I have finally sold my flat in Balham. Which is a great weight off my shoulders.
I went down there today to take a few last things home and to tidy up for the new owners. It was a slightly dislocating experience. I have had the flat for six years and so it is understandably full of memories. Most of the memories involve me sitting around in just my pants watching telly and eating pizza, but they are still memories and thus as worthy as anything exciting that could have been happening to me if I wasn't too scared to go out.
It's been a few months since I've lived there and the place seemed slightly alien, mainly because it was totally empty. So much of what makes a home is the things and the people in it.
And the pizza.
My friend Mackay had helped me with the move and the cleaning. He owed me for helping him build his patio. Though getting the fridge freezer down into the cellar at my new place was probably harder than anything I had done for him that day (though to be fair he did nearly kill me by losing his grip on it. If I wasn't super fit I would be super flat now). However as the time came to leave for the last time Mackay left me alone, partly I think because he realised I should have some time to say goodbye and partly because I needed to go to the toilet for a pooh and I don't think he felt like standing outside on the landing trying to look like he wasn't uncomfortable.
So in an act of symbolism and perhaps instinctive marking of territory my last action in my old flat was to defecate. This would be my gift to the new occupants, letting them know that they may own the flat on paper, but for a couple of days at least they would not be able to forget me. My bowels, recognising the significance of this moment, conspired to produce some ordure so foul smelling, that even I, it's originator, was uncomfortable being in its prescence.
My work here was done.
I did flush though and disinfect (the toilet, not myself, though that might have been an idea). It was more of what the idea stood for.
I had one last look round and considered what the new occupants would do to this place. It had been a total mess when I'd bought it, and I'd repainted, rewired and recarpetted it. After six years it would need to be totally redone. They will probably convert the loft and I would guess the kitchen and bathroom will be totally changed. And of course they will have to have the toilet condemned now.
If I were to come back in a year the already unfamiliar place will be unrecognisable.
I loved that flat and although all week I have been delighted about the money I will receive and the second mortgage I will no longer have to pay, I felt guilty for a second that I had sold my old friend down the line in return for profit. I had turned my six year long companion and confidant and protector into a cheap tuppeny-happenny whore. Well actually, given the steep rise in property prices over the last half decade, into a high class escort. Though in a way that's worse. At least a tuppenny-happenny whore is honest about what she is.
Then I thought about the money again and realised that I didn't care all that much.
Not really. It was a little bit unsettling.
I walked down the stairs and out on to the street and closed the door for the very last time. I strode towards our van, determined not to look back. But I couldn't help it.
Was that a tear in the eye of my flat that I saw? Was she sad to see me go? Or just wincing from the final parting gift that I had given her? Or was it a building and thus unable to comprehend emotion or smell or even understand who or what I was?
As we drove off and I told Mackay of the unpleasant stench I had left behind me, he speculated about how many kilos of my own excrement had been flushed down that toilet in the last six years.
We concluded that it would be a lot.
Oh and for those of you who were trying to guess where I lived in Balham. It was Cambray Road.
Too late to get me now. I'm out of there!
It's the flat with the distinctive odour.
