After the failings of the first house viewing I was ready for a couple of weeks away from house hunting. It was November and the whole world was gradually gearing itself for the hype of Christmas, so much so I wondered if it was a sign from God that houses were not to be considered when you have fifty clients screaming for their branded posters. For all of about two days I accepted this and for those two days life without property searches was good. Blog posts got uploaded, newspaper articles written, outside of work life was a very productive affair. However my brief moment of tranquillity was not to last. On the third day I started involuntarily twitching at the site of Rightmove’s consumer-targeted advertising.
“Oh no, not the twitch!” I thought, “it’s the very reaction mum has to house programmes. The property twitch.”
I tried to hold my finger back, I even went onto various other non-property websites to distract the demonic spirit inside, but it wasn’t working. By the time day five came around I found my eyes wandering the streets to look at the bright bill boards outside properties for let or sale. (Some of the feelings I felt towards the sight of a new ‘For Sale’ board are too disturbing to be described anywhere on the internet.)
A particular low point came when I realised the property twitch had spread from my hands to my feet and, scarily, my brain. A house on a nearby street was undertaking
Boards, boards everywhere!
substantial building works around this time, a thirty-something male and his mates were ripping the place to shreds. One morning the need to be near the smell of brickwork became so great that, without thinking, I crossed the street to walk past the house and thereby straight through a mini-building site. Without thinking, in my black pump shoes and office wear I strolled through the mud and brick dust that covered the street. The two builders who had witnessed this from the comfort of the doorway with their tea couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It was only later down the road I realised what I’d done and subsequently cringed and made for the nearest patch of greenery.
“Christ, I need help” I muttered as I wiped my leather shoes on the dew covered grass.
Help (of a sort) came shortly after this event. I was watching Pointless on TV which to me represented a bit of a low point in my viewing choices (pun not intended), when an email flashed up in my inbox. No surprises for guessing who it was from.
“THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR IS FOR SALE!! ON RIGHTMOVE! LOOK!”
(It was as if there was a sale on exclamation marks.)
Thinking her to be either a) insane b) nosey or c) a combination of both, I gave in to my inner twitch and logged onto Rightmove. Immediately my body relaxed, it was as if it was destined to spend many nights on this website. As I started entering in my search criteria into the various boxes all I could think to myself was “what monster has my mother created?” A few clicks later and I was able to track down the property. It wasn’t hard to find, as mum had correctly identified it was indeed the house next door. My housemate’s white car sat proudly on the driveway to the left.
As I scrolled through the property images one thing that kept coming to mind was simply “this can’t be the house next door, this can’t be the house next door”. For starters it was a heck of a lot cleaner and minus the clutter of the house I was sat in, but it was also just so different. Fewer bedrooms had resulted in a different approach to space layout and planning. A bigger kitchen, normal straight staircases, access to a patio area! All things which number 22 lacked and suffered for. I was in my own bubble and couldn’t help but smile reading through the description. The agents needn’t have gone to so much bother, I was already sold.
Meanwhile, in the reality of number 22, a roommate set off the kitchen smoke alarm, triggering the property’s hard-wired alarm system. Shouts from other housemates rippled around the house while I sat staring at images of a tenant free property with its clean carpets and stylish bedrooms. I sighed. Carefully avoiding the spring that was starting to protrude from my mattress I took the one stride needed to cross the marked carpets to where my phone sat quietly charging. God knows I had tried to ignore the call of the housing market, but enough was enough. I made the call.
This post is part of “The First Time Buyer Diaries”. To read the entire series (so far) clickhere.
“You’re not looking at houses in Swindon again are you?”
“Well, a couple of nice places have come up in the past couple of days. Look at this one on Morrison’s Street…”
“Oh for Christ’s sake mum! How many times have we been over this?!”
The start of my home buyer journey began many years ago, before I had even stepped foot in Swindon. Picking up property magazines, browsing through estate agent windows, the glossy images of marble topped kitchens and designer bedrooms scattered across the kitchen table. The rise of the internet changed nothing but the advert medium. Praise and scrutiny of homeowners formed an integral part of the Bennett way of life, one which still exists to this day.
“What a messy garden.”
“Overpriced.”
“Look at the tape across the sinks, that one is a repossession. If only we had the money…”
My folks have dabbled in the property market for as long as I can remember. My childhood memories are pin pricked with flashbacks of being traipsed around rentals, scrubbing holiday cottages and, in one fond memory, being convinced that we wouldn’t go to Warwick Castle unless I got under the floorboards and helped dad with the rewiring. It also meant exposure to heated discussions when things went wrong. It was ok though, if it got too much I’d go out into the field and run around with a stick. It didn’t matter if the tenants in Bidford were being difficult, because I was Superwoman and the proud owner of the biggest and best mud pie in Gloucestershire and that was all that mattered.
When my parents decided to pursue a new investment venture in my university city of Southampton some ten years later I was introduced directly into the world of house buying. How to view a property, how to negotiate and how to spot potentials and money pits. 19 Highcrown Street indeed helped to cultivate my inner middle-aged persona. As students in neighbouring streets slept off their hangovers, at twenty I was hanging out with handy men, builders and carpet fitters. I was also monitoring house accounts, handling awkward topics of underpayment (and evictions) and doing house viewings for potential roommates (and responsible tenants). For two years I helped manage my student digs, giving me invaluable real-world experience in a student bubble that provides you with anything but.
My deep seated need to buy a house was therefore nothing less than expected. As house prices steadily rose and fell, I steadily saved, watching intently as the Recession broke across Europe and interest rates fell. By the time I was at University the bigger concern was over employment at the other side, but even that wouldn’t stop me trying to achieve my dream. With a peculiar level of pride I lived off £4.50 a week to save on my student loans and limiting spend to need only purchases. ‘Want’ buys tended to come with mild guilt and/or heavy usage (to this day I still wear particular dress I bought when I was sixteen years old, partly because I felt bitter at splashing out £18 on it at the time). If you were to ask any of my friends and colleagues, past and present, they would testify the same about the surreal outlook on savings adopted by Alice Bennett. Even I myself used to consider myself to belong to a very special club for having the aspirations of owning property before owning a car.
I graduated from Southampton in the summer of 2014. On the day I graduated (16th July) Bashar al-Assad was sworn in for a third term as president of Syria and at around the same time throwing buckets of ice water over people became a thing. Luckily by this time the graduate employment was starting to bounce back and, thanks to assorted extracurricular activities, I secured a job working in the head office of a nationally recognised Heritage organisation. I bit a tearful farewell to Southampton, packed up my bags and headed to a House of Multiple Occupancy (otherwise known as a HMO or house share) in Swindon. Renting a room with other young people, in a town that also wasn’t particularly pretty, I would come to refer to the Wiltshire town as “a smaller Southampton”.
#HouseGoals
The housing market in Swindon has remained fairly unchanged since 2014 but don’t be fooled, the town is on the cusp of a substantial property boom. Compared to other local towns in Wiltshire and the neighbouring Cotswolds, Swindon is cheap. Inexpensive (relatively) but not too bad a place to live. Close to the M4 corridor, a commutable distance to Bristol and South Wales and, when the railway line is fully electrified, it could take less than an hour to get to London Paddington. The average house value in Swindon (complete with multiple bedrooms, parking and a garden) is considerably lower compared to London (which, based on what I’ve seen, will get you somewhere as big as a box room). You don’t need to have an A* in British currency to see the difference. And investors are not stupid people, they were starting to realise it too. As quickly as I could save £1000 by living off mouldy cheese and plain rice house prices around me would increase by £5000. The problem was not my level of saving, more what was obtainable. My resistance to mum searching on property websites such as Rightmove wasn’t due to a lack of property interest, but more because I simply could not afford to buy something that wasn’t a shed. As she got to learn the housing market of Swindon better, mum started to send me links to properties with the comment “I give it two days” and sure enough a perfect house would change to SOLD within the allotted 48 hours. She meant no harm by it, she was after all a self-titled housing guru, however it didn’t stop me feeling utterly helpless.
I decided to set myself (and mum) a few choice requirements for any property that I wanted to live in, thus reducing the ill feeling towards the natural cycle of house markets and start a more realistic internal monologue (“people sell houses and buy them, get over yourself Alice!”)
The requirements were:
Ideally three bedrooms (I didn’t want to live alone and I wanted lodgers to help cover the property costs).
West Swindon (close proximity to work and amenities).
A sound investment (I am my parent’s daughter after all).
No dumps/long term projects.
AFFORDABLE!! (Unless I shacked up with Mr. Bank of England any property had to fall within a tight budget.)
Mum’s reaction to my list was as expected.
“Well, they’re not going to get you onto any house buying shows are they? Kirsty Allsopp would hate you!” She exclaimed. “You’re searching in a half mile radius of Victorian terraces. Do you know how hard it is to find parking in this area?”
“Yes.” I responded, walking out the door. “Good luck.”
I thought the list would stop the constant emails from my unpaid land agent. It didn’t.
Things remained unchanged for the next two years. Searching Rightmove for property became a hobby sport more than an actual, let’s look for something to buy now. Spending Saturday nights throttling the next button, tapping on floor plans (“ooh, look at that nicely sized living room…”), passionate shouting matches with a dodgy broadband connection as it cuts out part-way through the photo slideshow. It was only when I told a friend about my nightly activities that I understood this was not how most young singletons spend their finite time on Earth.
In 2016 two things would happen to change my outlook: securing a permanent contract and a hefty handful of luck.
Obtaining a permanent job in Swindon equalled job security and meant for the first time I could apply for a mortgage (if so wished). It was a real game-changer in how I perceived the town. It gave me the freedom to do what I wanted without having to constantly prepare for my contract coming to an end. No more would I have to beg my line manager for a contract extension every four months. It also forced me to acknowledge that, after nineteen months, chances are I was going to remain fairly fixed in Swindon for the foreseeable future.
As for the luck, well that came into play on a damp November day in the shape of a harmless text.
“Just emailed you. Let me know what you think. x”
When I got back into my small room that evening I dumped my bags on the floor and scrambled across the bed to get my laptop. A click on the email and a double tap on the link took me to, surprise-surprise, a house for sale in Swindon. However this one looked nice, there was a charming bay window and some nice potted plants outside. Inside it had three bedrooms, a decent sized garden and even off road parking. It was also a reasonable price. With a deep breath I picked up the phone and made the call to my land agent.
“That house looks nice mum, I think I’d like to view it.”
“Already booked. Next Wednesday at 1:30 to fit around your lunch.”
“Your mother is crazy Alice! I couldn’t stop her!”
“Don’t listen to your father.”
It was official; I was going to view my first Swindon property.
This post is part of “The First Time Buyer Diaries”. To read the entire series (so far) click here.
Yesterday I experienced my first authorship rejection. It also marked the first time that a group of people didn’t consider my work to be truly, fabulously, awesome. Weirdos.
The piece was short, a 500 word review which described a recent experience I had at a local restaurant. After working through a few drafts, I finally submitted the piece to the web content editor and moved on to the next mini-saga that is my life. In truth the post was quickly forgotten because a) I spew out a lot of waffle articles and b) like all my work it was a mini masterpiece, something that children will look at in the years to come and think “wow, Swindon really had some rubbish eateries in 2017”.
And therein lies why my article was rejected. The email that I had expected to contain a link to my work contained instead a put down. The web content editor had made the decision not to publish my review due to the tongue-in-cheek negativity portrayed in the copy. I forced myself to read the email again to be certain that I’d read the electronic text correctly. Realising that my article had indeed been rejected I shoved my laptop under the bed and grumbled into a cup of tea. You know, the kind of response mature people adopt.
A couple of hours later, after a sufficient amount of tea and biscuits had been consumed, I calmly reread the short email again. This time I was able to gain some reassurance at least that the quality of my writing wasn’t to blame. Essentially I had been rejected for not pampering to a catering outlet which, in my mind, didn’t quite reach the mark on the night I visited. I still stand by my views and remain of a firm opinion that any venue, author or artist should be open to both positive and negative criticism. I know that my reader base would quickly bore of my writing or disbelieve its authenticity if everything I wrote was a falsehood of how wonderfully magical everything is underneath our blue skies. Free speech and my own personal sanity is dependent on balance.
Like hitting writer’s block and slowly improving my work over time, I don’t view this rejection as a bad experience but a new one. I now know that that whilst this particular outlet has no qualms with the quality of my work, they only want to hear good news stories, not controversial. I wish they’d told me that before but at least I understand the lay of the land. What can I say? Haters gonna hate…negative writing. Besides, they’re not paying me anyway.
On the flipside, the other news outlet I freelance for love balance and spicy writing so they have happily published my work (huzzah!) You can check out the rejected review here:
It has been a little while since I provided an updated on my living arrangements, so here is a quick summary.
Location: Still based in Swindon
Company: Still working for that same national organisation
Department: UPDATE – back in March I moved from the Commercial department to Marketing
House: Still living in 22 Starfish Road* (*not actual street name)
Housemates: Still living with Cherice and Becki the mermaid. UPDATE – I now also live with Amy who works at the head office of a high street newsagent firm, and Alex who, for whatever reason, can’t tell us where he works (we’re thinking Ministry of Defence or mafia boss)
Hobbies: Still managing the Swindon 18-30 group, hitting the gym, baking and (obviously) blogging. UPDATE – I now also write articles for a local online paper, The Swindonian
Transport: Still car-less. UPDATE – now much better at navigating the public bus system
In general: Still making the same mistakes and being wonderfully me. Classic Alice lives on.
On Tuesday (11th August) I celebrated something very special. Not a birthday or a religious festival, a new pet or a new choice of cereal (although I have started eating Sainsburys own brand Wheetabix instead of their cheap Basics brand, that was a big day). I didn’t even celebrate National Presidential Joke day, that’s how important the 11th day of the eighth month meant to me.
All hyping aside Tuesday marked a year since I moved to the town of Swindon to start my first post-university job (i.e. the moment I became a ‘proper’ adult). Now when I say adult I don’t mean the moment I came of legal adult age as specified by the British Government (no one believes the tosh that being 18 makes you a grown up, well unless you’re a pub or club owner). No, what I’m talking about is the moment I sat behind a proper desk, handling proper suppliers and paid, to much weeping, proper taxes. It was the moment I was dragged kicking and screaming out of my cushy student bubble and into the real world people live in.
The transition into the real world was by no means an easy one. When I found out that I’d got a job in the Heritage sector I was sky high. I was literally dancing on the kitchen tiles for days. I became a groupie of the organisation I was working for, I stalked the living daylights out of their webpages to get a solid idea of what they did, where they did it and why they were doing it. If they had offered me a free tacky t-shirt I probably would have worn it every day.
The search for rental properties was the first adult challenge I experienced. Looking back, it was actually more of a mess than the perfectly structured, rose-tinted, plan I was convincing myself it was and if I wasn’t so hyped up about my job I may have struggled with it more than I did. As someone who has never lived or rented in Swindon I was faced with an uphill struggle from day one. Single bed, decent, apartments were a nightmare to find, especially within a walking distance of my office. Those I did find either vanished before I had chance to view them or were blocked from viewing by agents who didn’t feel comfortable showing them to a young, single, female. Reassuring stuff. Luckily the day before mumma Bennett and I were due to travel to Swindon for rentals I found a website called Spare Room. A bit of searching and a few calls later I had three places lined up. Housing dilemma solved? You’d think that…
The day mumma Bennett I travelled to Swindon just had to be the hottest day of the year in Swindon. It also just happened to be the day Google maps decided to throw a tantrum and not work and the day all the First Great Western trains were delayed. Sorry, correction, train wise it was a normal day. The first property was located at the top of the steepest hill in the world, we had no idea where we were in Swindon and the pair of us were very much close to passing out. “Go ahead, go ahead!” cried mum, “I’m not going anywhere without you!” I yelled back while gasping for air. It had the makings of an emotional scene for a land-based Titanic film (you know where I am James, just think about it). We then had to go all the way back down that hill and cross the train tracks (getting lost again) to view a house in Bridgemead. At this point we were way behind schedule. This would be property I’d end up choosing, however at the time it was rush rush to get out and onto the next place. Only a couple of streets away yet we still ended up at the wrong end of a very long street. By lunchtime we’d seen only three houses but were sweaty, physically exhausted and mentally shattered. When mum pulled out Kirsty Allsop’s property rating method in Costa I came very close to banging my head against the table. That was the point I realised that being an adult wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows and it was at that moment I learnt my first life lesson as an adult:
In urban areas they have these mysterious things called taxis. Use them.
Rental property sorted, I moved into my new house on the 10th August. I met one of my housemates, mermaid Becki, for the first time which was actually a scarier experience than anticipated. Not because Becki isn’t a lovely person (she is/was), it was the pressure to get on with this random stranger. In my student days I was renting with friends, people my own age who I already knew. Chatting to Becki I was actually relived that she was a normal, nice human being, even though she knew nothing about me and was 30 years old compared to my baby-faced 21 years. Second lesson learnt:
Living in a houseshare with random people doesn’t mean no one is friendly and social.
…And third life lesson:
Mermaids are actually pretty cool in real life.
Started my new job the next day. As with any new environment I was an absolute bag of nerves, I was introduced to what felt like a million new people in the space of five minutes and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. How do I work this? What am I meant to be typing? Can I go home for the evening now? I really had not a clue what was going on. I found myself asking what felt like endless questions to team members and feeling like I was getting no where. For the first couple of weeks I walked out of the office feeling stressed, tired and guilty for slowing everyone up with their work. When I was studying at university I was fiercely independent with my work, I knew when and where my lectures were, how to use the online resources and where to find books linked to my course. Simply put I knew what I was doing. In my new job I was entirely dependant on the help of strangers. Independence to dependence, I felt like I was going backwards. After the first few weeks I started to pick things up at a quicker pace, I could remember names and faces, and I started to relax more knowing that the people around me did care about me and wanted to help. After a three month review with my line manager I reflected on my progression and with it a fourth lesson:
Everyone is the office newbie at some stage.
With the house and work side cracked, I still felt the personal side very lacking. Work, watch tv, eat, sleep, repeat, that was how my life operated. As crazy as my lifestyle got was watching Dave instead of ITVBe. When I started developing favourite Real Housewives (Teresa from New Jersey is a cow, and Phaedra from Atlanta is as sassy as – not that I watched much of it…), that was the point I had to do something. I started walking around the local area with the aid of a Swindon A-Z purchased on the advice of papa Bennett. While I started off wandering around the local paths and parks I almost always ended up in a housing estate a bit confused as to how I got there. While I enjoy getting lost in certain environments, wandering around housing estates at dusk with only an A-Z is hardly a joyful experience. Lesson obtained:
When they don’t understand the context of the situation, local residents really don’t like it when you stare at road signs and their houses before saying ‘ah hah!’ and wandering off in the opposite direction.
Following my feeble attempts to spend my evenings doing something I thought I’d try a different approach, I decided to get involved with Swindon’s clubs and societies. Now, for your own sanity I’m not going to go into much information right now about this aspect of my life in Swindon. I’ll talk about this later. What I did learn from the whole experience is a valuable lesson *spoilers!*:
You make your own happiness
And so one year later here I am, still sat here, in Swindon, in my houseshare, typing a new blog post. My deep rooted modesty makes me want to say not a lot has changed, but actually a lot has. It has been a roller coaster of emotions, it really has. From the highs of getting my job to hitting the low point of loneliness and dependency in a strange concrete town. Those who have a basic understanding of British towns and cities may argue I should have known what I was getting myself into when I decided to move to a town whose name derives from ‘pig market on a hill’. At first, yes, I did pin my uneasiness on the fact that I was living in Swindon and not the buzzing city of Southampton where I had spent my student days. However, as I started to integrate myself in to the proper adult pace of life and work I realised that it wasn’t me struggling with Swindon, all along it had been me struggling with the acquired taste of adult life. I was sat in my room with a cup of tea when this revelation hit me and I didn’t move until a sip of cold tea shocked me into spilling half the cup over me (some things I’ll never grow out of).
Tuesday marked a milestone in my young adult life. As I served up celebratory butterfly cakes to my colleagues on my proper adult birthday several asked “what’s the occasion?” I told them it was my one year job anniversary. “Wow! Where has the time gone?” They responded with amazement. To many of them it also felt like only yesterday since I’d started working with them. While we all sat eating my cakes and talking about children, weddings and everything in between I glanced out of the window to see the sun shining down outside. From this I can now add my most recent (and waffley) lesson to the list. Something I wish I could have told myself many months ago:
Life after university is like the British weather. There will be rain, you will feel feel rubbish and at times it may feel like you’re the only one in the world going through it. However the sun will come out. It may take weeks or maybe even months, but it will come and trust me when it does arrive the glorious sun will be worth the wait.
Less waffley version – life will get better so man up and get on with it.
My Housemate's a Mermaid 