maintenance

“Everything after 40 is maintenance” said model Linda Evangelista,

though the word  is missing from certain vocabularies.   The owner of the upstairs flat, for one. 

Three loosened tiles on the front step

soon became four and I knew her first words at contact would be “Can’t we do it cheaper ?” which is the beginning of weeks of proving procrastination is the thief of time.   If we asked the agents who let her flat, they’d have to have a board meeting to decide whether the step was in or out and whether they were responsible.  By which time the front step would have begun to disappear.  

So I called not the cheapest but the most reliable, let the current tenant know what I was doing, put my money (!) where my mouth is, and had it properly fixed, no false promises, by a Levantine as charmed with me as I with him (“You look like my mother !”) same afternoon I called.  Done.  The building dates from1900 and even when Poodle Twinkers (not her name) lived there,

she was a three act drama, and I lived through it several times.  Not again if I can avoid it.

Maintenance or rather lack of it is what has caused the newly appointed Labour MP for Ilford South Jas Athwal to verbally retrench  –  although  “ I had no idea” following denial isn’t the forward for anybody except  a ripoff artist.  He has seven properties managed and let by an agency.   Too often, bullying deferred.  The heart sinks. 

It is significant  and shameful to the new Labour government that tenants were afraid to talk to the press,

and if they did, would not give their names.  They are hanging on to their flawed, damp and infested housing for dear life, getting a roof over your head being at premium in the city.      And all for lack of maintenance.  Surely there is a Parliamentary device by which Mr. Athwal gets a period of time to clean up the housing  which he would have had to do directly before he got too big for his boots,

fire the “agency”, and behave like a human.  Never mind what he says, let’s see what he does.  Poverty is not a sin and it’s always with us.

I wonder where maintenance fits in with exercise – I only ask because most of the runners and joggers and  “just going to the gym-ers” I see look less than cheerful. And I walk, every day.   Of course I understand the maintenance of exercise in sport, though better in dance – the late great Margot Fonteyn said she could substitute other exercise for two weeks  but then

it was back to the barre.

Maintenance used to mean having my hair trimmed every six to eight weeks maximum.  But without telling the saga, I have found somebody who can cut hair – rare nowadays, one of the skills declining, like being a sempstress – and triumphantly in 2024, reduced my visits from four times a year to three.

Maintenance  means having the  rugs (x3) and chairs (x2) cleaned in house once a year and worth every penny.  It means having the window cleaner  – when I can get hold of him – three times a year.   And it means “you tell me” timed visits from the osteopath who comes to the house, thus obviating the journey home which often undoes what you have just paid to have done.

Maintenance means washing bedding and eating properly.   It means being wary of headlines that offer you not just the quick fix  (weight loss) but incidentally better skin, hair, nails, resistance to diabetes and  – blast of trumpets – retarded ageing.  Oh and did I mention it’s a great nail polish remover ? 

Snake oil lives.  What you hear is an old fashioned snort.

Maintenance has to do with upkeep.  You do for the car, the council does it if you’re lucky for the road and the pavement, maybe even the traffic flow – though so far, sadly, no control over bikes.  You do it for where you live and if you are lucky, y ou are met half way by the owner, though rarely any specially appointed intermediary.. 

Abandon maintenance and fall to rack and ruin ?   Sounds horribly familiar.