It never rains but pours...

Haven't really felt the need to post again until now.

2022 may only be 40 days old, but so far it has been a terribly woeful year for me. For starters, I spent most of the first half cooped up at home awaiting results of a Covid test that I didn't ever think was coming. After 15 days of waiting I finally got them, the irony being that it didn't really matter what the result was seeing I waited so long for them. BTW it was negative.

Then on Jan 15, something totally unexpected happened. I hadn't even changed out of the clothes I wore to bed the previous night when I heard cars and vans pulling up outside. First it was ambulance, then it was firies, then finally the police marching past my living room window. It turns out the tenant in #3 had died, the really sad part being was that he could've been dead up to a week. He had apparently drunk himself into a stupor and banged his head on the stove. We (the other tenant in #4 and myself) didn't see him that often, but I did chat to him on a couple of occasions and got to know him fairly well. I can honestly say he didn't get many visitors. I think it affected me more than I realised, seeing I occasionally have terrible thoughts of the same thing happening to me. It was a rather surreal sight watching uniformed and plain clothed officers walk up and down the landing, reporting and discussing things and I think I really heard more than what I should have. The whole process, with forensics involved as well, lasted around 5.5 hours.

Wind the clock forward to this week. On Monday, after a rare trip out to a local shopping centre (I am very reluctant these days to even set foot out the door but felt the need to go, even though currently I have a 50% rate of being somewhere where I could well be a casual contact) I returned home to find water flowing out of three separate places in the road. Great - a burst water main and no water in the house for several hours whilst council repaired it. Sigh.

But the big kick in the guts arrived yesterday, a week after my first rental inspection in nearly a year. I returned a missed call to the real estate only to learn that it was a courtesy call that I was being given 90 days to vacate the premises. A ruddy nice way to treat a tenant who had been here for 16.5 years give or take a month who was never late with the rent, reported all problems in a timely matter and had so many uncaring sods to deal with. The only place I've been at longer was the family home up north.

The only excuse offered was that my place wasn't in the best of conditions, but then neither are the rest of the units, though 2-4 have at least been partially renovated since I've been here seeing there's been regular turn over of tenants. (It would have helped if the landlords had responded in a more prompt matter when repairs were needed, but hey, that's beside the point.) The fact that the lass in #4 wasn't being shifted and that new tenants in 2 + 3 are expected (and interested parties had called in today to view #3) the conclusion drawn is that they just want me gone to renovate the place. That simple.

So now I have to go out into a Covid world and look for a new place to live, which I haven't done in 17 years. The market has changed, the way things are done are changed (apps and websites rather than printed sheets), prices have risen and I'd be lucky to find a studio apartment around here for $300 per week (that'll be half my pension gone in a fortnight), a considerable hike to what I'm paying current. The first place I viewed today was little more than a walk in wardrobe with a toilet for $230 per week.

My moods fluctuate considerably now. I am tired, I am sad, I am angry, I am depressed, and I am really in no mood to do the leg work and start packing, much less anything else, like continue writing a book on my experiences here and the other tenants I've met. But at the moment it's just me. I honestly don't know how I'll get through the next 89 days.

Rant concluded.