9 October 2024

My four years in Wittgensteinian austerity

As another anniversary in the Hove-l goes by, I realise I’m happy enough.

I write this on the fourth anniversary of my move into the Hove-l. I am superstitious about anniversaries: I lasted in the original Hovel for ten years to the day, and my eviction from that place was the second most painful eviction of my life. The first, of course, was of that from the family home; the third worst was that of my final day of university. I’d only been there three years but I’d managed to cram six years’ worth of experience into it. I won’t tell you what I got up to but it would make your hair curl.

Getting the keys to my current place put an end – for the time being at least – to the anxiety I’d been feeling since 2017, when I found myself homeless. OK, not homeless in the truest sense, as in sleeping-on-the-streets homeless. But there are degrees of homelessness, and I doubt if many readers of this magazine have experienced it, although I apologise if I’m wrong and also my heart goes out to you.

Anyway, as I write, my rent for October has been paid and although I have several crises looming, I am at least here for another month. And, as I said in this column last week, the place is in better shape than it has been for a while. There has been surprisingly little collateral damage from last week’s tidy-up: in fact, many things that were lost have been found. The most incredible feat was clearing out the space between the bed and the built-in wardrobe, which had become a midden of discarded books, magazines, Tangfastics wrappers, empty crisp packets, and so on. Seeing many of those books was like being reunited with long-lost friends. (Not so much the empty crisp packets and the like.) And now I can see my desk again, which is amazing. It’s made of wood! Who knew?

There is still nothing on the walls, though. Art seems to tempt fate. So I live in Wittgensteinian austerity. The only furniture in his study when he taught at Trinity, Cambridge, was a deckchair, and the same applies here. It has not made me as clever as him. The walls are bare, a kind of grey colour which I suppose a fancy home decorator would call “Elephant’s Breath”. There are still a couple of hooks up with the ghosts of the frames they held when the previous tenant lived here. I would love some art, but all it would make me think of would be the trouble it would take to pack if I had to move again. The last place I lived in I didn’t have to worry about that, as there was already some on the walls. The place I live in now was totally unfurnished when I moved in, not even a bed. We come into this world with nothing and we leave with nothing. My guest of last week, N—, bought me a mounted postcard-sized reproduction of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s “La Toilette” and that is now my sole artwork, propped up on the mantelpiece. (“Ah, Degas,” I said, before looking at the back.) The greatest work of art in the place is actually the view from the living room window, a stunning collaboration between God (the sea, the sky, the squadrons of pigeons doing their aerial displays in the early evening), and Man (the backs of the houses as they step down the hill, the wind turbines out to sea in the distance). I think I would have gone mad without that view.

I am not looking at it now, though, because we have got to that time of year when we can’t afford to put the heating on during the day, so we stay in bed. The heating, when it goes on, goes on for an hour at the most. The other day I went a bit mad and cooked some bacon in the oven. It’s the best way, but what was I thinking? My EDF-supplied smart meter went red with shame and rebuke.

And so the long march through winter begins. Each year it gets harder, although that winter in Scotland six years ago in an unheatable house which had windows that had to be kept open (a century of wallpaper being stripped; the fumes made me giddy) was something else. You’d think that kind of thing would toughen you up but it doesn’t – it means that the cold never leaves your bones. I remember once trying to get a mobile signal in a field down the lane and falling over into a trench of mud. That was probably my low point: little chance of that happening in Brighton. Though I could always fall into the sea, I suppose.

Not for the first time – and not for the last – I wonder what it would be like to live in a house again, as opposed to two rooms, a windowless bathroom, and a kitchen that doubles as a walk-in fridge for six months of the year. I know people of my age and class who have spare bedrooms; who have kitchens they can sit down in; who have gardens; who have second homes, for goodness sake. But I am grateful for what I have. My landlords aren’t greedy and are perhaps a little surprised they have managed to rent this tiny flat. But I don’t bother them and they don’t bother me. I get on with my work and hunker down for the days of darkness. Sorry about the lack of jokes this week, but what’s to laugh about? I am happy enough to have, for the moment, and touch wood, nothing to weep about.