The House Mover's Tale

A couple of weeks back, on 7th October, I returned from one and a half weeks' holiday up in civilisation, over on the West coast of Scotland. I got back around 6:30pm, and partially unpacked the car before having a cuppa. I'd parked the car outside the house, rather than in my 'driveway', as I had a pushbike on the roof rack, and the entrance to my 'driveway' has a bar at 2m height, so I needed to take the bike off first which I was planning to do after my tea. At around 7:45 I was upstairs in the front bedroom when I heard a crunching sound from outside, so I had a peek out of the window and saw two neds in baseball caps by the side of my car, and the bike no longer on the roof. I scampered down and out of the front door, but they'd legged it up the road with my bike.

I was furious, both with them and with myself. I knew that leaving a bike on the car was, in a grotty ned-infested hole like Bilbra, asking for it to be nicked. However, the bike rack was locked, and I'd only left it out for an hour or so. However, the hyenas had sniffed it out in double-quick time, which kind of perversely impressed me. Unable to pick/break the lock, the neds had pulled the bike and rack off the car, and must have run up the road carrying it all between them. So had I been sharp enough to realise that, I could have caught them up no problem, but I was just too shocked to do owt other than call the poilis. Who of course said they'd send someone round that night, even though I said it could wait until the morning as they'd never catch anyone in the maze that is Bilbra, and of course they didn't arrive.

And, of course, I'm livid with the lowlife neds who nicked the bike, which was a decent off-road effort which cost me £300 a few years back, and fucked the roof rack, which had cost me £120 just recently. My only consolation might be that they'd tried to keep it for themselves, rather than fencing it, and would try to ride it on the road, because the back tyre was so badly damaged it was plain dangerous to ride on. I would have got grim satisfaction had one of them had an accident due to the tyre failing on a busy road ;-\.

Almost certainly, though, they've fenced it, but with the rear tyre needing replacing - and specialist tyres like that cost at least a score apiece - and the bike being 'hot', they'd have been lucky to get £20 for it, if that.

So losing the bike was irritating, and a very depressing and forceful reminder of just what sort of a place I'd returned 'home' to, but worse was to come. When I tried a little later to open the car, I found that the bastards had tried to force the driver's side lock with a screwdriver and had thus fucked the whole central locking system. So the only way I could get into the car was climbing in via the boot.

So as a result I've had to spend tens of hours dealing with the cops then the insurance company and the garage which the insurance company insisted do the work, all the way over in West Bridgford. I've been without a car for nearly two weeks, which has made shopping a major pain - the Bilborough Co-op is pretty limited in its stock range. I tried to claim for the bike under my home contents insurance, but it turned out that I'd not chosen the extra option to cover possessions outside the home. I'll be lucky to get owt for the bike on the car insurance. I did try to claim for the rack and roof damage on the car insurance, but was told by the garage that as my car's sale value was barely the price of a fish supper it would be "uneconomic" to do the repairs - in other words, the car would have to be written off. Which made me curse insurance companies as even more bent than bookies, as at least bookies pay out. In the end, I got the locks done, but with £100 excess.

All in all, I'm out over £500, and have lost some 20 hours buggering about, and in return the neds will have at best got the price of a couple of wraps of crack. A suitable punishment, if I ever find out who they are, would be to lock them in a darkened room for that same 20 hours with non-stop Val Doonican played at them, then have them work at minimum wage shelf-packing to repay what they've cost me.

(In reality, like most thieves they'll be pretty thick, and will eventually get nicked for something else when they get careless. Then they'll get sent to jail, where they'll learn to be hard bastards and better thieves than they are now. Which will be no help to me, or to society as a whole.)

It's time to get out of here, right enough. Trouble is, I can only just squeeze into Beeston, my favoured destination, at the bottom end of the market, being able to just about afford to pay £125k maximum even though that would bump my mortgage payments up to over £600 a month. I therefore need every last penny I can get from the sale of this house, currently going for £95k, to go towards the new house, but I've had relatively few viewings and no offers as yet. With interest rates widely forecast to rise soon, and Xmas on its way, I might have to drop the price to get some interest, which would bugger me for Beeston unless I take on a crippling mortgage. Bramcote Hills is a little cheaper, though nothing like as nice, otherwise I'm looking at places hardly better than Bilbra.

The temptation just to flog it, take the loot, and sod off out of Nottingham for good is strong. However, anyone who gets off the 'housing ladder' is likely to be absolutely brassick come retirement, as the basic State pension will be worth fuck-all squared, and that little will be means-tested to buggery. I've got a work pension which, if I hang on to 65, will give me 3/8 of final salary, but that wouldn't be much if housing costs have to come out of it. So the inexorable logic is that you have to own a mortgage-free house come retirement or you'll end up as some grey bedsit bachelor struggling along on benefits and a meagre pension.

So, despite the obvious attraction of having £35k in hand, and doing a male midlife crisis thing and buggering off around the country in a camper van hoping for something to turn up, the sober reality is that the only choice available is Hobson's. Welcome to property-owning Britain ;-\

Ok, time for the off. A bad incident on Wednesday night, which it would not be wise to detail publicly until I've escaped from Bilborough, was the last straw. Two valuations have been called for next week, then the house goes up for sale. A quick hunt on upmystreet.com shows similar houses to mine going for £92-94k in recent months, which isn't too bad considering Nottingham house prices are on the slide, according to newspaper reports. So I'd best get beavering on tidying up the house and gardens, including snipping those blasted hedges which take up days of my time to keep under control, though on the plus side they do act as a very effective barrier to intruders. And, of course, I'll have to put up the obligatory hanging basket :-)

In the meantime, I'll be hunting for homes in Beeston, most likely, mainly because I like the shopping area and, of course, the Victoria Hotel, perhaps the best pub outside the city centre. Plus it'll be near to work. On the minus side, it's a bit pricey so I might have to settle for some tiny 2-bed terrace, but WTF - it's a step up from the bleak grotness of Bilbra. Alternatively, with luck, a job will come up outside Nottingham, even better in civilisation North of the Border, and I'll escape this grothole of a country altogether whilst I still can - I've seen a job advertised up Aberdeen way, but sadly it's only a fixed-term contract, which is a bit of a gamble at my age.

The adventure recommences...

I've just spent a happy 19 days up in Scotland, mostly in the Western Isles, where the word "community", so abused and debased by NuLabor, really means what it says on the tin - people know each other face to face, and seem to get on most of the time. Not an idyll to be sure, as all communities have their conflicts, and even the Western Isles has (mostly petty) crime, but people manage things for and amongst themselves, are friendly to strangers (even crass Yank tourists), and share a culture and sense of place. The default attitude towards people is trust, not suspicion.

My feel-good factor was a little jolted whilst up there as I still couldn't escape bad news from Nottingham (is there any other sort?) - according to a report in the Guardian Financial bit house prices in the city fell by 13% last year [1], and it was reported on national news that there'd been yet another shooting in the city centre in which three people were wounded [2]. By dint of studiously ignoring English news - I made a point of reading The Herald whilst up there - and not watching any TV, I was spared further turds on the table. As ever, though, my bubble was well and truly pricked on my return 'home'. I was depressed enough as always by my crossing the Border from civilisation into barbarism, although I eventually get used/resigned to that after a few days back, and I was pleasantly surprised on my return to Bilborough to see that the burglar alarm hadn't gone off, and that the house, and my car, were seemingly intact.

When I checked out the garden, though, I found that some ned had padlocked my drive gates shut, with a lock too strong for the puny hacksaws I have in my toolbox. This means that I'm unable to get my car out, which in turn means that I'll not be able to pick my cat up from the cattery tomorrow unless I can either find a heavy-duty saw or boltcutter to cut through the lock, or get hold of a locksmith to get it off. Either way, it's both extra expense and eats into my working day just because some darren had a spare padlock and wanted to piss someone off. If I were paranoid I'd think it was targetted at me, but the local darrens/neds are too apathetic to go after anyone in particular so chances are it was just chance I was picked on, or they had a bunch of padlocks they'd nicked and they've done other houses as well. I suppose I should count myself lucky that they didn't padlock the front gate as then I'd really have been shafted.

Then White Van Man and wife/gf decide to have a wee barney in the back garden, yer other neighbour lights a smoky fire to get rid of hedge cuttings so forcing me to close all windows, and of course the biking darrens were at it again speeding up and down outside the school. Truly a rude re-awakening to the realities of life in Grotsville, Notts. I'm really quite tempted to just flog the house, quit the job, and fuck off out of this grotty estate in this dangerous city in this barbaric and reactionary authoritarian country, and try to wing it elsewhere. A dangerous move for all sorts of reasons, but I'm not sure I can face the thought of moving to somewhere 'better' in Nottingham ('less worse' would be a more appropriate descriptor) just to get out of Bilborough, when really Nottingham is the problem. Perhaps I should just take a big pay cut and go work as a postie in the Highlands somewhere until a half-decent job comes up...

Oh, of course, it could be so, so much worse. I could live in far grottier and more dangerous areas - St Ann's, Radford, Basford, Bulwell, Strelley, Sneinton, Broxtowe, Meadows come immediately to mind - so maybe I should be content with living in a place that's just plain grot, rather than dodgy or plain lethal. As I approach 50, though, I don't see why I should still put up with 'less worse' when there's the possibility of 'good' if I actually pull my finger out - I could do with enjoying what little active life I have left, and ideally moving to somewhere civilised where there is a real community where people look out for each other. As a start, I'll get the estate agents in to value this gaff, and with luck, despite the supposed 13% fall in average prices, it'll have at least held its value in real terms as it's in the 'first-time buyer' bracket. If the worst comes to the worst and I can't find anywhere half-decent to buy elsewhere, I'll stick my stuff in storage and go live in a tent!

PS: It took me nearly 5 hours of bashing away with a geological hammer to get the padlock off my gate. I did buy boltcutters from the local hardware shop, but they barely made a dent on the hardened steel of the lock, so that was a tenner down the drain.

[1] House prices suffer biggest fall in 5 years as mini-boom stalls, Guardian Online, 7/7/06
[2] Gunman shoots three in 4am attack on nightclub, Guardian Online, 10/7/06

I've always liked rain, going back to when I was a kid and used to lie cosy and warm in bed listening to the drops rattling against my bedroom window. Rain clears the air of pollen, which always used to be a blessed relief from hay fever in those days when decent medication wasn't available. It washes the dust from the air and the crud from the streets, and gives the air that freshly-scrubbed feeling that you can almost taste in the mouth. In 'sunshine and showers' weather, rain and sun combine to provide skyscapes of breathtaking beauty that make you feel glad to be alive. And, of course, rain provides the water which we all need to live.

Having moved to Bilborough, that jewel in Nottingham's crown (cough!), I find another reason to love rain - it keeps people indoors, and keeps the noise level down. Now that summer has arrived to bless this expanse of identikit concrete boxes, some of the less social natives have emerged and are proceeding to enjoy themselves hugely at the expense of the rest of us (but then we're miserable bastards who don't count). Darrens pile up and down the road by the school on motorbikes of all types, from Piaggio scooters (for those whose folks have some dosh) through to trail bikes down to blarting mini-motorbikes. Having been a wannabe darren myself as a kid, and having worshipped full-blown darrens who had motorbikes, I know that there are only two purposes to having bikes:

1. To have a laugh when you've fuck-all else to do;
2. To piss people off.

The mini-motorbikes are good at both, as they give a speed rush and their ptharping blarting engines make a wholly disproportionate amount of noise that can be heard a mile away, a noise amplified by deliberately large exhaust outlets that transform the exhaust from a bee in a coffee tin to a full-throated giant fart. The very point of having such bikes and pointlessly piling up and down the same road on them is to piss people off, and to make a territorial statement. Getting from A to B doesn't come into it. So rain is good because only the most diehard biking darren will whizz up and down when it's siling it down, and in truth I have a sneaking admiration for those who are so dedicated to their mission to annoy the locals that they'll get drenched in the process - it shows a kind of dogged bullheaded determination missing in your average darren.

Then there are the neighbours. I'm lucky that I don't live down Tremayne Avenue, where there's a mini-block of flats which acts as a magnet to the local youth, and in this weather they loaf in the street chewing the fat, showing off their mean muthafuckaness, boasting and posturing to a gangsta soundtrack (I know - I have to pass them on my usual cycle route home from the Rodney). That must really fuck off their neighbours. At least all we have to deal with round here is barking dogs, White Van Men, and barbecues, and at least they can be blocked out by shutting the windows (ah, the wonder of double glazing) and doors. A shame I can't sit and loaf in my own back garden without being assailed by noise and clouds of petrol fumes, but that's life in Bilborough for you - quiet enjoyment of balmy summer evenings is not a lifestyle option arahrnd 'ere, ducks. Rain, of course, knocks them on the head too - the dogs come in, the barbies go out.

Unfortunately this is nearly as dry a part of the country as Hull. Not quite drought order country, but not far off it. Barely a drop all last week, so little respite from the bikes and the dogs and the barbies. Not much predicted either, though at least the temperature will drop from scorchio to cool.

Basically, this is not a good place to be in if you like peace and relaxation. If you like the 'sounds of the city' in summer, with loud folk in the street, booming music from cars and open windows, barbies burning, and something going on wherever you look, this is your city and your time. It rather reminds me of a lite version of the inner city depicted in Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing", where everyone's shouting aggressively at the top of their voices in the relentless midsummer heat and a riot ensues. Bilborough's not quite in that sort of league, thankfully, but it's not a relaxing place. Mind you, it's probably no worse than many areas of Nottingham, although it's a poor comment on the estate, and the city, that the best thing you can say about Bilborough is that "People buy houses here because it isnt as bad as a lot of the areas in Nottingham" (as a comment on one of my earlier posts said).

So, rain on, and rain on mightily. There's never a thunderstorm when you need one...

A report's just come out, produced by the "think tank" Reform which rates Nottingham as the crime hotspot of England. According to the Reform press release:

A new report today reveals huge variations in urban crime rates across the country with Nottingham, the highest crime urban area, recording four times the number of selected crimes per 1,000 population as the safest towns such as Southend and Poole. The report, Urban Crime Rankings, by the independent think tank Reform, uses new data obtained from police forces by Freedom of Information requests on seven offences: murder, rape, assault, burglary, robbery, vehicle crime and gun crime.

This has not unnaturally provoked a furious reaction from Nottingham Cahrncil, which devoted a whole issue of its Notice Nottingham propaganda sheet (PDF version) to rubbishing its findings, and of course the local plods were none too happy either. The cahrncil says that the report is based on "sloppy research", but unlike other 'studies' rubbishing Nottingham, such as the C4 property programme 'study' which rated it as the worst or second worst (I can't remember which) place to live in the UK, the Reform report is based on solid, empirical evidence and the 'think tank' itself is widely respected. So this latest report has the potential to be far more damaging to Nottingham's rep than some anecdotal 'study' based on perception and opinion. Which I suspect is why the Cahrncil is reacting so strongly to it, although they want to watch out that they don't over-react as people might start to think that yea, verily, they do protest overmuch.

Who's right? Who knows. I do know that you wouldn't catch me wandering around St Anns, Meadows, Radford, or Basford, where shootings are not uncommon. Whether it's getting worse or better is probably relatively academic to the poor sods that live there - 20 shootings a year (figure plucked from my bonce for illustration) may be preferable to 30 or 40, but it still hardly makes for a peaceful unstressful existence. If gun and drugs crime is getting worse in Nottingham, it's not an altogether surprising result of the severe economic decline of the city since so many of its miners scabbed during the '84 strike, and who were rewarded some years later with the closure of their own pits. Since I've lived here, just a couple of years, the news seems to be forever reporting job losses in the area, the latest of which have included:

• Kodak closing their Annesley plant, losing 350 jobs
• Nottingham hospitals to shed 1200 posts
• The closure of Carlton TV's studios (now being 're-purposed' as the Nottm Uni "King's Meadow" campus, which is neither a meadow nor a campus) losing some 200 jobs

To mention but a few. Boots have also been ditching jobs like autumn leaves (despite their building an automated distribution centre in Nottingham), and before I arrived here Raleigh had already become a mere assembly plant of parts imported from China. What I rarely see on the news is jobs being created, and when new jobs do arrive they're usually McJobs or sweated labour in call centres.

Yet there's plainly wealth in Nottingham, but concentrated in a few affluent areas such as Wollaton. There's a stark and obvious disparity in wealth between the well-off and the skint here, with wealthy and broke areas living cheek by jowl - St Ann's right next to Mapperley, for instance - which can only rub the noses of the brassic into their poverty and 'inspire' the more enterprising souls to move themselves up the wealth ladder by shifting high-profit drugs. Perhaps were there still decent-paid unionised jobs in the city crime would be far less of an issue, but sadly there aren't many of these outside the public sector. And for that, I'm afraid, the scabs of '84 have to bear much of the responsibility. It's the younger generation I feel for, who no longer have jobs in mining and satellite industries, but have to work in McJobs for peanuts, thanks to the selfish irresponsibility of their parents. The shame is that they don't realise this, as like most of the English working class these days they have the political consciousness of Big Brother contestants.

Urban crime rankings, Reform, 2006 (PDF)
Crime 'hotspot' study angers city. BBC Online, 23/5/06
City rejects crime capital label. BBC Online, 23/5/06

Browsing the BBC News Magazine RSS newsfeed today at work, whilst munching my cheese and piccallilli sarnies, I came across a disturbing, though not entirely surprising, report by an undercover journalist on sharp, not to plain corrupt, practices by a few estate agents she blagged her way into. The article summary reads:

Lying to customers, faked signatures, false passports and dodgy deals with developers. An undercover investigation reveals the secret world of estate agents' dirty tricks.

The comments after the piece from readers who've worked in the business, or have been ripped off by it, are instructive also, if depressing. Not that I'm likely to come across any agents like this given the piddling 95k or so my house is probably currently worth, but maybe folk in places where houses go for big money should be wary in their dealings with agents.

Personally, in the two small house deals I've been involved in so far, I've found the agency staff to be overworked, underpaid and more dedicated than I deserved them to be given their piddling share of the commission their agency would get for the sale. When I flogged my Hull house for 63k (I think), the commission was 1.5% which worked out as just under a grand for the Halifax, of which the very helpful and very down-to-earth and honest young woman who worked on my behalf probably only got a few quid on top of her salary. So I've no complaints as yet myself, and I'm sure most workers in agencies are plain old wage-slaves like the rest of us who do the best for their clients, but it's worth bearing in mind that there are some sharper and less scrupulous agencies around the place and maybe only dealing with those that have been recommended by word of mouth.

Full article on BBC News Magazine

I've been working at home a bit of late, having got a half-decent broadband connection from the Co-op (3% divi too - woo hoo! ;-)). I prefer to go into work when I can for a whole bunch of reasons, not least seeing other humans and saving money on my central heating, but occasionally it's useful to be at home without distractions other than the blasted cat trying to walk all over the keyboard. I can't stick in the 'ahrse (as they call houses rahrnd 'ere) all day without getting cabin fever and needing some fresh air, so I have to go out now and again. So today I went for a walk to the shops on Bracebridge Road to get a couple of odds & sods and also to the library to return a book. Sadly, I returned more depressed than when I left the house, having seen:

• cracked and highly uneven pavements, real ankle-breakers, and liberally sprinkled with mounds of dog turds to trap the unwary pedestrian who's not looking where s/he's going
• every possible public flat surface graffiti'd:

• road signs (other than the new one on my road, which presumably is of a graffiti-proof sort),
• boards on bus stops
• constructor signs outside the college grounds
• the brick walls of the library ("Bilbra Cru" - either the dimwits can't spell or, more likely, they're trying to emulate mean muthafucka gangstas)
• shop shutters

• a low-flying cop helicopter on the prowl
• a pasty fat-faced darren on a blarting mini-motorbike piling up and down aimlessly
• a telephone exchange box ripped open
  

On the plus side, I saw:

• the shiny new college building and sports centre
• land cleared for new building outside the college
• well-kept houses and gardens
• er...that's it

Bilborough is not the place to go for a leisurely promenade through the streets - no wonder that you only ever see packs of darrens, and pissants staggering back from the Pelican, wandering around. Not that it's dangerous, unlike some areas (St Ann's, Meadows, Radford, Basford, Strelley and Broxtowe come immediately to mind), but fuck me, it's depressing. When I lived in my wee palace in Hull, just off Springhead Road, I could go for a pleasant wander through the cul-de-sacs and over the sports fields and allotments if I wanted some fresh air, and come back in a better mood than when I left, but not here.

What I really miss is being able to walk to a decent pub of an evening if I fancy a bit of human company, but the Pelican is strictly for hard cases and the Poacher is deader than roadkill, so the only half-decent pubs are 10 mins bike ride away. Not much, right enough, but enough to put you off on a cold winter evening when it's sleeting down, and it's a right pain to have to puff and pant uphill after getting all warm and relaxed in a cosy pub.

So, time to go, I guess, although I've been saying that virtually since moving here. On the plus side, house prices are on the rise again so I read in the papers, so I dare say that I could get knocking on 100k for this box seeing as my neighbour's house went for 95k before Xmas. Of course that has a downside as well, as anywhere I want to move will be more expensive, ma c'è la vita. There are 2 options:

1. Move somewhere else in Nottingham.
2. Move out of Nottingham altogether.

(1) has the advantage of immediacy, but the disadvantages of:

a) houses in areas I'd like to go to (eg Beeston, Bramcote) being out of my price range, unless I settle for some pokey flat or tiny terrace and pray for quiet neighbours
b) Nottingham's a grot city in general and on the slide, so it would be good to get away from here altogether
c) at least 2k in fees (surveyor, estate agents, Briefs, removals) to move, probably more

(2) has the advantage of cost, as if I get a job somewhere civilised, ideally North of the Border where socialism isn't a quaint pre-80s word but a real living idea, I can claim moving ex's as I did for this place. Trouble is, jobs in the UKHE sector are pretty thin on the ground at the mo, at least North of here, so I could be stuck here for some time if I hang around to be offered the right job (web developer for the UHI would be nice :)) which would be wasted time.

I'm definitely getting more fed up with this area, though, and unless Bilborough starts to improve markedly I'll get to a tipping point when the grot just gets too much. It would be nice if the cahrncil spent a bit more money on the area, in particular improving the roads (which are seriously dire - you know when you drive into Bilborough by the ba-dum ba-dum of your tyres on the depressed channels across the road where wires or pipes go beneath the tarmac) and pavements. If public spaces are allowed to deteriorate through neglect then it hardly encourages the locals to treat them with care and respect. I suspect, though, that the council either doesn't give a toss or is seriously short of money, probably both.

PS: The guy charged with the recent shooting of the female cop in Lenton last week comes from Bilborough. If he is the shooter then that's a little worrying - burglars with guns are not good news. I've long lived with the realisation that I'm going to be burgled at some point (it's not happened to me once yet) and I can live with being ripped off as long as I'm insured, but the idea of an armed burglar adds another notch to the paranoia. Still, innocent until proven guilty.