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My building changed owners only ten days after I moved in. It's an old building, built in 1988 in that weird 80s futurist style that probably dated faster than any school of design in history. There's no lift, but the stairwell is wide and well lit by a bizarre jagged window that runs the entire height of the structure and makes it look like an earthquake just hit. All the public areas are covered with two-tone grey checked lino tiles; and the outside is mostly unfinished concrete (cracking now with age) with red paint highlights. At the very top of the stairs the banister is made of yellow and black striped rope woven through rings on a black metal frame - which is a design innovation I believe was invented by the set designers of Blakes 7 or possibly the decorators of Laser Quest in Acocks Green. I have to say that I liked it from the first time I saw it, even though it's lacking in a lot of respects, and now the new owners are sprucing the whole place up which (as long as they don't hike the rent) is even better.
But first they've got to cover the entire thing in scaffolding and tarpaulin.
So that's now the view from my window until I go back to England for a while.
No natural light can gain access to the building whatsoever. My appartment, the hallways, the stairwell - all dim and shadowy like a less dank episode of the Silent Hill franchise. As Will Smith once said, I "walk in shadow, move in silence, guard against extra terrestrial violence."
Well, the first one at least.
I mean, ok I bought a whole bunch of things for my new appartment that were more important than these, but where's the fun in reading about my second hand washing machine or my eco-friendly fridge?
Don't try to answer that. There is no fun.
Although I suppose the fact that I got "eco-points" from the government that apparently might net me some kind of gift voucher if I ever work out how to redeem them is quite nice.
Anyway, I didn't even want wire coathangers, but the plastic ones were so ugly, and then I noticed this little piece of sales hyperbole:
Slightly convenient? Oh Daiso, why do you undersell yourself so? There was a time when you could've used one of these to steal a car! Not just to bend into weird shapes and hang shoes on. TV Antenna? Poking things?
Oh this? This is just my ceramic kitchen knife. Shit yeah! Finally we're outgrowing metal and moving onto future polymer... something... Anyway it's meant to never get dull, be easy to clean and sharp to boot! Well, yes sharp enough that the first time I was using it I thought "Wow, this is pretty sharp!" and promptly sliced into my finger. Hence the plaster in that picture.
Oh! Ha ha! That's some kind of irony right?
Using a ceramic knife really does feel like I belong to some kind of advanced sci-fi civilisation where items are made from some durable white futuro-plastic and everyone wears pastel tunics and refers to each other by an inordinately long string of titles.
"What are you doing Pro-Arch-Senator-General Williams?"
"Merely slicing a tomato Semi-Vice-Brigadeer-Marquis Hapsburg. See how effortless it is?"
No sooner have I moved into my new appartment than I get a new room-mate:
Jesi is covering every inch of Japan that she can before she flies back to the states, so this leathery blighter has come to stay with me for a while. His real name is Kame-san, but while he's staying with me I'm calling him Dinosaur Jr. Isn't that right Dinosaur Jr?
Shut up, I put you behind the chair where you can't even see the TV. Anyway I'm a little sad to find that he doesn't really do any tricks, unless you count being able to kill a man when dropped from a fourth storey window as a trick. As soon as my new place is tidy enough for him to walk around without hiding in some impossible to reach nook I'm gonna dry him off and let him walk around. And hope that Jesi's right that he has no taste for human toes.
