From: Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk (Not Al Crawford)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Flats
Date: 26 Jan 93 12:31:35 GMT
Reply-To: Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk (Not Al Crawford)
Organization: Penicuik People's Revolutionary Sheepdog Liberation Front
Originator: awrc@barley.dcs.ed.ac.uk

With my wedding imminent, and marital accomodation required, I've recently
been dabbling in the housing market. Not in the full Mike Holmes "I want
enormous amounts of mortgage relief" sense though. Much as I'd *like* to
buy a house the difficulty of convincing the building society that I have a
reliable source of income (difficult when your grant award quite clearly
states "Terminates: 30/09/93" at the top - unless I can convince them that
I still have 100 years and 8 months of funding to go) as well as the fact
that we a) don't have any furniture and b) can't afford any furniture,
means there's no way we can seriously consider trying to buy. This is
really incidental to my peeve, but I decided to mention it just in case
there's a philanthropic multi-millionare lurker out there who might want to
donate a fully furnished house to us. Worth a try, anyway.

So, since there's no likelihood of being able to buy, we're having to rent.
Leaving aside for the moment the problems this has caused with Jen's visa,
even *finding* a flat to rent is proving a serious pain. We want just four
things from a flat - it's got to have central heating, it's got to be
affordable, it's got to be in a decent neighbourhood and it's got to be
within a reasonable distance of my work.

Hah!

It goes without saying that there doesn't appear to be any flat in
existence that fits all the above criteria.

Heating - given that Edinburgh is not exactly noted for its subtropical
climate, I'd somehow thought we'd have a reasonable chance of finding a
flat with central heating. Gas central heating would have been best, white
meter storage heaters would do at a pinch. So what do I find? Well, there's
plenty of flats that *do* have gas central heating, but they all fail on
one of the other criterion. Instead I've got to put up with flats with *no*
heating (icepicks and huskies supplied), flats with coal fires (oh yes,
very romantic, a glowing coal fire on a cold winter's night, however the
popular image *doesn't* include having to go out into the rain to get the
coal in and putting the ashes out afterwards), flats with gas fires (fine,
but they only heat one room) and so on. Oh, except for one - this flat had
*electric* central heating. Now electric heating, such as Dimplex
radiators, is a wonderful form of heating that more or less redefines the
meaning of the word "cost-effective". It redefines it to mean "hugely
expensive". In fact, electric radiators manage a cost-efficiency of 90% -
yes, it's true! It's been scientifically proven that running electric
radiators cost only 90% of the cost of heating a room by burning the money
directly in large heaps in the middle of the floor. So it looks like we're
going to have to freeze.

Affordable - hah! We're going to end up in debt.

In a decent neighbourhood. Bwahahahaha! There's lots of desirable flats
around, with gas central heating and low rents and all that. However, all
of them are in areas of Edinburgh that are best avoided if you value your
life. Fortunately they're easy to spot from the photos - helpful hints are
graffiti saying "Nazi Scum Fuck Off!" scrawled in blue spray paint across
the front of the building, and boards where the windows should be. The
buildings themselves are large square cuboids, built to a design rejected
by the Leningrad Housing Committee as "inhuman and degrading". These were
apparently designed by architects trying to keep themselves in work by
designing buildings that start to fall apart within minutes of the first
residents moving in. The lifts don't work and the stairs double as urinals
for the knuckle-draggers that are your neighbours. The fact that the
windows don't open is incidental, since your neighbours will just smash
them when they rob the place. We're going to end up dead or at least badly
beaten.

Within reasonable distance of my work. Again, lots of nice flats that
fulfil all my other criteria, but they're so far away that there are
species of birds that *migrate* smaller distances than I'd have to commute
each day. We're going to end up in the middle of nowhere.

So to summarise we're going to end up frozen, broke and dead and nobody'll
even notice because we'll be so far away from civilisation that even
Penicuik seems like a bustling metropolis. Whoopee.

You *sure* none of you are millionare philanthropists?

-- 
		Not Al Crawford - Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk
	 "Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty sheepdog"
Newsgroups: alt.peeves