After things went pear shaped living with my ex girlfriend, I went back to Me Flibble's to work out what my future held. I researched rental prices around England; mostly Southern counties, from Cornwall all the way across to Kent. I just happened to include Norfolk, I'm not sure why. I arranged viewings, and took myself all over, within the space of a few days. I went from Devon to Somerset, where I overnighted, then from Wales to Norfolk.
I drove over 6 hours to view the house in West Raynham. I arrived early. I waited. The agent didn't turn up. He didn't answer his phone either. I was damned if I was going to admit defeat though. West Raynham felt like peace incarnate, so I wanted to see the property. I looked through the windows. I couldn't see much of the kitchen, but could see that the front room was a work in progress. The floor boards were bare, and there was a step ladder in the middle with an open paint can on top. No one around though.
So, noticing that all the properties appeared to be the same, I knocked on next door and asked if they'd mind me having a look around. I was pleasantly surprised at how much space I would be getting for the rent.
I had really liked one of the houses in Wales, but being on the main road made me nervous of it. I often wonder now how different my life would be if I'd moved there instead of to Norfolk. That landlord there, at least, seemed really nice. But I chose West Raynham. And that's when the problems started!
I can't really remember how I got all of my stuff to West Raynham. I have a feeling that my step dad, helped. Or perhaps Mr Flibbles did. It was my birthday, which was really weird as I'd moved in with my ex girlfriend on my sister's birthday. It's probably insignificant to most people, but the two dates are welded in my brain, so...
I was shocked by the house when I moved in. The bedroom window had a huge crack across it. The bathroom sink was broken, the shower hanging off the wall, the tiles cracked. The door of the built in cupboard in the living room was hanging off its hinges, and wouldn't closed. The whole house was absolutely filthy. The floor was covered in dirt; it took me weeks of cleaning it on my hands and knees to finally get it to a reasonable state. The bathroom floor was as bad, plus it had paint splattered on it, and the sticky residue of carpet tape around the edges. Someone had obviously been employed to paint the house, but they had painted all the built in cupboards closed, including the electricity metre, and had only painted part of the way up the walls upstairs. The kitchen units were very old, probably from the 80s or earlier. One of the drawers wouldn't open due to being blocked by the handle from the cupboard next to it. Because the units were old, they weren't designed to fit modern appliances. My step dad did his best to adjust them, but I ended up with appliances lining the back wall instead. The tap of the kitchen sink was so disgusting that we decided to replace it. The sink wouldn't drain. My step dad rodded the drains for me, which helped a bit. A few months later Ben (with his plumber training) took a look at the internal pipes and discovered that they were absolutely packed with lard. He replaced those for me.
I made a list of the issues with the house and contacted the number the agents had given me as being the property manager. I left message after message after message, but no one got back to me. I tried phoning the agent office itself, but the number came up dead. Emailing the agent who I'd dealt with returned to me as "server not recognised".
I was totally lost as to what to do. I'd moved in at the beginning of October. A few weeks before Christmas my step dad had a go at me because I hadn't had any of the problems fixed yet. So while he was adjusting the kitchen units I tried phoning different branches of the agent I'd rented through. A lady at the Dereham branch told me that there had never been a King's Lynn branch; that I must be mistaken and must have rented through Norwich. Well, Norwich being another hour to the East, I knew I'd never been there. I telephoned them anyway. Another lady tried searching for my property on their data bases, but could find no reference of it at all. I was totally stumped. (It's just occurred to me now that if I'd not paid a months rent, I'd have quickly found out who was responsible for the property).
One day in January I was in King's Lynn. I noticed that there was a branch of the agent hidden down one of the roads. It wasn't where I'd collected the house keys from though. I went in and spoke to someone. They said they were a new branch, that there had never been one where I thought there was. (Eventually I did learn that there had been, that it had shut a few days after I rented the house). I was given an agent as a point of contact, Ashley, so I talked to him about the problems with the house. He asked me to email him the list.
Ashley wanted to see the problems for himself, so made an appointment to come and see the house. I showed him around, pointing out each issue. To each problem he had an excuse as to why I could live with it. Broken shower; can still be used by hand! Cracked window; only on one pane of the double glazing. Filthy floor; clean it. This was when I started to feel really despondent regarding the house.
A few weeks after moving in, both my cats and I started experiencing explosive diarrhoea. I went to my new doctor, who diagnosed Giardia. I informed the vet of the diagnosis, so he tested for it, and indeed found that the cats all had it too. So at a huge cost, both to my pocket and to my energy levels, I treated the cats with Metronidazole. The same thing my GP had given me! None of us had been ill prior to moving into the house, so we could only have picked it up there. From the filth. I probably got it from the disgusting tap, and the cats probably got it from the dirty floor. It took a huge toll on me, which I wish I could have somehow held the agent or landlady responsible for.
When I first moved in, the house wasn't connected to the BT network that enables the internet. So for a couple of months I was free! There was something strange plugged into the TV aerial, so I couldn't watch TV either, until one of my friends fixed it. The electricity metre was over clocking at such a ridiculous rate that I was paying £50 twice a week just to run my fridge freezer and phone charger. Eventually someone at Robin Hood (power company) listened to my plight and helped me a bit. It's because of that over clocking that I spent most of the snowy cold winter with no heating. I became quite accustomed to being cold, which seems to still affect how I experience heat now.
I kept emailing and phoning Ashley to try and get help, but I could never get hold of him. One day another lady answered his phone. She looked at the records for the house and found that rather than assessing the problems for me, Ashley had performed an inspection; his only comment being "better watch the cat situation".
I don't remember how, but eventually I became aware that there was a property manager in Norwich, who should have been able to help me. She was really nice to start with. Conscientiously trying to help. But just as I had, she kept running into brick walls with Ashley.
And then without explanation, Ashley was gone.
And then the property manager was gone.
I discovered that most of my clothes and blankets had gone completely mouldy in one of the cupboards. I'm extremely allergic to mould, so I had to throw them away. I found this quite distressing, as one of the items was my Great Aunt's birth blanket. She'd given it to me to keep safe, before she passed away. And I let her down.
I asked the agents to fix the mould. I asked several times, explaining that I need it urgently fixed as I'm allergic to it. I obtained quotes on how much it would cost, and offered to pay half. But I never received a response.
When I had been there 18 months I received a letter telling me that they were going to increase my rent by £50/m. It's not a huge amount, but I objected, given that neither the agent or landlady were holding their end of the bargain in regards to my tenancy. I told the agent that I would happily pay the increased amount of rent once they had fixed the mould problem. Next thing I knew I received an eviction notice.
Given how attached I felt, and feel, to West Raynham, you may be able to imagine how distressed I was by this. I didn't want to find another home, and once again I felt cheated by letting agencies, so I was loathe to go through one to rent again. However, I found a seemingly nice agent who helped me work my way through the eviction, and helped me find another home.
My previous agent wasn't finished yet though. 10 days before I was due to be out of the property they changed the locks. I'd been moving my belongings across to the new house, bit by bit, over the previous couple of weeks. When they changed the locks I lost several bits of furniture, and all of my old shop stock, worth several thousand pounds. Plus of course I didn't have the opportunity to clean the house or throw the rubbish away.
So that was the end of my life in West Raynham.
It was so frustrating, all of it. I kept telling Ashley the things I'd like to do for the house, but I don't believe he ever communicated any of it to the landlady. At the time, there were government initiatives to help people on low incomes improve the energy efficiency of their homes. I had lined up a company to change the storage heaters, and another company to insulate the walls, funded by the government. It just needed the landlady's authority, which I never succeeded in getting.
In frustration I actually wrote to the her, to the address on my tenancy agreement. I learnt at the end of my time there that she had moved house without updating the agency of her new contact details.
I believe that in the communications Ashley did have with her, he made me out as being a really awful tenant. I suspect that when I asked to have the mould treated in order for the rent to increase, he told her that I just wouldn't pay it. I believe he was sacked for being a lazy twat.
And the really stupid thing was that the landlady was so keen to get rid of me that she had the locks changed before my tenancy was over, but then didn't even try to get a new tenant for over six months.
I really miss West Raynham though, and hope that somehow I'll be able to buy one of the houses there one day.
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