Help me lose my home & save my life
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Help me Lose My Home and Save My Life
Losing my home
Two months ago I got a letter from my landlords, demanding a new tenancy agreement at £500 higher than what I’ve been paying. They gave me 14 days to sign it or else.
I didn’t sign.
I took advice, took some time to get my head around it, and then realised that it wasn’t a choice. They’ll have me out no matter what I do.
This flat has been our home for 13 years. In it I raised three teenagers, hosted a million sleepovers — was made redundant twice, then lost my job in the cuts — wrote several books, held workshops, put up half the poetry world on my sofa bed, and let all sorts of people come and live in Daisy’s old room in the hope of creating something sustainable.
Now it’s over.
Threatening Letter No. 3 dropped on my mat last week; I replied giving a month’s notice. My current (adorable) lodger leaves at the end of May and so must I.
Turns out losing your home is easy. What's harder is...
Saving my life
I am determined to make this catastrophe into a fresh start. All through April I’ve been selling my possessions — giving things to friends and charity shops, dumping stuff on the kids. It’s been gruelling work involving furniture, baby things, books, childhood treasures, endless papers of all kinds, kitchenware, clothes, and vintage mirrors. I’ll have sold about 10 typewriters when I’m done, at knockdown bargain rates, and will own a LOT less stuff. My good table goes on Monday.
And I've rehomed two of the guinea pigs — only one geriatric one still needs a new place...
What’s left will have to go into storage. I’ll go house-hopping and sofa-surfing, rebuild my income, and try to figure out how — and where — I might have a future. A friend is letting me use her place in Brighton as sort of base camp. I’m digitising my office. My new Pod of Being (funded by a pristine 1956 German portable) is a big green suitcase.
I’m going to start a blog. Basically, turn myself into a picaresque post-modern novel as I figure things out. You, whoever wants to, can come along with me. Watch this space.
REALLY saving my life
Here’s the thing. In the next couple of weeks, I actually have to pay a moving man and a storage place. (Storage alone turns out to be much more expensive than 99% of people think it is, and requires deposits, upfront payments, insurance, and VAT on top of stated price.)
And — like any picaresque heroine — I’m virtually penniless. There are no savings. Right now I’m living off the sale of my household goods, and the float has just been eaten up by a couple of bills, and I’ve even left it almost too late to do this appeal, through sheer dread of having to ask.
I also have (& I mean HAVE) to sort out my citizenship. That chronic, sub-dermal buzz of fear gets louder with every new immigration scandal. This alone will cost over £2,000 by the time it’s done. But for now even that has to come second. Storage and van and being able to get through the next month or two come first.
Saving my work
As soon as I’m out of this flat I will be hard at it, website-building, working, spreading the net to get more work in.
Everything will be all right — I know it will, I’m going to see to it. But I can only make it all right if I can get my things into storage, eat, and live secure in the country where I’ve lived my whole adult life. And I can only do that with a lot more help than I feel comfortable asking for.
Please help me turn this utter disaster into a fresh start. Any little bit of help makes a difference — even a bus fare is a bus fare.
I will make it up, free from my seven years of trying to bail out a sinking ship, by doing what I should be doing. Writing. This blog idea feels like a big thing — I'm far from the only person this is happening to.
And I will keep writing the very best literary criticism, essays, poetry, articles, books that I know how to write.
And by tutoring and supporting all kinds of writers, and editing all kinds of text, the very best I know how.
And by being eternally grateful.
Thanks. <3
Losing my home
Two months ago I got a letter from my landlords, demanding a new tenancy agreement at £500 higher than what I’ve been paying. They gave me 14 days to sign it or else.
I didn’t sign.
I took advice, took some time to get my head around it, and then realised that it wasn’t a choice. They’ll have me out no matter what I do.
This flat has been our home for 13 years. In it I raised three teenagers, hosted a million sleepovers — was made redundant twice, then lost my job in the cuts — wrote several books, held workshops, put up half the poetry world on my sofa bed, and let all sorts of people come and live in Daisy’s old room in the hope of creating something sustainable.
Now it’s over.
Threatening Letter No. 3 dropped on my mat last week; I replied giving a month’s notice. My current (adorable) lodger leaves at the end of May and so must I.
Turns out losing your home is easy. What's harder is...
Saving my life
I am determined to make this catastrophe into a fresh start. All through April I’ve been selling my possessions — giving things to friends and charity shops, dumping stuff on the kids. It’s been gruelling work involving furniture, baby things, books, childhood treasures, endless papers of all kinds, kitchenware, clothes, and vintage mirrors. I’ll have sold about 10 typewriters when I’m done, at knockdown bargain rates, and will own a LOT less stuff. My good table goes on Monday.
And I've rehomed two of the guinea pigs — only one geriatric one still needs a new place...
What’s left will have to go into storage. I’ll go house-hopping and sofa-surfing, rebuild my income, and try to figure out how — and where — I might have a future. A friend is letting me use her place in Brighton as sort of base camp. I’m digitising my office. My new Pod of Being (funded by a pristine 1956 German portable) is a big green suitcase.
I’m going to start a blog. Basically, turn myself into a picaresque post-modern novel as I figure things out. You, whoever wants to, can come along with me. Watch this space.
REALLY saving my life
Here’s the thing. In the next couple of weeks, I actually have to pay a moving man and a storage place. (Storage alone turns out to be much more expensive than 99% of people think it is, and requires deposits, upfront payments, insurance, and VAT on top of stated price.)
And — like any picaresque heroine — I’m virtually penniless. There are no savings. Right now I’m living off the sale of my household goods, and the float has just been eaten up by a couple of bills, and I’ve even left it almost too late to do this appeal, through sheer dread of having to ask.
I also have (& I mean HAVE) to sort out my citizenship. That chronic, sub-dermal buzz of fear gets louder with every new immigration scandal. This alone will cost over £2,000 by the time it’s done. But for now even that has to come second. Storage and van and being able to get through the next month or two come first.
Saving my work
As soon as I’m out of this flat I will be hard at it, website-building, working, spreading the net to get more work in.
Everything will be all right — I know it will, I’m going to see to it. But I can only make it all right if I can get my things into storage, eat, and live secure in the country where I’ve lived my whole adult life. And I can only do that with a lot more help than I feel comfortable asking for.
Please help me turn this utter disaster into a fresh start. Any little bit of help makes a difference — even a bus fare is a bus fare.
I will make it up, free from my seven years of trying to bail out a sinking ship, by doing what I should be doing. Writing. This blog idea feels like a big thing — I'm far from the only person this is happening to.
And I will keep writing the very best literary criticism, essays, poetry, articles, books that I know how to write.
And by tutoring and supporting all kinds of writers, and editing all kinds of text, the very best I know how.
And by being eternally grateful.
Thanks. <3
Organizer
Katy Evans-Bush
Organizer
England
