix it. When one of the original contractors finally came around, he took off the shower casing and a load of gunk washed out. According to people with plumbing knowledge in the family this was probably due to the contractors not washing the pipes through properly when they refitted the shower.

Again we hoped this would be the end but sadly two months later the shower started giving off burning smells. This time a different plumber came around and after a check said that it had been damaged during fitting and that it would have to be completely replaced. S's only statement was that believed the bathroom to be jinxed. I believed him in the sense that it was because he owned it.

When this was finally fixed it had been more than a full year since the original water leak. If S had fixed it properly then it's unlikely the rest of the problems would have followed. It's cost him more money in the process but more importantly for the last eighteen months the place where we were living no longer felt like our home. We have felt stressed, trapped and desperate to get away; not ideal circumstances for having a baby.

But now we are away and we feel much more relaxed and even have a little garden. I have learnt a lot, and know now that I have to be up front with my expectations rather than trusting that someone will do the right thing.

In the long run though, with the amount of people renting these days there has to be some change in the law to force landlords to do more than the minimum possible to ensure that people do not have to put up with poor living arrangements which the landlords themselves would not put up with. We have come through it, through to the other side of Hell; others may not be so lucky.

The right words?

It's a hard thing to try explaining, that mild depressing feeling every time you walk out of the door in the morning and toddle off to work. That goodbye at the door, or above the cot, that knowledge that something new will happen today and you will miss it, forever left without it but to be cherished by another.
There's guilt in there, that your wife or partner is left alone to deal with the nappies and the crying and the feeding and you're not there to give them a hand. It no longer feels like a partnership, it feels like two planets orbiting the same tiny ray of sunshine. Occasionally gravity will brush them close together but usually they're trapped in their own patch of lonely space. "You do that job, I'll do this job. When you come home you can hold her while I do this". "We" seems more and more a word that is only assigned to Royals.
And then there's the sadness, the sense of missing out, of losing those precious moments to bond while they're still getting use to the world. And not just with the baby but with your partner too. Often the evenings would be times to hug together but now there's something in the way and you know they feel the same way too but both are just as helpless as an infant.
Oh yes there are moments, there are weekends for a start, although they are mostly for regathering energy. Plus there is still the food shopping, the cooking for the following week, the cleaning for which there is no longer any time in the week...Oh yes there are the evenings, where babies, much like adults, are not quite at their best. They are tired and cranky and aren't really up for peek-a-boo. They just want to feed and cry and sleep and wind down for the night to be brighter rising the following day....And oh yes there are mornings, grabbed between a scurried look at the clock and a mouthful of breakfast, yoghurt in your beard, getting yourself ready for the demands of another day away from home.
Maybe I am complaining, or maybe these aren't quite the right words to express how I feel as a father, trapped in the expectations of being male and going off to work. How dearly I would love to have a few months to get used to having a new identity. The most scary thing is that when I am at work I forget what I have at home. Not because work is so engrossing, but that it allows me to spend so much more time in my old life that the new one just feels like a dream.
I don't want it to be a dream, I want it to be a constant, living reality. I want more time with my family.

Fathers Day

After being overdone for two weeks, finally little Freja was born on 7 June; and gorgeous she is too. I always thought that all babies looked the same until I had one of my own. Maybe that's how it works? Anyway, all three of us are beginning to get used to living with each other, albeit with differing sleeping patterns and I think that she has already realised that she is the one in charge.

People have asked me how it feels to have become a dad, but to be honest I don't think it has sunk in yet; maybe I'll work it out when she starts asking for money to go the cinema with some boy from school. Or maybe it'll hit me in the middle of the night while changing a dirty nappy. As long as it's not the dirty nappy that's hitting me!

So, here she is and maybe sometime soon I'll be able to get back to proper blogging.

Index Linked

Well, those Walpurgis embers glowed a lot longer than I expected, and we're still awaiting the birth of the baby.

Although the due date isn't until Friday, so lots of time to go yet...anyone who hasn't yet had a go fancy having a guess at the due date, weight and gender?

With the recent news that MP's might soon be voting themselves a £10k pay rise, or at least considering it (obviously we're not all in this together quite as much as they liked to make out), it made me think that perhaps there could be a way of us all being in this together and that is index-linking pensions, benefits and minimum wage etc to MP's pay. That way, every time they get a bit more, so do we (well not me exactly, but those who really need it). Something to think about when we finally create our egalitarian society at least.

One of the reason's I've been off a little longer is because of something I've been working on for the past few weeks and that is a Premiership Entertainment Index (PEI for short) and you can find a link to the blog where it's documented at the top of this page.

As a nerd for numbers and statistics generally it's been something I've been thinking about for a while before putting it into fruition. So if you're curious about numbers and football, it might be worth a little look.

Easter Structures

Happy Easter to everyone, and since the clocks went forward last night, I guess its a Happy Spring too...not that it feels like it at the moment.

In the past week I have been reading Scarlett Thomas’ book ‘Monkeys with Typewriters’, subtitled ‘How to write fiction and unlock the secret power of stories’. So far its very interesting, and also very useful too. Having been on a couple of writing courses in the past I’ve never had too much enjoyment out of them, probably because they dwelt too much on ideas and writing itself. These are things I’ve never had too much trouble with. Ideas zoom in and out of my head all day and writing a sentence is fairly straightfoward.

But the biggest problem I have always had is with structure and how to fit all the various ideas and sentences together. Scarlett Thomas’ book dwells much more on these theories, at least in the early passages that I’ve read so far. For me this is exactly what I needed, the bare bones and skeletons from which to hang the flesh of inspiration. I seriously hope this will help my writing in future and not be another one of those false dawns of excitement that lead to nothing but crumpled papers and a deletable word file.

For now it makes me wonder what type of plot the Easter story is: Is it rags to riches; carpenter’s son becomes son of God and the leader’s right hand man? Is it a voyage; man journey’s from life into death and returns three days later? Or is possibly modern realisim; man is charged with incitement of terrorism and is sentenced to death? Either way, its intriguing.

It’s now been three months since I began my new blog, and I’m very satisfied with how I’ve been keeping it up on a regular basis (unlike my last one). I feel I have more things to say, partly because I gave it a little bit of structure before I started (it’s obviously something I need).

But other demands are coming upon me more and more, and I want to begin to work on some things a little more privately too for a little while. So I will be taking the month of April off from this blog. I still plan to be tweeting, so you can follow me there and see what might be going on. I promise that I will be back though before the Walpurgis embers stop glowing!

Walls

I read a story recently which said that the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall was under threat of being demolished. It seems that the land had been sold to a construction company and now they want to knock it down in order to build luxury flats. To be honest I was a little shocked. I had always considered that Germany had a pretty good grip on looking after its history and I hope that the recent protests are enough to allow a halt to these works.

It would be incredible to think that if these flats were built there would be no memorial of the chilling period in history where a city was physically divided. No matter how many photographs you see, or museum exhibits you encounter, nothing brings the brutal truth home to you than standing next to it and looking up. Imagining friends and relatives on the other side and yet you can’t even reach to the top of it. Even if you could, and you could sit astride it, all you would see is barbed wire, gun emplacements and roving attack dogs. It has only been a quarter of a century since it was still in use and definitely needs to stay in place for at least another quarter century as a stark reminder to what mankind is capable of.

On another note, I dragged my very pregnant wife out on a walk into the woods at Abbey Wood at the weekend. It was rainy and very wet, with sticky and slippery mud in places, but it was still good to get out amongst a bit of nature; to hear birds singing and woodpeckers pecking, and also squirrels amongst a more natural habitat rather than that of roofs and aerials (ironically as we neared home again we saw a very excited looking squirrel carrying a small muffin in its mouth!)

It may seem obvious to some of you that Abbey Wood may be so named because of an Abbey, but it is not quite so obvious that the ruins of Lesnes Abbey are very close by, and after a somewhat circular walk through the trees we came out upon them. The weather and the season being what they were there was barely anyone else about, barring a couple of dog walkers we were alone there. And how wonderful that was!

When you live in the middle of the city, with a busy A-road stuttering past your house, it is almost impossible to find some space alone. And yet here it was; a small nirvana on the outside of the city. It would be impossible not to draw some connection to the centre of contemplation that it once would have been, and not difficult either to gauge the grandeur from the ruined walls that remain. It was beautiful and I think for a while to come, if I need to clear my head a little, I will just imagine myself back there.

I can’t go without mentioning the rugby, and Wales’ historic victory over England in Cardiff. It was their best win since 1905 over them and the first time that they have retained the Five/Six Nations trophy since 1979; and what a resounding victory it was!

The most fascinating thing was how outclassed they were in the first match against Ireland, when after 42 minutes play they had conceded their third try and were 30-3 down. Roll on six weeks and they beat England by that same margin and in the process of winning the championship had not conceded another try. For almost six hours French, then Italian, Scottish and finally English waves of attack tried to breach that red wall of Welshmen – but failed.

It won’t be remembered as a particularly exciting tournament sadly. The total number of tries scored was less than half that of the 2000 competition and the problems of the scrum recur again and again. But it will be remembered in Wales for that incredible victory against England and for the even more incredible turnaround from the opening match.

Cots and All

Apologies to some of you; I used to get a bit bored about people talking about babies and all the stuff that comes with them before I was to become a father, but I will be talking a little about baby stuff today.

Our most pressing agenda recently has been cots. Ideally we would have gone for something that was made with ecologically sourced wood, as well as using nasty’s-free lacquer’s and glues. Sadly, such luxuries are well out of our price range and so we’ve had to settle for something from Ikea. We ordered it this week, and so will hopefully receive it next week. The whole thing is starting to feel much more real now.

However, we will be going for something much more organic when it comes to mattresses.

My wife has also almost finished making a baby blanket, which has now been quilted, but is just missing some binding for around the edge. The handmade patchwork side of it can be seen at her own blog Confessions…

She has also been busy making baby toys, including some extremely cute stuffed animals. I think that the baby is going to end up with more toys than me before it’s even born! But for a while I’ll get to play with them myself.

My hormonal fits have been starting to wear off I’m glad to say, I’ve not been feeling too up and down this week, just a little tired instead. I have some days off work next week and am looking forward to the rest, but we will be spending some time at the baby sling library in Greenwich. I’ll be able to tell you more about that next time.

We’ve also ordered a book this week called ‘The Diaper Free Baby’, which hopefully will explain methods of infant potty training which we intend to use. The concept is that babies are born with the instinctive knowledge not to want to soil themselves, and it’s a way of getting them to use a potty earlier than with other children. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Not only is it better for parents and child in the long run, it is also better for the environment. We’re hoping that it’s going to work, and we’ve read good things about it. Anyone else out there got any more information or advice for us? I’d love to hear it if you do.

Raging Hormones

Apologies for the blogpost that went missing over the weekend. I've had a strange couple of days with genuine mood swings, going from feeling absolutely fine, to being grumpy, tired, and exhausted, then suddenly back to happy and energetic again! Very strange. My wife thinks that I'm displaying pregnancy symptoms, which may be possible. Extreme cases even have a diagnosis: Couvade.
Whatever the reasons, here's a poem:

Raging hormones
Up and down
Happy and mellow
To a grump
With a frown
But my wife
Has the bump
It's not me
I'm just the husband
Pregnant
In sympathy.

Antenatal Class for Valentine's

We had the first of our antenatal classes last night; something that I was dreading. I’ve always struggled with these types of group learning, whether it be school, University, evening creative writing classes or work training sessions. Being within a group of people who I don’t know (and are therefore unable to trust) is just one of them. But it’s also the pressure you often feel to have to say something important.

I’ve never been the most vocal of people, or at least not instantly. I like to think about things carefully, go over all the pros and cons and more often than not come down somewhere right in the middle of any argument. So, when people ask what I think, or whether I have anything more to contribute, I rarely have anything to say, usually because it’s already been said by someone else, but also because I’m still unsure.

Having gone there with deep reservations I found that it wasn’t quite as bad as I was thinking. No more participation was required than you wanted to give, and of course I had my wife’s hand to hold. The other factor was that most of the information is directed towards the mother anyway and so the focus is somewhat away from me.

The demographics were fascinating to me though, and I think an antenatal class can tell you a lot about an area. There were six couples, all of whom were married, and two single women. Of the couples, none were a White British pairing and neither of the single women was British either.

That there are multiracial and multinational couples in London is not too much of a surprise, but the fact that all the couples were married was a big surprise to me. Marriage is making some kind of a comeback at the moment, and for many reasons the ideals of marriage are a big news item too.

As a natural cynic I can’t help thinking that most people are getting married because they like the idea of a big showpiece occasion rather than thinking about the years and decades that come after. But perhaps I’m wrong.

Perhaps in a world where things change so quickly and so dramatically, where information is available at the drop of a hat, where progression and year on year improvement is the ultimate desire, this world that is now incredibly unreliable and scary is making people latch on to something can give them constancy. And whether you are two men, two women or a man and a woman, what else can give you that social constancy as a marriage?

It’s a somewhat romantic thought I guess, but I’d love to look at data correlating number of marriages with social upheaval.

Any thoughts?

I’ve been writing more poems lately since starting up my new blog. It’s helped to have a bit more of an outlet. I’m thinking of sending some out into competitions too, not that I’ve ever done that well with them in the past, but it’s pointless to give up. Of course Valentine’s Day always provides a poem requirement, and I think my wife was satisfied with this year’s effort. I was too in fact.