Ok.
First house: Pendle Road, Mitcham.
Plus points: 'kin huge kitchen, lovely big back garden, big second bedroom.
Minus points: 97,000 but it needed a *hell* of a lot of work done on it, so if we'd got it, we wouldn't have been able to get all the work done for ages. Plus - the location was terrible really, to be honest. If I can't live next to a tube line, then I'm living as close to one as possible.
House/furnishings/people: This was the fun bit. They were completely weird! Their main bedroom was completely filled with soft toys, and get this - every single painting or print on the wall was of a teddy! Madness. Can you imagine getting people around to see your flat, and leaving that sort of stuff everywhere? We speculated that the bloke was very downtrodden, but did weight training to compensate and feel hard, since he was a bit beefy. I'm just thinking about whenever they invited people around, what friends do a teddy obsessed couple have, teddy fetishists?
Second house: Sellingcourt Road, past Tooting Broadway
Plus points:None that I could see.
Minus points: Outside of house painted a peeling dark brown, upstairs looked like it had a dead body in it, and massive amounts of damp had sludged it's way into the brickwork all the way down the front of the house, it was horrible.
House/furnishings/peopleSeemed to be being shared by three students, white and light blue paintwork, with noxious fitted wardrobes and cupboards, as well as teeny fucking rooms… oh, it was horrible. Kai had arranged the viewing, and the estate agent was about 20 minutes late. When he arrived, he looked oily and nervous. "You here to view the house? Running a bit late, ok?" Er, no it's not ok, sunshine, we're about to give you a substantial amount of money. Kai had described him as a "obnoxious little git boy" after he'd spoken to him on the phone for approximately thirty seconds. Superb description.
Third house: Gleneagle Road, Streatham
Plus points:Reasonable location. In fact, I'd go so far as to say "good" location, plus, lots of the house had been done up, and it was only ninety grand. There was a funny load of metal steps down to the back garden that I could well imagine sitting at the top of in the summer, drinking a glass of wine after work. The kitchen floor had been done out in proper stones. The bathroom was lovely.
Minus points: Kai didn't like it for some stupid reason. That's the minus point. Ok, alright, well I will say that if we could find a place *like* that, but that *hadn't* been done up, we'd probably get it for about eighty-five or less, in which case it would be a bargain, as well as being something we would really love doing up. We are trying to avoid other people's decorations, so you know… s'fair enough I guess.
House/furnishings/peopleNo "people" stuff here - the bloke was away. He's a musician of some sort - the box room was filled with equipment. He also liked "tasteful" African art and those bamboo pull down blinds. Hmm - dull, but worthy, in other words.
Fourth house: Mitcham Lane
Plus points:A shed! Patio doors... uh...that's about it. Kai liked the kitchen, I didn't much.Jesus - you should have seen the home furnishings... yeeeeerch.
Minus points:Pretty expensive for where it was... I mean, Mitchum Lane... I really didn't think we'd live round there and I don't want to particularly.Plus the house was just bland-o. I don't know exactly, but there was "no thanks" written all over it.
Fifth house:Woodbourne Avenue, Streatham
Plus points:very good location, if a little bit too close to the main road so loads of people going past all the time. Insanely cheap because it was a repossession and had a damp problem (they were willing to take offers on sixty ie: about 55. Way below stamp duty plus, god, can you imagine the mcweeny payments you'd have to make? Jesus, if you kept them up to seven hundred a month, you'd have it paid off in about ten years.
Minus pointsWeird. The damp made it feel like a morgue, the kitchen was so unbelievably tiny, you couldn't even turn around in it properly, plus it was an end of the terrace house with no garden, and it had huge windows, in all of the rooms. Since it was of course ground floor level, it felt… very vulnerable to outsiders (ie: any burglar worth his salt would take approximately 3 seconds to gain entry). The actual rooms weren't that awful, in fact, I could see that one room would be cool as the front room, rather than the room that had been designated as such by the design of the place. I don't know, you know - neither of us liked it. It felt very soulless. I don't think we would have enjoyed living there.
At which point we fell to the ground, knackered.
"Queer as Folk" was repeated this evening. Happened to still be up while Kai had gone to bed. Nice to see Manchester filmed in the most glossy and ludicrous way possible! I have to say, there's nothing I like more than seeing handsome young men fucking, with a reasonable story-line, and unlike porn, no actual cocks or horribly gynaecological detail. It's depressing how many people in the press complained about the sex. I mean… look, I know it's a tedious argument to tetchily complain about the lumping together of sex and violence by "moral majority" style cultural commentators, but why can't elderly or prudish eedjits get over it? What on earth wrong is there to be had in seeing consenting good sex on TV? Or rather, consenting sex happening to come up in an otherwise, well - I mean, QAF is just an "ok" drama series, but I happily stand up and applaud it from an "it's about bleedin time" standpoint, as well as the "do you mind if I watch this on my own and possibly record it also" one.