Pause, Play.

When I began this sabbatical, I never thought for one second it would take the route it has over the past 9 months. And the latest saga only added to the madness endured since leaving our very standard life back in Sydney.

Here’s a quick recap of the situation so far:

Italy for 5 days. Terrible weather forced us to abandon ship.

Europe for 3 weeks, waiting for divine intervention. A fabulous holiday, but hardly a sabbatical.

Mull of Kintyre for 3 months. Some success with family time and creative projects, but utter remoteness soon ground us down. An issue with our own property came to light, and we decided to return to London.

Feral Tenants refuse to leave our home, rendering us homeless, jobless, and without any clue how to fix the problem (sending in the heavies was sadly not an option).

Following our latest dilemma, I did the only thing I could think of, and appealed on Facebook to anyone who might have an empty property that our family could move into immediately. It was a huge ask.

But sometimes the planets really do align. 

Our savior came in the form of an ex-colleague from several years previous. Her mum had sadly passed away up in Edinburgh, leaving the family home of 35 years to be tied up by three exhausted siblings. There would be lots of sorting of items, and lots of re-decoration to undertake, and in return unlimited use of the house for the foreseeable future. It seemed like a completely logical solution for two very different situations, and whilst initially it felt like it might be quite an uncomfortable experience, all involved seemed to think it might work.

My sabbatical took a pause whilst we were up in Edinburgh, to allow full dedication to the challenge, but the new skills I learnt during this period have proved just as worthy as the creative ones I thought I’d be learning. 

For a few short weeks, a truly beautiful house in the very charming district of Morningside, Edinburgh became home to us, as we forged close relationships with the family involved. In what went on to become a personal and humbling experience, I'm so honored to have been able to help the three of them - we'll forever be grateful they allowed us into their very private world.

But news soon came through that the feral tenants had been served papers from the courts, and they quickly moved out of our own property. We gave the order to immediately change the locks to ensure they could not return, and three weeks later, we endured the long drive south again, returning to London to collect our new keys.

What we found inside was a filthy pigsty, uncleaned (ironic, given that our tenants were actually professional cleaners), and uncared for during their stay. After putting in a claim for their entire deposit, we set about turning the hovel back into a home, leaving no stone unturned along the way. Whilst we still have much to do, normal life can finally begin to start. 

And so, what of my sabbatical? 

Our return to London after all these months has not put a stop to my creative adventures. Whilst it will be much harder here in London, my intention is still very much to break into illustration, rather than return to full time employment. Sure, I’m bound to undertake some freelance work to pay the bills and mortgage, but as the old saying goes,  it’s not over until the fat lady sings, and she’s yet to get up on stage. 

It's time to play again.

Keep Calm And Carry On

Three days from the end of our holiday in Porto, and just 5 days before we were due to move into our flat in London, we received a very blunt email from our Estate Agent informing us that our tenants would not be leaving our property.

Initially, we thought they didn’t have a leg to stand on, given that we’d served notice some two months earlier, but, after appointing a solicitor to deal with the problem, it became very clear that these people could not be physically removed by us, or anyone else except Her Majesty’s Heavies - namely a Court appointed bailiff. 

We decided to do some digging around to see who we were dealing with, and after a quick visit to a neighbours house, we discovered that our tenants are in fact Brazilian, and aren’t the girlfriend and boyfriend that we were led to believe they were. They’re a family of four with two children aged around 10 and 14 who are both regularly seen riding their bicycles around the Close.

It also transpired after a visit to the Estate Agent that these people are refusing to leave purely because they’ve discovered a loophole in British Law - a ruling that suggests that they are guaranteed to jump to the very top of the waiting list for a Council property if they are evicted by the Court.

People like this make me (and most others) very angry. Not only are they depriving us of moving back home, but they’re also depriving others of a much needed affordable Council house - people who have possibly waited patiently in line for many years. It’s a blatent fiddle of the system, and to make matters worse (if that were at all possible), us, as landlords, have just one route to getting our property back - through the Court. 

If we interfere with them in any way at all, our case for repossession will only take longer - anything up to a year. As it stands, we could be homeless for up to 4 months. 

We can’t change the locks or cut their power supply, or send in anyone else to chase them out - in fact, we can’t even knock on the door and have a polite conversation with them without risk of them saying we’re harassing them. 

As tenants, they have the right to remain at the property until a Court orders them out. As landlords, we have almost no rights at all.

Interestingly enough, despite us suddenly being homeless, despite us having a child under the age of two and despite us being the lawful owners of the property (which is full of furniture owned by us), we aren’t entitled to emergency Council housing.

Why? Because we are homeowners.

Rulings like this often cause people to get physically violent, and whilst I don’t believe we will, it does get more and more tempting with each day that passes whilst they still live in our home. Almost all of our friends, and most of our family has mentioned at one time or another to ‘change the locks’, and even the lady on the customer service desk of the Nationwide (our mortgage provider) told us to ‘send in the heavies’.

It seems we are not alone in thinking the law in the UK does not work as it should. 

It equally seems that a man's home is only his castle once he's spent almost a thousand pounds of his child's college fund, and waited several months to repossess it.