On 11/11/2011 I signed on the line and received the keys for my first ever home. It was to be on a road called Beechtrees. If, like many not from the area, you begin to think that sounds nice, don't get your hopes up. The truth is, Beechtrees is in an area called Digmoor, which since the late 80's has struggled to wipe its reputation of being a very rough area with high crime rates and vile people, and yes, over its years it has played home to some very not nice people, but when signing for the keys I was very excited to be starting the next part of my life. It was to be my first home away from my mothers where I would be living by myself.
I moved in and at the time didn't have much to call my own. My uncle visited from Canada and was left a little bit bored being sat in the flat on a rickety chair watching a tv from the 90's while inside I was dying a little, wishing it was already the home I wanted it to be.
Over time I began to turn it into the home I wanted, more furniture came my way from donations or from people who were selling items cheap, and I was made up with how my home was beginning to take shape, it was what I wanted it to be.
In 2014 towards the end of the year I received a letter, hand posted, stating that the area I was going to be living in, well, Beechtrees, had been chosen to receive a multi-million pound investment from local government. The houses and flats would be given a brand new look, new kitchens, new bathrooms, new windows... everything! I was really happy at this news! It was to be short lived though as in 2015 I received the plans for what the area I was to be living in, but my flat, my home, was not on the plans. As the main letter confirmed to me, indeed, my home, the building was to be pulled down and I would have to move. This would of course turn up on the day I had bought some wallpaper ready for going up in the living room and of course, it never made it up there.
My home was coming to the end of it's life.
I was a little bit on the sad side, I won't lie, but how could you not be excited at the prospect of a new home? I had no idea when I would move, but I knew that it couldn't be too far away, so all idea's of decorating were put on hold, time to begin to think about how you want your new place to look... I thought.
Over the time, since I got the news, I began to grow bored of where I was living. It seemed as if I gave up, it wasn't tidy, cleaning was the last thing to get done often and I had grown tired of it's location and increasing number of empty properties around it. I had lived there since 2011, it was time for a change of scene, in truth, the flat was starting to do me mental damage because I was growing so bored of the environment there, but what could I do? I was to be leaving soon anyway.
In the May of 2016 I arrived back off a family holiday to the letter off the council saying "We need you to begin to look for a new place to live, the flats will be coming down" followed by a short visit off a man from the local government who was very informative, telling me they were aiming to have the flats down in September of 2016, something which I think has now been delayed, but you never know!
I began packing little bits and looking for where I could move to. It turns out the council had already been working on fixing up an old estate near to where my mother lives and a lot of people messaged me to say about these brand new flats that had been built and how I should apply for one of them, all the time i'm remembering that it is a bidding system when it comes to council housing, I could bid, but with them being new and a massive shortage of housing in the area, I wasn't likely to ever step foot in one, let alone own one.
After a few weeks I received the information that I had been set up on the council's housing website and that I could begin to look for a new place to call home, and, it just turns out that there was 2 of these new flats available. No pictures, very little information, but hey, they were new and I could always say no if I didn't like it.
What happened?
See you in part 2....
