Property

The Germans live in Germany,
The Romans live in Rome,
The Turkeys live in Turkey,
But the English live at home.

- JH Goring, The Ballad of Lake Laloo and other Rhymes, 1909

I have been given a responsibility - that of placing my inheritance into property. I did so 3 years ago at great cost to my lifestyle. At the time, I was living in a room in a big house in one of the prettiest and most expensive towns in the world. It was my first place of my own - where I lived alone. (I call it my own, though I was renting it. To me, I don't see a difference - unless you can buy a place outright you're still paying someone and it's never 'your own'.There is an obsession in England with owning property that I cannot understand.)

I loved that room and my time in it. Not perfect - the window looked out onto a brick wall! But it also had two attic windows which gave it plenty of light. And as I say, I was in what I consider to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. The best thing was, living so modestly, I didn't have to spend each day doing a high pressure job. I was temping at the local University and I was a Personal Assistant to one of the loveliest people I've ever worked with. In fact, this happened twice. It was only when I had to get a permanent job that life became less fun. I was enjoying working for this woman - we had a great working relationship and she really made me laugh. I had minimal responsibility. Not very much money, but enough. However, I knew that I would have to get a permanent job in order to qualify for a mortgage, and invest the inheritance as I had been instructed. So I did.

I left my little room and bought a small flat locally, at a considerable financial stretch, at the end of July. After all, that is where my life was. Within 6 months I did possibly the top 3 most stressful things you can do. I lost my Mum, started a new, important job and bought a property. It was bloody awful. Within weeks it was clear that the job was not going to work out.

The job was utterly doomed. No matter what I did. And I really tried to stick it out. I knew 2 years before I left I was in the wrong job, but the consequences for the property didn't bear thinking about. Without commuting into London (which is, I'm convinced, is some kind of purgatory) I could not afford to live in the flat. I moved into a different position for 6 months or so just to pay the bills and get by until I moved on for good.

I had done two years of working out plumbing, putting shelves up, worrying about damp, bricks, curtains, friends thinking it's really cool to have your own place but not prepared to help, carrying everything because I didn't have a car (most people would have a car before a property I think, and living in London it would be criminal to own one, in my opinion), and basically being left to manage a property, of which I had no experience, and get used to life without my Mother, entirely on my own. I was stressed out and felt completely isolated. I had responsibilities some of friends couldn't, and still can't conceive of, and it separated me from them. They were able to continue being students, or living with parents or just meeting friends instead of buying bathroom sealant and feeling like your life's been escalated forward by 20 years. I would sit on my lovely sofa and stare at the wall. So much comfort. Yet it all meant nothing to me. Last April, after the doctor prescribed anti-depressants, I threw them out without taking a single one and started planning a new life. I took voluntary redundancy at work and put some savings towards re-training as a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teacher. But first I had to rent the flat out to cover the mortgage from Hell.

I arranged this. I paid out several thousand pounds on certificates, various maintainance work, re-servicing the boiler, installing a new shower and even got a new roof for the extension (flat roofs, bad bad bad). I thought I was leaving the flat in a secure and fully operational situation. I moved everything I owned into a family attic, where it remains, and let the flat fully furnished.

I was making no profit, I simply wanted the property to pay for itself so I could live my life the way I wanted to. I wanted my freedom.

Having had my whole world, or my understanding of it, turned upside-down, I decided to go to Spain and teach English with nothing more than a large suitcase and my laptop. No longer interested in the right hand bag, a big television, an all singing all dancing mobile phone, having nice clothes, I decided I wanted the freedom to move around, and work for a modest income - the reward being a better climate, meeting new people and taking a chance on life, which if nothing else is what my Mother's death taught me. I could have spent the rest of my life in that flat, in that beautiful town, eating comfort food, walking around the parks and hoping with all my heart that one day I'd eventually meet someone who brought meaning to my life. Because no material thing could anymore, and all of my friends and family had someone more important to them (a spouse or a child or family, etc) and I was simply not needed. I decided to make the most of my lack of commitments and my lack of being needed. I decided to have an adventure.

I got away from it for only a few months before the flat suffered a range of difficulties that I couldn't have forseen and I had to return to sort it out. Disaster. I had money set aside just in case. But not this much.

I am therefore selling the flat. Because I cannot go back to that kind of job.

I had one before. I worked in a high building. And I remember looking out of the window and thinking, I could jump. But I wouldn't because I want to live. But not the way people expect or want me to. I remember looking out of that window and thinking, knowing my luck, I'd probably just break everything and still be alive. I got back down (off the table near the window) and looked at the pile of photocopying. I got back on the table and looked out the window. The sun was setting. I thought how nice it was to have choice about something, even if it was taking my own life. I looked back at the photocopying. For about 5 minutes, I remained trapped between the choice of photocoping 150 student files and throwing myself to my death. In the end I just got back off the table, left the photocopying room and went and bought a chocolate doughnut. I DO NOT wish to go back to that situation. I need to find another way of existing. I did offices full and part time from 1997 until 1996. 9 years. I think I've done offices, considering it is rather clear that it isn't the best environment for me. I will do it if necessary, if the means justifies the ends, and if the job has just a little bit of meaning or purpose rather than endless bureaucratic nothingness. I just want to make the most of every moment. I left a life of comfort behind in order to do that.

So. I'm selling. And I'm not re-buying.

Not yet. One day, I hope I will have a career, perhaps even the one I've always wanted (or just a job which I can enjoy), and a reason to be in a particular place. Surely if life is to have a pattern, it is to go out, find your calling, maybe find a mate, settle down, re-populate the Earth (or just a bit of it) and die. It's in that order for a reason. To settle down first and have my life taken up with trivia and financial burden, all for the sake of having the status of property owner and earning a profit is ludicrous. It's the wrong way around. The thing that really gets me is I watched my Mother struggle year after year to pay for her mortgage. The mortgage she never paid off. Because she died young. Of stress. Because she worked herself into an early grave. To pay for a mortage. For a house. Which she never owned. Because she died at 59. Because she worked too hard. So that's great. Am I to have the same fate? In 27 years time I would have paid off my mortage. I would be 55. If I live as long as her (and really, the amount of cancer in my family, and on my Dad's side too, is absurd. We're like walking tumours) I will have 3 years to enjoy the property that I OWN. Oh goody. Then I'll die. There are no cheque books in Heaven so I'll leave it behind for my kids. Except I won't have kids, because instead of finding my own family I'll have been too busy trying to unblock the sink and re-build the wall and get over-time at work to pay for a new tap.

All I have is me and my hopes for a creative career. And yet, that is what I'm being to asked to sacrifice. For the sake of 'owning' a property. It has its place, but not for 27 year old single actress who's raison d'etre dictates a life of insecurity.

"The British try to create certainty in an uncertain world by staking out their own territory. There are huge pressures to buy in the UK. If you are in your 30s and renting people wonder what's wrong with you. Renting is a stigma like being unemployed. You are perceived widely as not having a stake in society."
- Dorothy Rowe, Clinical Psychologist, author of The Real Meaning of Money.

I know that my family and friends love me and want the best for me. They want me to be safe and secure. What they fail to understand is that just over 3 years ago, the most significant person in my life died and I will never, ever feel secure again as long as I live. She died in front of me. That's one Hell of a lesson in mortality. Security is an illusion. You can pretend with houses and cars and insurance policies, but at the end of the day the most important things in life get snatched away from you at the drop of a hat and there's nothing you can do about it. The only way I can reconcile this is to live my life in a fashion which celebrates every moment, every gift and every loved one. I don't want to be bogged down by materialism and the rat-race when I can have my freedom and be myself. I hope that one day I can find work in my field of vocation (I'm holding out for some auditions in England but I have to wait until next year) and maybe then I'd have a reason to go to a certain place and settle independently. Once I have a place or a person, or God willing even both, perhaps then I can look at buying a property. But I will not find those things by submitting to a safe job and home. Buying for the sake of greed - for an investment I may not even live to see, seems utterly ludicrous. I am therefore following a dream as far as I can, to pursue writing, acting and my heart. I will go where I believe I am being lead, be it by God or by madness. It's what's in my heart and I trust it. After all, if I end up in a mental instutition I still won't have to worry about the guttering or British bloody Gas.

I'm told so often that by renting I'm throwing money down the drain. Really? I have my freedom to change my job, my country, and my home at a month's notice. And I don't have to pay out if the toilet explodes. In fact, I can claim money back off my landlady. I expect will buy a place one day if only to respect my Mother's wishes, but all this philosophy of buying doesn't mean anything to me. All I hear is that I will be rich one day. Is that the same 'one day' my Mother used to speak of before she died prematurely, I wonder?

But you know, I'll make money my own way, through writing or acting, and I'll be free and I'll be comfortable, with or without my Mother's gift, and with or without understanding.

*And now, to add a note in October 2008 amidst what appears to be a global recession, I can celebrate my choice having sold at the right time (Feb this year!). I can now go anywhere I want, and I'm not losing equity in my property. Ha.*

I'm leaving you with this article.

"The crash predicted for 2005 never happened, but interest rates are rising, troubling homeowners already paying as much as they can afford each month, and predictions are filling the newspapers that the Bank of England will raise its base rate again next week, to at least 5.5%. In America there are warnings that defaults on $300bn of mortgage debt may tip the country into recession. In Britain, house-price inflation dipped below 10% in March, and home ownership dropped for the first time in 50 years; late April brought back predictions of a coming crash - and a crash would, of course, please those who can't buy, those for whom the boom simply means an ever-more-unattainable goal.

But home repossessions and wiped-out pensions are a bleak and extreme answer to a problem that must be addressed with subtlety - and with urgency. The British relationship with bricks and mortar is like an increasingly dysfunctional marriage, in which every day that passes makes the country more ruinously dependent on a partner it cannot, or won't, control. Some tough questions, about everything from snobbery to social exclusion, political failure to plain greed, need to be answered bravely and fast if its children are to emerge relatively unscarred." - Aida Edmariam, The Guardian, May 4th 2007

For the full article click here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2072197,00.html