The Aga Saga

Not having a kitchen is starting to take its toll. Takeaways on our knees surrounded by dust is just depressing and the trips to the pub for club sandwiches are getting expensive, not to mention wildly unhealthy. I haven’t prepared so much as a bowl of cereal in over a month and I’ve taken to buying a 50p chocolate croissant from Tesco Local on my way to work each morning. Jax and I discuss the situation on the mattress one night. We agree that we’re both looking a bit rounder than usual, and that being single and fat is a definite no-go. So we have now put ourselves on a strict sushi and smoothie eating plan. I think Jax spearheaded this campaign because she’s got a bit of a crush on a tall and lean Arty Alpha who she works with at the ad agency (she goes for the skinny ones, I go for the big ones; I couldn’t bear the thought of a boyfriend fitting into my jeans). She’s entirely oblivious to the crush of course, but he appears in every other sentence at the moment, and apparently he’s just so funny, and so talented and I’ll never guess what he did in the office yesterday... I give her a knowing smile and then she denies the whole thing in an outraged and disgusted fashion. She’ll keep this up for another couple of weeks, and then we’ll move into the sending-random-amusing-but-clever-texts-quite-late-at-night phase I should imagine.

Anyway, the kitchen. It is being hand made by Peter the Carpenter in Suffolk and seems to be taking around the same length of time as the Sistene Chapel. He rang Jax and promised her for the fifteenth time that he would come soon and fit the thing. Jax, at the end of her tether, with nowhere left to negotiate (she paid him in full upfront, but we don’t talk about that…) said she expected to see him on the 12th of Never. Peter the Carpenter found that highly amusing and said he loved a girl with a sense of humour. I took the phone from her and hung up as I sensed she was about to use the ‘C’ word.

Bob the Builder, however, has been right on schedule, and won’t stop for anyone. He came round this morning as planned to hook up the beautiful, proud and haughty Aga, which was meant to be the centrepiece of the room, for baking scones, warming hands and creating the ‘cottage’ part of our Urban Cottage theme. But hooking up the Aga will now never, ever happen. Because the Aga runs off of gas and electricity, and when we bought it we thought it just ran off gas. We told Bob it was just gas. So Bob dutifully hooked up a gas pipe, hid it behind the plastering and under the reclaimed floorboards from the Cambridge college and left just one discreet nozzle poking out in the designated place in the kitchen area. To fit an electricity pipe now, this far down the line, would require many hours and much expense in ripping out all of the tiles, two kitchen cabinets and half of the floorboards. We don’t have any extra hours and we certainly don’t have any extra money. The Aga was purchased many months ago, stored at Jax’s ex-future-in-laws for an embarrassingly gratuitous eight months, during the break-up and beyond, and was carried up three flights of stairs by six men a few weeks ago. It has been a complete pain in the backside and now it won’t even work. It’s a vicious, superior and withering piece of kit and we now want it out of the flat as soon as humanly possible.

It doesn’t care, it’s just sitting there, laughing at us, as if it always knew it would never lower itself to the function of actually being cooked on. If this Aga were a person it would be Keira Knightley; beautiful, irritating, pouting across the room with no intention of ever mucking in. Bob tried to break the news gently. Jax made to throw herself out of the window but he managed to catch her in time. I was inclined to let her go, to cleanse her soul of the unending frustration and heartache that this flat is causing. One final jump from the third floor, onto the hard concrete below, to succumb to the will of the Refurbishment, to accept that the house always wins. I asked Bob if we couldn’t just use the gas part, and ignore the electric hot-plate section in question. Perhaps we could use it to store clothes, I suggested. When he had finished laughing he departed to the corner shop to buy a Twix and give us a moment to reflect.

Tonight we boycotted the sushi and smoothie and sloped off to the pub for yet another club sandwich and chips and a bottle of wine. At about half past nine Jax’s phone beeped. It was a random amusing and clever text from the Arty Alpha. An interesting turn of events. Jax grinned and pushed the bowl of chips over to my side of the table.

When we came home, Keira was smirking at us, one eyebrow raised in mocking derision, so we kicked her. We felt better. Then we took her picture and put her on Ebay. We’re hoping that she ends up with a domestic slattern who fries cheap, greasy potato waffles all over her expensive body and never wipes her down.

Running Water

Two weeks into our new life in Shoreditch and I am starting to feel the same rage my mother used to express midway through family camping holidays. ‘Going rough’ is all very liberated and organic in theory, when discussed over a large glass of rioja on a plush sofa in a friend’s centrally heated home. But, as in my youth when we would find ourselves stranded under sodden muddy canvas with dog shit on our shoes and the nearest pub a forty minute car drive away, the postmodern glamour of slumming it wears off after about three hours.

Fourteen days have passed and it feels as if Bob the Builder has made no progress at all. He has of course, but not anywhere that it makes an iota of difference to our comfort levels. The skirting boards are in. Whoop. I’m still sharing a double mattress with Jax on the floor, her antique bed from France having sunk on the ferry at Newhaven and me having had more thwarted dates with bed vendors on Gumtree than a middle-aged man trying to get laid on Dating Direct: they all advertise themselves as sure things and then they don’t return your calls. Our single life of careless liaisons and romantic misadventures has temporarily stalled. Even if we had our own beds and managed to lure a chap back to the building site, it’s not like we could hang a hat on the door to warn each other of the impending liaison. Because we still don’t have doors.

And the shower is still not plumbed in. It is sitting in the wet room, all white tiles and grey grout and sexy green slate flooring, tempting me like a siren on the rocks: you can look but you sure as hell can’t touch. Every morning it’s the same. One of us dresses while the other guards the door from Lee the Pessimist and Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer. Actually it’s Lee more than Darren who tries to catch a glance. Not surprising I suppose; Darren probably has a harem of wives back at his semi-detatched in Plumstead, just panting for him to return home and utter the words, “It’ll be a couple of hours before that goes hard so don’t touch it just yet.” (he was talking about the plaster in the hallway but he managed to send us into a minor frenzy; we were hungover and had been watching a Jude Law movie on my laptop so I suppose our reaction wasn’t surprising.) Lee on the other hand, has the advantage of youth over Darren, but none of the charisma, chat or physique, so he seems to satisfy himself with Nuts magazine, the News of the World and peering round the doorframe in the mornings asking if we want a cup of tea. We always decline. Then, each morning, is the Building Meeting. Jax writes copious lists for these meetings and reads them out to our team of three like a General marching into battle. Every day Bob tells her that her expectations are too high, that most people spend a year renovating a property, and that it’s one small step at a time. Jax nods gravely, eyes welling up. She doesn’t really do small steps, and certainly never one at a time. I am more realistic. I ask for a door. There is normally some sort of showdown, followed by a consolatory cup of tea and a Hob Nob, and Jax thanks everyone for working so hard. Then we both go off to the gym to use the shower. I get gift points every time I swipe into my gym. I haven’t been on the treadmill in months but I am told today that my daily shower visits mean I am now eligible for a free Clarins facemask. I nearly weep with joy on the gym receptionist’s shoulder. It’s the simple things that affect you when you’re trying to build a house, I tell her.

Working late tonight, I arrive back at the flat at 9pm to find Jax, Bob, Lee and Darren sat on pots of paint in the living room lit by tealights, stonkingly drunk. It’s a big day, Jax tells me. The boiler is in, the water is running and it’s hot. I pause. Does this mean what I think it means? I go to the wet room and stroke the pipe leading from the achingly trendy industrial showerhead all the way down to the tap. I turn the dial. Water comes gushing out. It is warm, now it is hot. I am overwhelmed with the purest, most ecstatic form of joy, an emotion I haven’t felt since I scored my first and last hockey goal from the left wing in the C Team under 16s County Finals. I leave the water pouring and run back to the living room. Bob looks like a proud father. Even Lee the Pessimist is smiling. Darren the Plasterer is truly plastered. He puts a hand on Jax’s knee. She doesn’t move it. They are all grinning up at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Did you notice that not only can you shower, but you can shower in private?” Bob replies. Lee looks slightly glum at this point.
I go back and look again. There is a door, on a hinge, that opens and closes. I move around the flat, gloriously opening and closing each door to each room. It is a truly tremendous day. Darren is seven Stellas down and in the mood to show off. He asks Jax if she’d like him to accompany her for her first shower, gives her no time to answer, throws her over his shoulder and carries her into the wet room. Bob, Lee and I cheer and follow in a kind of conga line. Everybody dances into the shower. I realise at this point that I am sober, so desist from the group bathtime and stand back to watch. They all hop around for a few seconds then Bob accidentally hits Jax round the head and she, being mildly claustrophobic and incredibly drunk, begins to panic. The men pile back out and give Jax room to breathe. We all whoop and cheer again to keep the spirit of the party going. Darren realises that it’s late and his missus won’t be happy. Lee is feeling a bit queasy and Bob says he’s getting too old for too much fun. They change out of their wet work clothes and into their civvies, give us both a kiss and wobble out of the front door. Jax and I bed down as usual on the floor, but this time we close the bedroom door, and dream of hot showers in the morning. One small step for Bob, one giant leap for the girls.

The background

This is the situation. Jax and I are best friends. We are in our twenties. We both had serious relationships with boys from university for seven years apiece, until the Itch kicked in and we found ourselves single, liberated, and squatting in my friend Samuel’s loft conversion. Mid-way through her break-up, Jax completed on an un-liveable 1-bedroom ex local authority flat in Shoreditch, which she planned to completely smash to pieces and renovate into a 2-bed. Over a tub of ice-cream and an episode of Friends on a desperate February Saturday night during the first throes of single life, Jax confessed that she couldn’t face doing the flat alone, she couldn’t face it without me, would I move in as her lodger and we could live together, happily ever after? I agreed. We cried. I won’t go into the emotion of that Winter, suffice to say that Spring eventually came, shoots turned into flowers, and Sam plied us with pork belly, cheese boards and very good red wine until we both remembered how to laugh again. So that’s the history, moving on….

Four months later (three months later than planned) and we finally have new walls up in the flat, unplastered, a shower room with no running water, a space where a kitchen should be and no furniture in either of the bedrooms or living area. We figure we’re ready to move in. We left on Sunday with a taxi full of our belongings, me in the front seat clutching my glass bowl of shells from Cuba, Jax riding over on her bike. Sam gave us a framed map of Shoreditch and a bottle of champagne and waved us off. I think he’ll miss us, although at least now he can see his expensive carpets instead of just bags and bags of shoes and bank statements.

We have decided that if we are living in the flat then it will encourage Bob the Builder and his team, Lee the Pessimist and Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer to work quicker as they will be under close supervision. In the meantime we will eat in restaurants and shower at the gym. We arrive at the flat. We unload everything from the people carrier: cases, bags, boxes, bin liners, the guitar I’ve never learned to play, a tennis racket, seven hand stitched rugs from India that Jax has never unpacked, a TV with no aerial and our welly boots. We pay the driver. He drives away. We realise that we do not have a key to the flat. We ring Lee the Pessimist. He asks us why we didn’t think to get the key from him on Friday. We say we don’t know why. He moans. He says he’ll come over at the end of the football in twenty minutes. He also says he’ll bring the Memory Foam mattress (which was delivered to him last week and should have already been in the flat) like he’s doing us a favour. This mattress is the only thing we have to sleep on for the next fortnight until we sort out proper beds; without it we are on a hard wooden floor. We make this clear on the phone. Lee the Pessimist says he can’t do everything on schedule, he isn’t a machine. We scrabble around until we find Sam’s champagne, pop the cork and drink from the bottle on the front step. Suddenly the loft conversion seems like the Waldorf.
By the time Lee arrives we are a bit giggly which does not go down well. He doesn’t really like Sundays he tells us. He is gracious enough to carry the mattress up to the flat, but draws the line at helping with any of the bags or cases. He drives off in his van and says he will see us tomorrow like it’s a threat. We lay the mattress out on the floor of what will be Jax’s room. We can’t find any bed linen so we haul two of the Indian rugs over it as groundsheets and prepare two more to use as duvets. We cannot unpack anything as we have no furniture, so, unable to complete any domestic tasks, we make an executive decision to go to the pub, and there we stay until closing. I don’t want to admit it, but I am dreading going back to the flat. It is a hollow shell without plug sockets, doors or blinds. I sense that Jax feels the same way. We have a swift gin for the road, stiffen our sinews and return home. In fact, the Indian rug-bed looks quite welcoming. The tap in the toilet works so we brush our teeth. I manage to pull out two oversize t-shirts from a case. I offer the yellow 1990s Global Hypercolour t-shirt to Jax and keep the ‘I heart NY’ for myself. The Hypercolour t-shirt still works and it has already gone orange on the armpits where Jax is starting to get the gin sweats. I feel a bit like we’re married. We pull another rug over and close our eyes, hearing for the first time the steady and rather loud sounds of Shoreditch by night.

The following morning we are woken by Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer standing in our doorless doorway wearing nothing but a pair of tight faded blue jeans and holding a roller. He has muscles on his muscles. He grins at us and bids us good morning while staring at our chests. He didn’t know we was lesbos, apparently. We laugh and explain we’re just good friends. He wants more of the lesbian banter, but its too early. He saunters off to the living room to turn on Capital Radio and we dress in shifts, with the other guarding the doorway. Lee the Pessimist turns up and complains that Tesco had run out of chocolate doughnuts and that’s the only kind he likes. He sees the mattress and asks if we’ve become lesbians. Darren gives him a high five. It’s going to be a long couple of weeks.