What does a homeowner look like?
I was thinking about this while on the tube in London.
I had just had to use no less than three cards to pay for three cans of G&T. I was going to drink them with a party of people on Clapham Common, and I would walk around for the rest of the night like a one-man band, clanking my empty cans in a tote bag.
I was standing in a crammed carriage on a Saturday on the Northern Line. I had half my arse cheek neatly slotted into another man’s arse crack, and when he eventually unstuck his bottom from mine and alighted the train at Clapham North, it felt as though a piece of me went with him.
Did I look like a homeowner? My changeable accent might suggest so. Or the fact that I look like a big, tall woman who knows right from wrong. Or the fact that I know a whole bunch of homeowners.
I thought about a man I went to university with, who used to pick and eat his nose during lectures, and how I’d watched him on social media become a homeowner then father. I thought about a friend who I met up with once a quarter who always showed me her holiday photos, and how I would tell her every time that they gave me goosebumps. She was a homeowner. A woman in the pub where I grew up told me recently that everyone who owns a home must be drunk, because no one could be sober under the weight of the responsibility of a secured long-term loan. Turns out she owns two homes. And she is always drunk.
Well, I confirm that I am now a homeowner. I own a home.
But I bet my home looks a little different to yours.
The day I went to get a mortgage was a memorable one. I saw an ad in the Evening Standard, right at the back of the paper, and I noticed that it had a typo in it:
‘This is a UNIKE mortgage arrangement!’
I was wondering if this was a clever way to rile those with grammar interests, and then thought about how some might tut and use this as a way of demonstrating their intellectual superiority. Perhaps they’d circle it with a red sharpie and take the paper to work and show their colleagues and laugh, as if to say, ‘I spotted this and that makes me better than you.’ I thought of how sad that was as a hypothetical situation, and I settled for the idea that I’d immediately noticed the mistake and quietly and calmly kept it to myself, which meant that I won.
When I visited the company’s website – Unique Mortgages For You – I wasn’t surprised to find a poorly maintained Squarespace. It had a garish custom cursor feature that, instead of being a typical arrow mouse, was actually a house, which made navigating around the site tricky. The colour palette of the brand was primary colours – and by that I mean the colour of primary school uniforms. Primary school green, secondary school burgundy and private school navy.
On the ‘About Us’ section, I read with interest that Unique Mortgages For You – who were authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority – worked with borrowers who, in return for vast sums of money to buy their first homes, pledged the lives of their future unborn and undecided-upon children to commit themselves to working in the estate agency industry, starting from the age of six.
I read with even greater interest that it was a government backed scheme, to counteract the effects of our aging population. Children would start working in respected professions from the age of six – estate agenting, chocolate-tasting and becoming a child-star in the movies – and would immediately begin making their national insurance contributions which they would deposit in their government issued piggy banks. I thought about how those funds would pay for me to sit in an armchair in a home listening to a well-meaning young woman sing Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again while I slipped slowly into delusion. And I have to say, I was sold.
After signing up, it took me a while to find my dream home, which isn’t easy in this big city! But as I always say, when you put the hours in, you reap the rewards.
My nine-year old trainee estate agent, who arrived on a three-wheeled scooter, took me to a new proposition – an ‘individualised new home of unoccupied status’ in a bustling neighbourhood nestled in a charming yet up-and-coming locale in Zone 3. She told me that the property individualisation had been completed, and I had no idea what that meant.
The first thing that struck me was that the front door was made of denim.
‘Amazing! Instead of a knock at the door, it’s like a knock at a pair of jeans!’ I said, with a bit of a laugh.
‘Yes, denim doors are actually good for installation,’ my estate agent said, checking her unicorn rucksack for the keys.
‘Do you mean insulation?’ I asked, just to clarify.
We stepped into the property and were straight away in the living room. I got the immediate sense that this place had been built for me.
She explained that the house changed on a bi-fortnightly basis, which intrigued me.
‘How does that work then?’ I asked.
Alice, the nine-year old estate agent, went on to say that it was a fully serviced property with staff that turned over the whole house to make it a completely different space to live in every two weeks.
I learned that, in the first half of the month, the kitchen is filled with flowers, and that a local florist picks the buds with the sweetest stench of possibility and optimism. The water pressure is turned up to eleven, and an adrenaline-like force causes eruptions of water to come out of the taps and shower. Someone comes by to ‘dopamine dress’ the curtains in the living room, hanging embroidered patterns of brilliant colours.
Extra mirrors are installed throughout the property, Alice said, and the fridge is stocked with salty foods. And, for a bit of fun, the word ‘UMAMI’ is lettered across the fridge in colourful magnets.
‘And the food is included in the mortgage?’ I asked, with growing curiosity.
Alice nodded. ‘Viennese whirls, miniature pork pies, stewed rhubarb and quince are all inclusive of the mortgage price in the first fortnight of each month,’ she read from her glittery notebook.
I gave her a thumbs-up to show her she was doing well, and she looked a bit miffed. I cleared my throat quickly and asked her something dreary about stamp duty by way of apology for having patronised her.
She pushed open the door to the office, which was an enormous room, the biggest in the house. There were no less than five desk set-ups, and I recognised each one as a shrine to the five desk jobs I had worked at in my twenties.
‘This must the individualised element!’ I said enthusiastically to Alice, who nodded wearily.
It was like taking a trip down memory lane. They had got it right, down to a T. The ergonomic chairs, the double-screened set ups, the whisky in an espresso cup, the stacks of untended-to contracts, the fun-snaps and fake plastic poos, forgotten oranges and a framed photo of the sign that welcomes you to Yeovil.
The only addition was above each desk – a framed photo of each boss relevant to that job. On closer inspection, I could see it was each of my bosses in their primary-aged school portraits, showing them as no older than Alice. I felt a lump grow in my throat. They’d all been children once too.
In the bathroom was a stand-up shower, a lavatory and a sink – all as you’d expect – but, stuck to the wall, was a museum of sorts, of all the violin rests I’d lost as a child. It looked a lot like modern art to me and was very pleasing to the eye.
I thought I spied an aquaslide in the compact courtyard garden and was about to enquire further, but Alice seemed in a hurry to get on with the tour of the property and hastened us on to the next room.
‘And this is the hangover room,’ she announced, pushing the door open to a darkened box chamber.
‘What’s this?’ I pointed to the film projected onto the wall.
‘That is a 24-hour stream of surprise flash mob wedding dances,’ she confirmed.
‘Cool,’ I replied.
I poked my head into the master bedroom, a simple space with a small double bed, a dressing table with a Mason Pearson hairbursh popped atop it, and ‘Always Kiss Me Goodnight’ written across the wall with self-adhesive lettering.
‘Well, it’s all very grand,’ I told Alice, ‘but what happens after the first fortnight? What goodies come next?’
Alice’s eyes turned dark. ‘Well… no one comes to the house in those two weeks.’
She went on to say that all the mirrors in the house would be covered in slate-grey drapes. The office would be locked and unattended to. Instead of a 24-hour stream of wedding flash dances in the hangover room, there would be a countdown of the fortnight to be over and done with, accompanied by the maddening sound of muffled cries.
There would also be boxes of tissues at every turn. In the kitchen, the fridge would be empty, except for bottles and bottles of palm oil, and bags of brioche rolls. The water pressure valve would be released, and the taps and shower would produce only a searing hot dribble. Every appliance would work at half the speed. The windows would be tinted with limbo black, ensuring privacy but blocking all traces of light. Something about the internal skeleton of the building would shift, causing the drips, hums, gurgles and creaks of the house to be heard at an intolerably loud volume.
‘The whole house will feel smaller, almost half the size,’ Alice explained, citing some new technology that compresses air and makes houses less dense.
‘Okay, I’ll take it. But can I just live here for the first two weeks of the month?’
She looked at me scornfully and told me that no, that wouldn’t be possible.
And so I collected the keys and successfully moved in – and it’s only been ten days but it’s been going perfectly.
And with my house keys of the home that I own dancing in my pocket, back on the Northern Line but now merry after three gin and tonics, heading to my home, I now find myself contemplating what the purpose of a home that you own, actually is.
Somewhere you like but end up not thinking much about at all. It stands there while you go out into the world and live your life, and it’s there when you get back and allows you to charge up again on a mattress that doesn’t bully your lower back. It’s a place that hopefully has running water and somewhere cool to keep your milk. Somewhere that conceals you, shields you, holds you, as you inhabit a private world of your own design.
Emilie Tuna is a comedy writer and performer from London. Her work blends absurdism with emotional truth, exploring the strange logic of everyday life through satire and surreal storytelling.
Instagram: @emtunafish_12