madhatter’s coffee.

Illustration by jaqian

Everybody has a weak point. A point that other persons ought better not to cross. A point were one gets angry. I, for example, don’t like to be fucked over.

Not that Iris did. Well, I guess she didn’t really intended to. Or I still try to stick to that belief. It’s gets harder after what happened, I admit it. She basically took my rent – twohundredandthirty quid – and my deposit – another twohundredandninety quid – and run away with it. I’ve been told that Bristol is a very expensive place and I am certainly overpaid regarding that I only work twelve hours a week. But I’m still pissed.

But that only turned out when I was already considering the idea of moving out. I’m no angel, I considered moving out long before I mentioned it to anyone. Long before I actually acknowledged it to myself. What would also be a pertinent observation about me is that I am a lazy bastard. Which was more or less the reason why I didn’t care, why I didn’t move out. I had a nice room, I had just moved in, I had a stunning view on the Edinburgh Castle, I simply saw no reason.

So I stayed.

And got fucked over another time. This time it was the agency.

Kingford Estates Ltd. is that sort of company people around here would call a ‘bunch of fuckers’. An interestingly good description if you ask me. What happened unfolds like this: If I wasn’t an angel my flat-mates definitely were devils. Their philosophy was as simple as ineffective. The agency wasn’t very obliged to their duties so they decided to drop their’s. Not smoking in the flat was, as I already mentioned, one of them. And after the agency didn’t really care about the state of their property we stopped to do so, too. How could we have, anyways? With no hover cleaning was definitely out of question. It was cold outside, so we stopped smoking out there. And, what none of us did know: Mario stopped paying the bills. That he spent the money the others gave him for his own purposes if he needed to is another story.

Nevertheless, after a wile and many complaints things started to turn out positive. Or so we thought. We received a letter from the agency telling us that we would be relocated to a hotel for three days in order to complete the final repairs in kitchen and bathroom. Which was a brilliant idea. There was only one problem. The problem was small, had long hair and a German nationality. It was me.
As a subtenant your landlords don’t even know about the amount of tenant’s rights you can claim is ridiculously small. You’re basically homeless. And of course it is a little bit difficult to check into a hotel if you’re supposed to be a) Spanish b) female and c) beautiful. Assumed of course, you don’t match those criteria.
Since I didn’t, I chose the way of making myself official. Being official is something expensive in Scotland. And compared to Germany it is just crazy. In Germany there are no agencies. I’ve been a subtenant for my whole life, I never signed a contract and if I payed I simply handed over some cash.
Well, at least this didn’t change. The amount of cash I payed to Kingsford Estates summed up to exactly onehundredandtwenty British Pound Sterling. For staying exactly one month… but let’s stick to the storyline. At least this made me a rightful tenant, for good measure even a tenant that was internationally credible, since I had to pass a so called international credit check which should prove that I never committed the crime of running away without paying my rent. So far so good.

That nothing was done, when we came back is a different kettle of fish.

to be continued…

…peep… peep… Well, I think I’m more or less back to live. The past two months were a little bit stressful. But no worries, slowly but in time I’ll retell the adventurous story how a naive stranger in this city was robbed, thrown in the gutter and continued fighting with fierce adversaries to emerge as a new hero for a bunch of twelve-year old pupils.

Everything began… when I moved in. Moving into another city is always a risk. The main problem isn’t to find a home or new people to talk to, the problem is to find someone you trust.

I’m easily fooled.

When the innocent teacher moved into a flat with a bunch of Spaniards he made not just one mistake. He mistook the whole situation. Iris, the girl that inhabited the room before I moved in was smart and totally stupid in the same moment. I suppose she mistook the situation as well as I did – the difference between me and her was that she had criminal instinct.
Her error was to trust the Mexicans. And to think that a letting agency should be professional and costumer orientated. The agency’s name was Kingsford Estates Ltd. and the assumptions proved fatally wrong.

Kingford Estates is as far as I experienced professional in doing exactly one thing: sailing very, very close to the wind. But the fact that they did not even know that they had Mexican tenants before my flat-mates moved in really swept me of my feet. This small incident resulted in my flat-mates being accused of causing damage in the flat they weren’t responsible for.

But back to the beginning of this story… Once upon a time my flat-mates moved into a nice flat in Leith, offering a magnificent view to the castle and being hilariously cheap. They head heard about this flat from some Mexicans who wanted to move out and were looking for new tenants who would start a new contract for another twelve months. The landlords seemed to be more or less reasonable and further doubts were resolved by the already mentioned view.
After they moved in they realized the contract they signed had some handicaps. For smokers it can be a small problem to live inside a nonsmoking flat. And then there were all those small damages that the agency had promised to repair. Two months later the small damages were still there and had bred a few siblings. Three months later the flat still missed the repairs and also a hover plus a microwave.

This was the point when the plumbing in the bathroom exploded. I don’t know how it looked like, it was mid August and I was backpacking through Sweden. But if you ever lived in a house where you had your own private waterfall in the kitchen you probably get an idea of the situation. Well, the plumbing was fixed. The damages were… cladded.

So when I moved in everything looked more or less alright. And if you’re desperately looking for a flat you don’t care about a little hole behind the sink or some dark spots at the ceiling. And you definitely don’t ask, if they have a hover. Who for Christ’s sake doesn’t have a hover?
So I moved in, a naive newly-born subtenant, gave my money to Iris who moved out and my deposit as well, because she promised to change the names in the agency. Nice. Everything is settled. Let’s start to live again.

to be continued…