New Home

Very exciting day yesterday; finally, after months of just the weirdest problems, I signed the papers and handed over the money for the new flat. When I say 'handed over the money', I did quite literally hand over the money, in cash, which had been brought into the country for me by a finance company. It was odd indeed to be handling such a vast wad of cash. I wanted to take a picture of it but a hideous last minute argument erupted and the whole deal almost fell through, so it didn't seem quite right to be taking out my camera. Anyway, a wad of ten thousand dollars is only about an inch thick - which is not quite as impressive as I had hoped. I should have asked for it in small bills!

Natalia, my lovely estate agent, had arranged for me to stay in an empty rental apartment out in Palermo for the last ten days or so. It was a bit miserable to be honest - noisy, uncomfortable & cold - but I am so grateful to her for doing that. The cute place in town where I had been since April had been let to someone else, so I had to move from there before I had my own home to go to. Natalia also arranged for a nice man with a van to schlep all my stuff out there and then back again yesterday afternoon. Mostly, it is all still sitting in the vestibule as I will not unpack until some serious cleaning has been done. The place is thick with filth.

I am now sitting in my pyjamas in the back bedroom on a carpet thick with cat hair, surrounded by unbelievable filth and wondering where to start.

Oh what joy though - I have my own place in Buenos Aires! It is quite huge and has the cutest cupola on the roof (see below for picture).

My first visitor was Romina, who comes to me once a week for English conversation. I took her up and showed her the cupola and she said "How pretty, but what purpose does it serve?". A very formal sort of phrase that made it sound as if she was questioning the cupola's right to exist, when really she was just a bit curious. So I said that it is just there to be beautiful, though in fact it also serves as a sort of shed.

I had had to run out and buy my first bits of furniture before she came as the kitchen table and chairs that I was expecting to have been left were gone. Round the corner here is Avenida Belgrano, which happens to be the furniture district, so I traipsed up and down and in & out of likely looking shops to see if I could get a couple of chairs. It dawned on me that I was likely to end up with something really crappy if I bought in a hurry, so I changed tack. Amazingly, just as I was thinking that I had better get back and that surely Romina, who is very young, would not mind sitting on a suitcase, I saw a gorgeous pink beanbag hanging in a shop with a sign on it saying $100, which is a little shy of twenty quid. I went in and found they were leather and available in all sorts of colours. A very nice man pulled one down off its hook and let me sit on it and I almost went to sleep on the spot. I told him I was going to carry it back up Belgrano and he nodded to the van outside and said he'd give me and the beanbag a lift home, so I said I'd take two! Delighted that my first bits of furniture are a pink and a purple beanbag, though the standard of furnishings will have to improve if I am to rent the place out ever! Here are the beanbags and Susan's bed which is pressed into service as a sofa (yes it does have a mattress, what kind of a hostess do you think I am?!). Makeshift coffee tables include Julie-Anne's box of precious stuff that I am - erm - carefully storing for her:

Then later Linda came and toasted the place and after she left a few other friends popped round with thoughtful offerings like wine, champagne, a dreamcatcher, a huge cream cake and a chair - so we sat and drank and ate cake and chatted about all sorts. They had some good leads for workmen, which I must follow up as there is a huge amount of work to be done here. Spot the amazing cream cake Miguel brought over...

Belen stayed after the others had gone and we chatted on until after one this morning. She seemed impressed with my Spanish and we laughed about our first meeting last year and how we had struggled to communicate.

When she had gone & I was on my own, I skipped around the flat again taking it all in. Then after failing to talk to my sister in LA, I spent a couple of hours emailing before getting the single mattress off the bed I bought for Susan when she came out in July and arranging it on the antique bed frame I have bought with the flat. The last owner helpfully took away the mattress, which is a blessing if it was anything like as filthy as everything else here. I find it hard to believe that anyone could live with this much filth. Oh, she also took most of the light fittings off and didn't leave replacements, so that's a job.

Hhhmm must buy a huge ladder, these ceilings are so high.

But first: proper mattress, hoover, bucket for Sugar Soap Michele so kindly sent over, heavy duty gloves & pliars for ripping up foul cat-stinky carpets. I have a hammer & will probably also need a crow-bar of some sort for pulling out the bizarre concertina doors that have been put in the middle of the double living room. Yay, tools! I went to a shop called Easy at the weekend, which is a sort of B&Q / Home Depot, and got quite excited at the prospect of buying tools. What am I like?

This afternoon I have some important paperwork to file, so I will go and disinfect the bathroom and find out whether the shower works...