Who Lets the Dog's House? (WHO, WHO, WHO, WHO)

I have a thing for puns in the title. Sorry.

So who lets the dog's house. Who? Who? Who? Who? Every time I venture into Uni, I am forced to walk through a triangle of letting agencies that pretty much control the vast population of Cardiff and Cardiff Met's students' dwellings. They are in charge of providing, receiving payment for, maintaining, stealing deposits for, and of course, forcing down students' necks, housing for Mummy and Daddy's precious little Prince or Princess. In all honesty, I don't see a problem with this; business is business, time is money and all that.

What I do have a problem with is the sheer juxtaposition between the lives these letting agency folk live, and the lives of the cash cows (us faithful ol' students). As I walk through the Letting Agency Triangle, I feel the opulence-level rise faster than the bank manager's eyebrows when asked for an overdraft extension. Gone are the cantankerous doors and shifty-eyed windows of studentville, and in with the Cheshire gates and perfectly tanned façades of the Letting Agency Triangle. Metallic cans once containing watery hops do not stray into the Triangle. Neither do the homo sapiens that thrive on the alcoholic beverage stay for longer than is absolutely necessary. The buildings stand straighter than everyone else's; they stand like worthy war heroes: 'Look at the shelter I am providing you with, the space in which you sleep and study. I'm only asking for your praise and admiration', they say. Again, I don't see a problem with this. I'm not going to part with my hard applied-for money and hand it over to some shabby little squat-shop occupied by a man chewing on a matchstick flipping a coin in his hand. Of course I wouldn't. I'd much rather hand it over to a nicely groomed man or woman in a suit, a warming smile, and your best interests at heart. If only.

Being a petrol head, I have mixed views when walking through the Letting Agency Triangle. The cars that adorn the pavement are as flashy as a Chav's knuckles. BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Bentley; they're all there. A nice BMW M3, brand new: £55k, minus extras. A BMW 535d, again, brand new: £45k. Audi TT, private plate, £35k. Bentley Continental (the W12 one, not the V8, you pauper), fresh from Crewe: £135k. And there's another one, convertible this time, in a delightfully discrete crystalline white: another £160k. This is my equivalent of walking through a street where pretty girls come out to greet and flutter their eyelashes at you. Yes, I realise how sad it sounds that I prefer cars over scantily-clad women. There is a big impact of seeing so much wealth nestled in poverty; it's like a jeweller placing a 12 carat diamond atop a ring made of pig iron. It is the hyperbole of juxtaposition. And what places me into despair is knowing my money went into it. I paid for someone's Bentley, someone's holiday to the Bahamas (first class, of course), someone's wife's botox. And yet I live in a house where we don't mark each other's heights, we mark how far up the wall the damp has grown. Posters have become structurally integral. Radiators have become vast metal ornaments because placing hot water in them is too expensive. We've even had a few furry neighbours, one of which we caught. The carpet in the hall can only be described as 'corpse grey' with filth (it's described on our itinerary as being 'dark cream'), and doors refuse to open because the frames in which they inhabit have nervous breakdowns and collapse onto them. I could go on.

And so I shall. The shower likes to descend water upon anyone eating downstairs, the walls lean like they're awaiting a hip-replacement, there is enough fridge/freezer space for 2.5 people (there are 5 of us) and I'm pretty sure my mattress has assumed the lotus position, because it is not the flat and comfortable haven it is meant to be. Alas, I have picked many holes. I should also add that I do enjoy living in my wonky, arthritic house, and yes, it's the 'experience' and the people you live with who make the experience yadda yadda yadda.

It pained me to know that the Letting Agency people live not just humble lives, but extravagant ones. Excessive displays of wealth in a place where £20 will get you a night out is just a monumental show of bellendery. I even thought that these people should be monitored by an external source and money regulated, but after a bit of thought, I suppose I'm just jealous. I felt like complaining at someone else's success. I would've been no better than anyone who slandered Bill Gates, Richard Branson or Wayne Rooney when they first looked at the sky and thought 'that's the limit' (except Wayne, who saw the sky through the hole in the top of the potato bag he arrived in). I'd be no better than those horrendous people on Points of View, who scream bloody murder at the prospect of a repeat of Pointless being shown whilst the current series is ongoing.

In truth, I am jealous that I didn't get the idea first. They live financially rewarding lives, void of the choice between eating or going out. They saw an opportunity and capitalised on it. I can't comment on the rest of their lives for they may be utterly miserable in every other way. I just wish I could've secured my slice of the cake before it became their monopoly (and may I add that the houses I would let would be worthy of human living, and may even be described as 'quite nice'). My only wish is that they would be more discreet in their earnings. We students are a poor bunch, and months of procrastination have meant that many of us have turned to less-honourable pastimes, say, lock-picking, for example. Or the ability to fraternise and seduce wealthy business people. I'm not saying much, I'm just saying.




(Sidenote: I'm not completely wrapped up in how much money people earn or how much people own in terms of material goods, as my blog may denote. I enjoy a success story, and at the end of the day, we all sort of want to be rich. Don't lie, you self-righteous little shit. Get your arse back down here with the rest of us. There you go. Do you feel that? That's called acceptance. Now keep your head down and shut up, you'll do as your told.)

Babbling on.

I have no real point to make in this post, just a slightly fuzzy head and fingers itching to type. In a slightly Kafka-esque style, I will literally write my mind, and if anything intelligible or even legible turns up, then we shall call this post a success. Right, here we go...

Time. That background thing that we can never quite escape. It's a funny old thing, time. It's usually running out, healing wounds or placing enjoyable events as far away as possible from each other. A pretty busy character, is our time.
Recently, I've had a lot of time to think and essentially do nothing. These last 6 weeks have been filled with the slightly more taxing job of avoiding work, but largely, I have still done nothing. And d'you know what? I quite like it. Time is not a conscious being, but the way it acts on us as conscious beings is quite alarming, in the best way possible. It loosens ties to once dear things, it chops to-do lists down and down until you have very little else to do. And then, as a plateau is reached, time drops little parcels of things to do, by which point you are hungry and eager to do them. The second year of Uni has been a complete triumph over the first. I did not enjoy my first year studying English Literature. I enjoyed the people, I enjoyed the places, but the course was horrendous. Now in my second year, I have been able to cut the crap out of my learning and concentrate on things that appeal to me and only me. I've had a little saying for a few years now: 'Before you can enjoy the best in life, you must learn to appreciate the worst in life'. Studying ye olde Englishe did not appeal to me. Shakespeare didn't particularly interest me. Beowulf bored me. African Literature made me want to end my education. Modernism, however, captivates me.

Modernism is essentially the act of sticking two fingers up to whatever came before it. After the heavy, sterile, and middle-class Victorian novels, modernist writers (and artists, whom were the genesis of the movement) took a look at the artfulness that was on display and had a sit down. In all honesty, I would have done the same. What a masterpiece of feminist literature Bronte's Jane Eyre is. Dickens, what a fantastically talented and brilliant chap he was. Bravo. And then these modernists stood up, and, when trying to come up with their next piece of work, completely ignored the fantastic old Victorian style. Instead, they tackled different topics; topics of power, of everyday life, of being turned into bug and worrying about how they may have to miss work because of it. I have been taught that there is no real definition of Modernism, and I love that. With most literary movements, there are codes and conventions that define it. Modernism is the opposite. It is the breaking of the codes and conventions that define it. It takes some brain power to stand up and realise an opposite even exists. Just to make it even cooler (and maybe even justify the brain power involved), many of the writers and artists were fucking mental. Would I like to read a novel by someone who was about as stable as Piers Morgan is popular? Yes I would. Hand me that Virginia Woolf novel.

I think I see a little bit of myself in Modernism. I shouldn't fit in in life. I do not work hard, I scrape by on a cat's whisker in most cases. I've blagged my way through occasions that I should really know what I am doing and I've had the time of my life. I shouldn't have had so many fantastic experiences. I do not feel that I have deserved them, but still, opportunities creep up. Call it luck, call it what you will. Modernism is praised for being such a dick. I guess I've been a dick in the sense that I have no idea what I am doing and have ended up landing on my feet more times than I haven't. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's something that I treasure in a strange, retrospective way.

There was no real purpose to this post. It literally was me, as the title suggests, babbling on. I guess I'm just having my feet touch the ground again for the umpteenth time, and now the ground has started moving. I'm hoping that it is a floor, and not a treadmill on which I am landing, because some progress to something new and exciting would be most welcome for a dick like me.