A squatter’s granddaughter on mortgages, damp, and why a ranch loan sounds almost reasonable by comparison
Friday, Damp and Furious
The kettle has broken, the boiler is making the noise of a man clearing his throat in a cathedral, and my landlord has sent me a message that begins “Hope you are well.” I have never once been well after that sentence. I read it with a cold hand and a hot mug, and it was while I was reading it that I saw the headline: first-time buyers swap rent for boiler repairs. I laughed out loud. Then I stopped laughing, because it was a diary entry about my future.
My granddad was a squatter in the seventies, in a row of houses off Ladbroke Grove that were later turned into flats the colour of oat milk. He used to tell me that the great thing about squatting was that you had no boiler to worry about, because the house had no heating. I think about that more than I admit. Freedom, he said, is a draught.
A Short History of Not Owning Things
Punk grew out of a London where rent was cheap and rooms were broken. Bands rehearsed in basements, wrote songs in kitchens and lived in flats that nobody would let to a dog. The cost of living was low and the cost of creating was lower. Today, a musician in London needs a day job, a side job and a landlord with a heart. I have two of the first three.
The idea of buying a place, then, is a fairy tale. It is like discovering that the dragon has retired and wants to sell you a cave. And yet people do it, and they celebrate with a photograph of a front door key held up like an Olympic medal. A week later they discover the roof and the photograph is deleted.
Borrowing Money Like a Rancher
I have been researching how people finance land elsewhere, mostly out of spite. In America there are lenders that specialise in ranches. I found three with straightforward names: Texas rancher loans, Oklahoma rancher loans and Colorado rancher loans. I do not know anything about their rates. I just like the confidence of the names. Nobody in London would call a mortgage broker a rancher, and nobody has ever offered me a loan with that much swagger.
For the basics of how money works on a farm, farm money is a surprisingly good read for anyone with a bank balance that behaves like a rollercoaster. And the farm desk at farm.FM found that ranch owners are millionaires on paper and broke by supper. I took a screenshot. It is going on my fridge, next to the letter from the council.
Dairy, Debt and Defiance
The dairy portfolio, meanwhile, has a lending arm called Texas dairy loan and a trading arm called Texas dairy trade. The first sounds like what you say to your mother. The second sounds like what you say to a man outside a pub with a bag. I like both of them. They have the air of old-fashioned honest crime.
The Daily Mash reported this week on how a film longer than 100 minutes had better be worth it. A mortgage is a film longer than twenty-five years. I am not sure it will be worth it. I suspect it has a bad ending.
The Complaint Department
There is a place for the frustrated, and it is a web address I have started visiting daily: farmer gripe. It is a hymn to grumbling, and I find it more uplifting than any motivational poster. A man leans on a gate and says the price of everything is a disgrace. A woman nods. A dog sits down in protest. This is community. This is what Britain used to be before we all got apps.
I have started composing a song about the boiler. It has a good riff. The chorus goes, in my head, like a plumber’s apology in three chords. I will not tell you the words. They are mostly consonants.
The Landlord Replies
The landlord’s message, once I had the courage to finish it, said that the boiler would be looked at “in due course.” In due course is a term that, in the history of rental housing, has meant between three weeks and the heat death of the universe. I have replied in my best polite voice. I said I understood. I said I hoped he was well. I said, in a postscript, that I had developed a cough, and that it was the colour of regret.
Late Notes
I am writing this under two jumpers and a duvet, with a hot water bottle on my feet. The band is coming round at eight to rehearse in the kitchen, because it is the warmest room, and because the neighbours have stopped complaining. I think they have given up. For company I read Bohiney, The London Prat and farm.FM, which are the only places where a boiler can be both a tragedy and a punchline.
The Daily Squib is on the screen too, with a piece about budget secrets and why Labour needs the Neets. If there is a budget for boilers, I would like to see it.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/