It took the builders about half a day. Who knew that what takes so long to put up can be torn down in a matter of seconds?

I can’t say I feel particularly nostalgic. If anything my regrets are a product of what should have been, site not of what has been the reality of my house over the last few months.

Let me explain: on my second week in the flat, I was consumed by the curiosity to find out what lay beneath my ugly laminate floor, so I ripped up a board in what was one day to become my bedroom. Underneath, lay some grey indistinct cement, so I deducted that the people who had converted the block, had made off with any nice existing flooring and replaced it with the cheap floorboards.

I was wrong. Yesterday, while Jack was ripping out the kitchen, he called me over to have a look at something. What the absence of splashback and cupboards had revealed was that there were still the original tiles under the wall plaster and that, much to my dismay, the original floor tiles were also still there!

Whoever the barbarians who undertook this course of action are, I truly believe they should be taken out and shot. Harry, my all-knowing builder, insists that it is a waste of my time trying to recondition the tiles and return them to their original state. This makes me very sad, as I am still struggling to find a floor that I like and the original tiles do look really rather cool. Sigh.

This brings me to an ethical question: in my search for a kitchen countertop and tiles, I have come across various types of Zimbabwean slate. Now, when it comes to wood, I know a bit about sustainability issues and that basically if it isn’t FSC certified it’s probably best not buy it. I also saw with my own eyes the effects of logging in Congo and Mozambique and can’t say I would like to be part of something like that. So what about slate?

Mines are bad. Right? Yet given the fact that we all use computers, phones, electricity etc. however bad mines may or not be, we still enjoy what comes out from them. So how can we understand if something comes from a bad mine or not and what criteria should we use to decide?

I can’t say I’ve had much luck answering this question. The best I managed to uncover was an article that informed us that after ten years of forced nationalisation of private firms, Mugabe has recently done a volte-face and is trying to attract foreign investment. Which brings me to the conclusion that all Zimbabwean slate comes from government run mines and that it is probably pretty unethical to buy it. Sigh. Now that I’ve answered my own question will I heed the answer?

This is probably my last Hackney Bird blog for a long time. I have decided to make like the birds and fly south. I will keep a record of my activities but it will not be as Hackney Bird but me (Katy Fentress).  Enjoy…

New Years resolutions hang over our heads as we increasingly retreat into a state of denial exacerbated by the looming January 31^st tax returns deadline… “£800 all in one go? But that’s so much money!!! This year I promise I’ll put aside 20% of my profits every time I get paid…” (Yet isn’t that what we said this time last year?).

Just last week, patient I was walking up an icy Sandringham road – the last intersection before the Dalston/Stoke Newington boundary marker which is Shacklewell lane – when I spied, buy cialis about forty feet ahead of me, a man stumbling across the road in an obvious state of drunken disarray. Before I had a chance to fully take in this lonesome figure, I spied another man walk up behind him and nonchalantly kick him in ankles. The drunk stumbled but did not fall. This appeared to give displeasure to his assailant, who hung back, kicked him once more and then sped up and overtook the utterly baffled victim (who had still, impressively, managed to keep his balance). The drunk tried to regain his dignity and began to shout after the perpetrator of this meaningless attack, challenging him to come back and fight him like a man. The assailant walked on, ignoring him and causing the people on the street to think that the drunk was a loony who had no doubt inexplicably lost the plot.

A quick postscript to this story: I believe I was the only person who witnessed the incident and further down the street I happened to be walking directly behind the sauntering assailant. As the shouts of the victim finally began to fade into the distance, the brutish man decided to glance back. I caught his eye and gave him a dirty look but beyond that did not express to him my utter contempt at his desire to pick on weaker and more pathetic members of society. I doubt he even registered my look. I suppose in some way that makes me an accomplice, even though I took no pleasure from the scene. Sigh, so much for being a paladin of justice.

Construction work on my beloved place of abode is proceeding slower than expected. In a way the presence of two sofas has made living here more bearable, to the point that I sometimes think this is how the flat is supposed to look and forget about the grand plans I have for this high-ceilinged, big-windowed space.

Work was actually supposed to start today but the freeholders have been slow in approving my plans and the bamboo flooring isn’t arriving until the 20^th, so it looks like I’m just going to have to sit tight a little while longer.

Luke, a good architect friend of mine, has warned me that I must be more concerned with getting out some kind of a liability insurance in case my builders were to accidentally damage some part of the building, leaving me to foot the bill. It’s good to have pessimistic friends who predict that negative things might happen, it helps keep my “oh whatever I’m sure it will all work out fine in the end” attitude in check.

At least having sofas and crockery means I can indulge in one of my favourite pastimes: cooking dinners for friends. The problem with this, is balancing this fun occupation with my otherwise constant concern of not piling on the pounds just because the temperature outside has been sub-freezing for weeks and I’m spending too much time sitting on my sofa (working that is, I don’t yet own a desk). In theory this means not, I repeat not, making super heavy pasta bakes, which contain more butter, cheese and milk than I’m sure is good for anyone and then snacking on the leftovers of this super-heavy meal for days afterwards. This of course is NOT what I did this weekend. Promise!

Oh the guilt of overindulgent eating. To prove my repentance I am heading to the gym. Now. No really.

Instead, I moseyed on down to the highly recommended Mess Café on Amhurst road. They say the hamburgers and milkshakes there are to die for, although so far I’ve only had the American breakfast, which was decent and nothing like anything I’d ever had in the States before. Unfortunately the rain seemed not have deterred the eager café enthusiasts and after about three minutes standing in line (patience has never really been my virtue), I gave up, bought a Saturday Guardian and some free-range bacon and eggs at Marks and Sparks. I know, shopping at such a controversial supermarket was highly politically incorrect of me. Yet where else am I to get free-range in this neck of the woods if not at Tescos, which is arguably much worse than M&S? It’s hard to balance the need to be virtuous and buy free-range and organic, with the need to not shop at evil corporations that are ruining our society, potentially backing the oppression of Palestinians and squeezing out small-businesses across the world.

Oh, so while I’m reviewing my culinary week, Friday lunchtime saw me head down to Brick Lane to indulge in one of the only decent curries in a hurry that I have found there. Shalimar does not outwardly seem any different from the other multitude of Bangladeshi eateries in the area but don’t be fooled: for well under a tenner, you can indulge in some pretty high quality spice-tastic concoctions. I had the lamb and spinach curry and apart from spending the rest of the day worrying I had green stuff stuck in my teeth, it was well worth the cycle.

Later, while lazily pedalling home, my eye did catch a sight of a little junk shop that stood out from the rest of the high-priced, crappy old furniture establishments, simply because it did not appear to be trying at all. I ended up bargaining for a rudimentary mini-coffee table and mirror that had been haphazardly banged together by the owner of the shop from random bits of wood he had picked up. After considering for a couple of minutes if it might not be worth just doing the same thing myself, I decided that at £20 for both items, I couldn’t really go far wrong. The mini-coffee table (which looks more like a miniature bench) and the mirror have now been painted white and I’m still umming and ahhing over whether I should take some sand paper to them to create that “distressed” look that I so hankered after a month ago but which I am beginning to tire of already.

I’ve made a monumental decision about the flooring in the flat. Enough with all this reclaimed floorboards business. From what I can make out “reclaimed” has simply become a catchphrase for “old and yukky but with a 1000% mark-up for you silly twats who want your flat to look ’shabby chic’!” Instead I’ve decided to go down the sustainable road and invest in a serious bamboo floor. My online research has so far thrown up the company Simply Bamboo as one of my prime candidates. After having received some samples from them, I am now pretty convinced to go for their strand woven coffee boards which, at around £22 per square metre, is well less than half the price of anything I have seen until now.

Beyond that, I now attend a response from the freeholders of the building to whom I have submitted a plan of what I intend to do to the flat. I sent them a printed out letter by mail on Thursday, so hopefully they’ll get back to me some time this week.

I do hope everything will be ready for our January “begin to build” deadline…

Unfortunately I never did manage to contract the disease, medicine so I suppose I’m still at risk and might ruin my chances of having lots of little kiddlywinks. I’ll probably end up having to do a Brangelina, ailment although now that having a black baby has become the ultimate fashion accessory, maybe I’m not so keen on the idea after all.

Swine Flu in the media is like a persistent cough that just refuses to go away. After the summer of fear we are now in the midst of the autumn of creeping anxiety. Swine Flu appears to be round every corner and the government has decided that all “at risk” categories (which include children, pregnant mothers and the elderly) must undergo the Swine Flu vaccine.

Seeing that I am not in the “at risk” category, I have reached the conclusion that the wisest course of action is to go around snogging anyone who displays any swine-ish symptoms. My reasoning is that if I contract it now and get it over and done with, maybe I’ll be immune by the time the next super-strength strain decides to start making the rounds. Oh, and in case you were wondering, this is not an elaborate plan to get me a man.

Mr Z, my set-designer friend who will be collaborating with Harry from candourinteriors to renovate my abode, came round for dinner the other night and we started drawing up 3D plans of the flat. I hadn’t realised that there is this amazing freeware program called Sketchup that you can just download off google. Sketchup lets you to draw up plans to scale and insert fridges, washing machines etc. so you can envisage what your house is going to look like. Nifty stuff huh?

I’m still doing the rounds of all the different architectural salvage yards to see if they have any bits and bobs that can work with the new house. Mainly I’m looking for a marble countertop for my East End Jellied-eel shop inspired kitchen, possibly some reclaimed floorboards and a tin bathtub that does not have three zeros attached to its price tag. Mission impossible I know. So far the different places I’ve been to have all seemed to be ultra-swanky and as a consequence pricey times a million. Do not even step into Retrouvius Reclamation and Design, if you do not plan to flash the big cash for old reclaimed school tables and blackboards.

View from my window

Beginning of week three in the new flat in the lost land of East London’s Hackney Downs.

It’s a bit of a retail desert out here, sovaldi sale with little of the trendy haunts I had so gotten used to down in the southern reaches of the hood.

There is, buy viagra however an interesting gastro-pub just across the road, cheap which has so far made it’s way onto my list of local eateries.

The Pembury Tavern seems not to be frequented by the postcode plonkers[1] that generally grace the eateries around Broadway Market but by more nerdy, thick-rimmed spectacle wearing types. This might not of course be entirely true, as I have only actually eaten there once and so cannot really be a good judge of what kind of types frequent the establishment. Yet I couldn’t help but notice an entirely wholesome vibe when I lunched there with Jelly last Sunday.

While on the subject of postcode plonkers, it must be said that there is nothing more satisfying than having a blinding hangover and going to Broadway market on a Saturday morning to despise and insult the people and their ridiculous getups.  Why anyone would choose a market (however hip and overpriced) as their main fashion moment of the week is beyond me. I generally stumble over in little more than my pajamas and Marc Jacobs sunglasses, which I wear not as a fashion statement but as an ingenious contraption behind which to hide my bleary, bloodshot eyes.

Oliver Twist wannabe

The vitriol brought on by this nauseated state is unparalleled. I seethe at the sight of grown men trying to look like Oliver Twist and women in their burlesque makeupand wannabe fifties outfits.

I have in fact tried going to Broadway Market when not hung-over (which occasionally, believe it or not, does happen) and it isn’t nearly as fun. All the wannabes just seem bland and desperate and try as I might, I cannot muster any healthy hatred for them.

Back here in the cappuccino-less Downs however, it’s all afro hair salons (maybe I should get myself that weave I’ve always wanted), greasy spoons, social care centres, Turkish food shops (there seem to be four in the immediate vicinity of our block) and late -night shoot-outs. Oh and then there’s Michael’s flower shop under the bridge, which I suspect has a roaring trade, due to the afore mentioned late-night shoot-outs.

Give this square mile three years and I’m sure it will have succumbed to the inevitable gentrification of pre-Olympic Games east London. But for the time being it’s just me and Little Miss Scrumpet (henceforth LMS), living in this soon-to-be glamorous converted Victorian schoolhouse flat.

Oh the trials and tribulations of refurbishing! I can’t wait to tell you all about it…