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All landlords are bastards. Before you give me ‘I’m a landlord and I’m nice’ or ‘My mate is one and they’re lovely’, I’m going to have to stop you right there. You are not a good person, and that pal is a parasite. Profiteering from the human right to adequate housing automatically makes you a scumbag. Housing is a right, not a commodity. This is the truth and I hope, in time, you come to accept it.
Now I have always,always, hated landlords, but I’ll admit my bad feeling towards them has intensified recently. You see, my landlord also happened to be the landlord of my childhood best friend, Amara, until he gave her notice to vacate her flat so his cretin son could have it instead. Amara was single. Her job as the assistant manager of the fruit and veg section in ASDA pays OK but it was a struggle to find anywhere decent she could afford in time. Me, her very best friend in the world, offered up my sofa, saying it was hers for as long as she needed it. Nicol, my boyfriend, was not best pleased. He and Amara had never really formed much of a relationship, mainly because she found his belief that he could save the world with a perfectly prepared recycling bin and an online presence dedicated to shaming people who didn’t care as much as him tedious. I understood it was less than ideal, what with there not being a defined end date to the arrangement, but Nicol agreed to it on the basis of loving me and wanting to make me happy. This was a rare display of Nicol prioritising my needs and, I’m embarrassed to admit, it moved me to tears.
Anyway, Amara found a new flat within a month, so it wasn’t a huge imposition like Nicol had fretted it would be. Plus, during the time she lived with us, she warmed to him loads. It was delightful to watch my best friend finally realise how wonderful Nicol could be, and for him to find an issue he could actually assist with rather than bang on about helping online. He educated himself so he could help Amara navigate the legal recourse for being illegally evicted. Understanding how grim our housing system really is led to him and Amara forming their own renters union so what happened to her could be prevented from happening to anyone else ever again. Nicol finally had a cause where he could make a real difference at the local level. Not just in South Lanarkshire, but also at the micro-local level of our home, when he and Amara left it together, flitting in secret one Saturday afternoon while I was getting my hair cut and they said they were off protesting for rent controls. This was not something I had foreseen, and it was not an event that would have been possible if landlords were not cunts.
So here I am, sitting on the same pink velvet sofa Amara slept on – and, let’s be honest, definitely fucked Nicol on – in a flat I cannot afford on my salary of zero pounds and zero pence, having been made redundant two days after I was abandoned. My role of receptionist at a law firm deemed unnecessary, an unattended iPad was deemed to be as efficient as me. It goes without saying, then, that making money to keep a roof over my head is vital in my current circumstances. Which is why I am this second painting my toenails, a task I usually complete once a year when I go to a foreign beach, after which I let it flake off to nothing during the winter months. This exception is being made as I’m preparing to take pictures of my feet to sell to a pervert I met on Reddit who has already bank transferred me £50 and is promising more if he likes what he sees. After that it’s just a measly £650 I need to scramble together for the rent.
The television is on in an attempt to dull my intrusive thoughts, which include, but are not limited to, having to move back in with my parents at the age of thirty-two; not meeting someone to be the father of the children I want before my eggs all perish; and accidentally choking to death and my body not being found for days.
As I wipe a smear of nail polish from the cuticle of my pinky toe, the theme music forFixer Uppers Go Under the Hammerstarts. It sounds like a middling pop hit from the mid-90s and features a lot of saxophone, which is weird because I don’t think the programme first aired until the new millennium. The premise of it is that the presenter shows us a house or flat which is in a sorry state and about to be sold at auction. We then meet the person who has bought it and hear their plans for the renovation they are about to undertake, before an estate agent tells us how much they think the place is worth in its current condition. There are usually three such renovations per episode; only once we have seen all of the befores are we then taken to the afters. The properties have all been ‘transformed’ thanks to such arduous work as cleaning the place and then liberally dousing it in white paint. The estate agent returns and proclaims the buyer to have made a small fortune. The end.
It doesn’t sound like much, but as the days and weeks of solitude and unemployment have gone on, I’ve begun to findFixer Uppers Go Under the Hammerutterly gripping. This is despite the buyer almost always being someone who is trying to make extra income by being a dickhead landlord. This show has, in fact, probably inspired many of them to enter into the property management game. Everyone connected to it is a disgrace, while also being responsible for the one hour of the day where I experience the joy of being as justifiably angry as I want to be for the other twenty-three.
To be clear, I understand this is not quality entertainment. Everything about it is shite. And yet, I love it. This is in no small part thanks to Malcolm, the presenter, who is inexplicably always wearing two coats, a style choice I’ve only ever seen made by people who live on the streets. He’s fronted the show since it began and has an air of anger about him that, after two decades, this is still the only job he’s allowed to have in television. Travelling the length and breadth of the UK, standing in horrible houses, explaining how they could be less horrible and sold or rented for profit. His hair is sparse, highlighted at the tips and spiked up, giving him a hedgehog quality. This animalistic side is exacerbated by the noises he makes in place of any meaningful commentary. The other day, in a second bedroom which had room for a single bed and little else, he gestured to indicate the lack of space and growled.
Having watched so many episodes ofFixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer, I truly believe I know and understand Malcolm. He is a man trapped in a job he has grown tired of, but the low-level celebrity it gives him is not available to him elsewhere, so he has no choice but to turn up to an ex-council maisonette in Harrogate on a grey Tuesday to pretend to be enthusiastic about the ways an investor could improve it. My old receptionist job was like that. I’d worked there for years enjoying the mindlessness of it, believing I had a job for life and, even if I didn’t like it much, I was safe; no one else would fight me to make tea for clients. I wonder if Malcolm realises he’s one change of executive away from my existence.
The episode that’s on is a repeat, Malcolm looks less like he might have a drinking problem than he does in the newest ones. We see an auction room of dreary people bidding for a house riddled with mould. A man who has a pencil behind his ear, which lets us know upon sight that he works with his hands, ends up winning – although it doesn’t seem like much of a prize. Malcolm interviews him in the kitchen of the house he’s just bought, and I boo when he reveals that yes, he is a builder by trade and already has several rental properties. This isn’t booing like at a panto, it’s what I imagine the citizens of France gave the elites before they chopped their heads off during the Revolution. The first property really gets my blood pumping. I can’t wait to see the next minging house and hate the next landlord whose only ambition is to leech off renters.
My toenails are finished; the final effect is not quite as flawless as I would have hoped for. The ability to paint inside the boundaries of my own nails is not one I’ve ever possessed, exemplified by the skin all around my toes being streaked with colour where I’ve had to wipe away my mistakes. The polish itself doesn’t seem to want to dry. It’s plastic and tacky the way it gets when it’s old. None of this is ideal. I survey my feet like the builder surveys the rotten rooms he now possesses. This will do, we both think. Actually, I should clip the thick black hairs that grow on my big toes and then it will do.
I tighten the lid on the nail polish and carefully place it on the little table next to the sofa which used to hold Nicol’s constant cups of tea but is now perpetually empty. The thought of him makes me freeze for the briefest of seconds. Whenever he enters my mind, which is often, I have to make the decision not to wallow. Wallowing won’t change anything. Where before I had a steady relationship – although, after having had some time to reflect, it was not what I think many would consider agoodrelationship, but still, I wasn’t alone – a regular income to pay my bills with and a best friend to turn to whenever I needed, now I have nothing. Lose one of those, and you can be sad and then sort out a replacement. The full destruction of it all… nah, no point trying to come back from that. I don’t even have to make the choice this time, because Malcolm is introducing us to a new property that is going to auction and it’s in Hamilton, which steals my attention because I am in Hamilton too. In all of my weeks watching, this is only the third time they’ve been in Scotland. I’d assumed the budget didn’t stretch this far north, yet here is Malcolm walking down a street that looks like the one I live on. As I assess the scene, I realise it doesn’t just look like my street. Itismy street.
Fixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer
Series 25, episode 14.
First broadcast 20/03/19.
MALCOLM stops outside of a building – the same building Jemma lives in.
MALCOLM
Today I’m in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire. Home to the famous Hamilton Accies, the longest echo within any man-made structure in the world, and also this one-bedroom flat in a characteristically West of Scotland tenement building.
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA shouts ‘Bloody hell!’
MALCOLM strides up the stone stairs, passing the green tiles that line the stairwell. He stops on the landing which has two doors coming off of it.
MALCOLM
Flats in this style of building boast magnificent room sizes and, if you’re lucky, splendid period features, too.
MALCOLM enters the flat to his left, JEMMA’s flat, stopping in the hallway, next to the cupboard. He opens and shuts the cupboard door three times.
MALCOLM
A cupboard is always a handy thing to have.
CUT TO interior of the bathroom. All the fixtures are avocado green, the floor is covered in brown carpet tiles, the cream paint of the walls is coming away in huge strips like a bad sunburn revealing a baby-blue hue beneath it.
MALCOLM
Now the reception room, as you’d expect in a building of this style, is a good size. Such a good size that – if you wanted to – you could divide this space in two.
MALCOLM walks through the centre of the living room flailing his arms to indicate the dissection of the room into a smaller living room and another bedroom.
