Inventory (I should be wary)

'Oysters extend to Brentwood' was the headline in the first free paper to be shoved through my new letterbox. Trust me to move nearer the centre of town just as this B-movie scenario starts to unfold. However it turns out they don't mean giant radioactive oysters at all – they are talking about the Oystercard. Also puzzling was the headline above it: 'Please give unwanted presents'. Curious advice, I thought – but they meant give them to charity shops.

Anyway here I am, in the new flat. Do I feel at home yet?, people ask. Now that it's full of boxes, maybe. Initially, I worried that it was a bit scuzzy, but now I realise that this suits the thing that there is about me. Shall we call it 'quirky'? No, let's not. Though the place has its share of quirks –  a kitchen without drawers, a veritable symphony of squeaking doors. There is also a glass ramekin (originally free with some dessert, I imagine) full of rusty screws, but probably every tenancy has one of those.

I am above a salon called Skin Solutions. I am supposed to be letting out my parking spot to them, but they are rarely about when I am. Sometimes, although they are open, the door is locked and there is a notice to say that they are 'downstairs' doing a 'treatment'. What transpires in their basement of horror? - I can hardly imagine. Perhaps I should let them use my parking space in return for their not dissolving the skin from my body. I haven't yet witnessed them dragging the skinless corpses out to the bins at the back. In fact, I haven't got to grips with where the rubbish goes yet at all.

Nor the heating. Apparently, it helps to turn it on. Simpler, and less expensive, to walk around the house in three layers of clothing.

On taking possession of the place I was given an inventory, a lengthy document I was advised to read. It is, however, a gruelling piece of social realism, and I have struggled to get to the end of it. Every screw itemised - the sorry condition of everything unsparingly described ('fair', 'poor', 'scratched', 'cracked') – and photographs too, to really rub your nose in it. I could only manage a few pages, which is no doubt just what they intended, having concealed somewhere within the document a Faberge egg or old master which, when its absence becomes apparent at the end of the tenancy, will result in my being sued for millions. Oh yes, I know how it works.