Well goodness me, what a busy, busy time it has been for us. I hope you’ll forgive the rather huge gap between updates as we’ve really had quite a few huge changes!
For this entry I’ll stick to just the biggest change – we’ve moved house for the second time in 6 weeks! Remember me bragging about how we’d moved into our very own studio flat, and how much I loved it? And how nice it was having our own space again? Well, we lost it – serves me jolly well right for getting big-headed about it all! Despite assuring us time and time again that our lease was renewable, 4 weeks after we moved in we were told that our landlord was planning to renovate our flat, and that we’d have to skedaddle. Not nice news to receive at all. Marco called up our agent demanding an explanation, and he informed us that the landlord had made the decision very recently and that they hadn’t known about his intentions. Suspicious, Marco then called up the actual real-estate office and spoke with our agent’s manager, who told us that they’d known about the renovation plans for over a year!! So we don’t know whether the agent didn’t do his job properly and check, or whether he lied to our faces because he wanted the place filled. Either way, as you can imagine, we were pretty upset.
Most people reading this know Marco, and will know that most of the time he is as charming, gentle-hearted and lovely as any person can be. However, what you probably don’t know (unless you’ve had the misfortune to get on his wrong side) is that he can also be terrifying. I don’t mean that he yells and bellows, but he has the ability to speak to the person who wronged him in a completely rational fashion, but so chillingly and scathingly that he usually gets them to admit to their own hopelessness and they end up quivering heaps of apology before him. I watch in awe as it’s an ability I completely lack. Under such circumstances this skill of Marco’s was invaluable, and he pretty much left the real-estate agent in tears and got them to agree to drive us around to hunt for new flats, help us with paperwork, and to waive all the lease-fees and agency-fees that are usually involved in moving. So the outcome of it all is that in spite of it being a huge nuisance, we’re now well settled into our new new flat, and I’m happy to report that it’s truly a step above where we were before. We’re literally just around the corner from our previous apartment, but now on the top floor instead of the ground floor, so we have a beautiful big window and lots of natural light. BUT – I spouted on about how much I liked our previous flat and it was taken away from us! So I won’t make the same mistake again, except to say that although it was a big fat pain in the you-know-where, we’re now thoroughly happily in our new home.
Most importantly, we still have our air mattress and plenty of room for spacious floor dwelling for any Australians who may be headed this way. And I learned an important lesson about real-estate agents in London: that they are incompetent twits and not to be trusted!!!
Toodle-oo,
Jenny xx
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