Post 462 - Living Conditions

Silence. To most it’s golden, but to someone who this time last year lived slap-bang in the middle of the seagull equivalent of Grand Central Station, it’s also platinum-coated, diamond-encrusted, and presented in a box lined with angel’s pubic hair. My new pad in deepest darkest Kincorth has many advantages over my previous abode on Aberdeen’s undesirable Bank Street, but freedom from the squawking menace that blighted my beloved beauty sleep is the cherry on top of this crib-related cake. A brief visit to my old stomping ground on Friday night hammered this message home, as 30 seconds of enduring that contemptible cacophony while I stood on the doorstep awaiting entry was enough to have me reaching for the Kingsmill laced with arsenic – and that was just for myself – you should see what I had in store for the seagulls.

And so after two years of living in a cramped, overpriced shoebox, where I was frequently kept awake by seagulls, drunks from the pub down the street, taxi drivers, van drivers, boy racers, trains, and worst of all, the fucking students who lived downstairs, finally I’ve upped sticks and moved into a spacious semi-detached in Aberdeen’s south side. Kincorth, by reputation, may not be the nicest area of Aberdeen, and I would think twice about walking around it by myself at night (or even setting foot into the local pub) but most importantly for me, it’s far enough away from the city centre and the fish factories at the harbour to ensure that I get an uninterrupted 8 hours a night. Give me neds on tiny motorbikes, gobby single mums and hardened criminals over students and seagulls any day of the week.

While noise reduction may have been my number one reason for moving, space was a close second. Beautiful, empty space. You don’t realise how much you love vast expanses of nothingness until you don’t have them. In my last flat, all my worldly possessions were crammed into sheds, attics, under tables, behind sofas, on top of kitchen cupboards, piled up on stairwells, basically anywhere I could find to store stuff, as my bedroom was so small there was only room for a bed and a chest of drawers in it, and the tiny top-floor flat had no built in cupboards. At the all-new chez-Lucky, there’s a decent-sized living room and kitchen downstairs, and more importantly I have a nice big airy bedroom upstairs, in which there’s easily room for my bed; two double wardrobes for all my beautiful clothes; my bookcase; my electric keyboard and stand which I can now set up permanently and actually learn to play; a double chest of drawers (sitting on top of which is my flat-screen TV, big black and shiny like Darth Vader’s helmet, my DVD player and my assortment of vintage games consoles); and there’s a big built in cupboard where I can store all my guitars, DVDs etc. And there’s still more than enough room for me to stretch out and do some sit-ups or squats first thing in the morning. Not that I would ever do that, but it’s nice to know I have the option. It’s a good, if peculiar feeling being able to walk across my bedroom, rather that being able to reach all four walls from my bed.

The convenience factor may be gone - it takes me a little longer to drive to and from work every day; I can’t walk home from the pub at kicking out time; I don’t live above a well-stocked newsagent anymore; but on the plus side I also don’t live above two noisy stupid 18 year old whores who have fucking parties that go on until 6am on a Wednesday, with their retarded friends mashing their fat kebab-stained fingers on the door buzzers at 2 in the morning and waking everyone up. I’ve never came so close to shitting through someone’s letter box before – though I did take some slightly less scatological revenge: every time they woke me up with one of their late night / early morning parties, when I got up at 8am to go to work (having got about 2 hours sleep) I took a roll of electrical tape downstairs with me, and taped down the button on their buzzer system on my way out of the door, knowing that the only way they would be able to stop it is to drag their hungover arse out of bed, get dressed and go out the front door and remove the tape. Was it petty? Definitely. Did it feel good? It felt fucking great, seeing those bleary-eyed troglodytes standing on the doorstep in their dressing gown trying to figure out what was wrong with their buzzer. If only I could have found some way to take similar revenge on the fucking seagulls…

Song currently listening to – “All For The Sake Of Love” by Die Toten Hosen.
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