Here is a short story entitled "What the actual Hell?":
'Twas a midwinter eve, and all through the house
Clothes were strewn everywhere, too large for a mouse
I think that's efficiently set the mood, this is the Nottingham Fairy-tale; you don't appreciate crime until it (almost) happens to you, and happen it did.
On the 27th December, sat downstairs in the dining area, my housemate notices a shadowed figure going into next door's house, obviously he can't go jumping the gun, it might just be a neighbour. But 10 minutes later, here comes the shadowy bastard again, wheeling out the neighbour's bike with two bags, one on the handlebars and one slung across him. A conundrum arises, what would you do? Would you confront the burglar, knowing there's full well a chance that he's armed, he's clearly criminal- criminal enough, I hasten to add, to break into a contractor's lock up with a host of keys inside and then systematically clean out the largely vacant student houses.
My housemate does the bravest thing, he cracks a window and challenges the robber. In his own, kind of cool but very "him" way,
"You don't live there do you mate?"
"Yeah... uh, I know the guys that live here, I'm picking up them stuff they said I could borrow."
"You don't know them do you? Put the stuff down"
And he does, he throws the bike and the bag on the handlebars down in the yard and gallops off.
I know I sound like I'm gushing, but he's a hero, my housemate. I don't know if I'd have been able to do that, he ran to the front door to see if he could catch the guy, ringing the police at the same time, god knows a crisis increases his efficiency tenfold. I'm under no illusion that if he hadn't been so quick off the mark, and enabled the contractor to get the locks changed, way more houses would have been burgled. That kind of shit can ruin people's lives, make them scared to be in their own house, and he helped prevent that for however many people.
Anyway, the mention of the locks brings me back round to the present problem, this happened on the 27th of December, our contractor came and changed the locks on the same day but unfortunately our lock isn't the right size for our door, and locks with a key on both sides which is illegal in a rented property. In addition to this, we were only given two keys between six housemates, admittedly not everyone is moved back in. But when I got to the rental shop on Tuesday 10th I was told that "We have got all the keys for that street except yours". By some magical twist of fate, the housemate with the keys was in the Subway two doors down from the shop. So I managed to get all my stuff moved in without too much of a hitch, but it then becomes apparent that we were meant to have a lock with a twist-lock mechanism fitted that morning. Didn't happen clearly, still only had two keys. "We're having someone come round on Saturday morning to fit the new lock."
"You said that about today. Our lock is illegal."
"Yes we're very sorry about that, we'll get it sorted Saturday"
Of course I'm sat here, Saturday afternoon, not a singular locksmith has been in sight. Not one. I've also left it too late to ring the landlords and give them a bollocking for lying to us again, so I've left messages and an email and I just hope to god it gets sorted out soon.
I've gone and got 5 new keys at my own expense, but fear not, I'll be sending Reed the receipt and they will be reimbursing me. And sorting the goddamn lock.
I took some photos on my way to Sainsburys to get the keys done, so we'll end with those. This is my Nottingham:
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| brownfield and towers near the house |
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| My dominion, we call the towers "Chernobyl", they're bleak |
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| The Marina! |
