25-06-2025
Home is where the Hove-l is
Photo by Susan Benson/Millennium Images
A week of a looming sense of unease is finally over. Some ten days ago, my landlords pinged over a text saying that they were sending some people to check the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors at some point between 10am and 4pm on Wednesday and that if I wasn't going to be in, there'd be someone with a key with them anyway, so don't think you can weasel your way out of this one, and anyway, it's for your own good. (Not their exact words. I give you the gist.)
Now, my landlords are pretty good as landlords go. They don't bother me, and I don't bother them. I pay my rent on time each month and decide that maybe the mould and the bubbling paintwork in the corner of the kitchen can wait for a bit. To do anything about it would be to have to invite someone else into the Hove-l, and that would be… suboptimal. For, as I might have mentioned before, or you might have been able to guess, I am not the tidiest person, and the place is not – how to put this delicately – conventionally tidy.
The squalor is not organic as such, so there is little prospect of the place being colonised by vermin, but there are still enough stray books, bits of paper, empty Haribo packs and God knows what else lying around for the casual observer to think that the person who lived here had gone beyond depression into a state not far off catatonia, and that some kind of intervention might be needed. I suppose I ought to admit that the bed itself, due to my habit of snacking on Tyrrells truffle and sea salt crisps (oh my God, these are heavenly) and Waitrose Essential Garibaldi biscuits, has resulted in a surface that is more crumb than bedsheet, but who other than me is going to notice?
Anyway, top and bottom: I had to tidy the place up before Wednesday. Normal people would have either a) cracked on straight away, or b) not let things get into such a state in the first place. But I am not normal people and so I let the matter rest, so to speak.
This had psychic repercussions: the looming sense of unease mentioned above, and also disturbances to sleep in the form of nightmares in which I was evicted; in one case, the agent doing the evicting looked uncannily like JD Vance. That woke me up.
The thing is, I like living here. I have done so for nearly five years, which is the longest I have lived anywhere since being kicked out of the original Hovel after living there for ten years. The reasons I like living here are the location – handy for Waitrose and 24-hour shops that cater for the insomniac who fancies a packet of Haribo and some sour-cream flavour Pom Sticks, yet also in a leafy part of town which is actually like one of the posher bits of London, say, around Gloucester Crescent or something. On a summer evening, with the birds tweeting their goodnights in the soft twilight, it is magical. The view from one side is of this genteel rus in urbe location; there are houses opposite whose balconies and high ceilings, not to mention polished and tidy interiors, induce in me pangs of envy and regret, but then I remember I have something they don't have and never will: a view of the sea, and, therefore, if the conditions are right and I turn the lights out, a view, I like to think, of all creation to the far corners of the universe. Yes, I know you can have one of those if you look straight up, but there's something about looking out to sea, isn't there?
There are two snags. The most obvious one is the size of the place. It is tiny. The lack of any windows in the bathroom makes it seem even smaller. Then again, how much does one person need? It's just more to tidy up. The other is the sense of insecurity that comes with renting. One can get thrown out at any time for any reason, and even if my landlord is a business that wants nothing more than to run smoothly and not go chucking its tenants out on a whim, the memory of being chucked out in previous lives lingers. Just like Shostakovich would have a suitcase packed by the door ready to go in case he got word the NKVD would be turning up in the middle of the night for a chat, so I do not have what you might call markers of permanence here. The starkest example being that there is not a single piece of art on the walls, and I like my art. But just as we are born unfurnished, so I rented this place unfurnished, and, should I have to leave, that is the condition I will have to leave it in. What I will do with the bed is anyone's guess. (It's a very good bed, and I should know.)
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Well, I managed to tidy up, or at least clear a path from the front door to the bedroom. Picking stuff off the carpeted floor was a challenge without a vacuum cleaner, but I did it. I even washed my bedding, but that was more for my comfort than anyone else's. The people who came round to check the appliances were lovely, but not really my type.
[See also: Thomas Skinner's full English]
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