The "Property Ladder" explained... you're welcome

So tomorrow I embark on the wonderful world of NaNoWriMo.

For those who don't know, it is a writing challenge type thing where your mission is to write a novel in the space of one month.

I have my idea safe in my mind and I am ready and raring to go. This may mean that I am going to disappear once again from this blog. I do apologise in advance if this happens, I will try to write the occasional tid bit every now and then throughout the month. Especially as it happens to also be my birthday month and the month where there is a large possibility I will be moving once again... either that or I will be homeless.

You see, Housemate-Anna has decided to embark into a wonderful world that has a ladder called 'Property.' Apparently, this involves standing on the bottom step of this ladder and living there. Eventually, by doing this for a while, you will find yourself owning this particular part of the ladder. Once you have done this you can then make the decision to stay on that part of the ladder and not pay any more money or sell it to someone else and use the money to pay for the next step.

All of this, as exciting as it sounds, seems a little bizarre to me. Apparently people are paying a lot of money to live on a plank of wood (or metal, depending on the ladder of your choosing and how fancy you want it to be). And although you get to own this plank after a while, I fail to see how it can be especially comfortable to live on or how you stop from getting rained on and feeling cold in the winter... unless the ladder is located indoors with central heating and there is a blanket and hot water bottle available for this. However, if you're going to go so far as to place the ladder indoors, you might as well just buy the building you've put the ladder in as it should be able to provide a little more room and I would imagine it would be a lot more comfortable to sleep in. But who am I to judge?

I'm obviously missing something about it all anyway because it seems to be quite the fad in this country. A lot of people seem to like doing it and, even more bizarrely, like to move up the ladder when the time comes. Now, unless this is for the challenge, I once again find myself completely baffled by this notion... If you are on the bottom plank of wood then you have more accessibility to the floor around the ladder. It would ensure that you can have more stuff that you can balance against said ladder and, although you run the risk of having things from the higher steps falling on you, at least there is less chance of you falling from a great height to your death.

The higher up you go however, the farther it is to fall and the harder it is to balance all your stuff on the planks you now own. Also, you will have to attempt to climb the ladder around all the people below you and I don't like climbing ladders when they're empty! No thanks, I'll just keep to my buildings and the beds I'm able to keep in them instead.

There are a few conclusions I have come to after I thinking about this a little more.

1. Judging from the amount of people who like to join this ladder over the course of history, this world consists of a lot more dare devil type people than I imagined. Although recently I think we have been birthing a generation less so, as more and more people seem to be renting houses instead.

2. I think I now know why there are so many large houses and buildings now, they're not there for the fancy look of them, they are a necessity in order to house these "Property ladders."

3. I have not investigated this country well enough because I have yet to see one of these ladders for myself. Note to self: Ask to visit Housemate-Anna once she has found an available bottom plank of wood so that I can see this marvel with my own eyes.

4. People seem to be spending far too much money on these special ladders. Especially when they could just go to Homebase and get a whole ladder that they can own completely, top steps and all, for about £20.

5. It is possible that the ladders I have seen (for getting into lofts and getting cats out of trees etc) might not be to scale to these amazing ladders that Housemate-Anna has been talking to me about.

6. I should probably have this discussion with Housemate-Anna when I haven't been drinking copious amounts of wine as I might not have got an accurate understanding of how this works.

Anywho, as I'm not quite ready to live on a ladder, whether I own it or not, I am hoping to find myself another person to live in my lovely abode with, or find a person with a real home that I can live in. All of this needs to be organised for December 2nd (moving day) and as it stands at the moment, I have absolutely no plans whatsoever... none at all... not even a sausage.

All I do know is that I cannot afford to live in the flat I'm currently living in on my own, nor any other one bedroom flat in London, last year's flat taught me that well.

Surprisingly though, I have found myself completely de-stressed about it. I am at peace and not worried at all. This could be for two reasons:

1. I'm in denial and will end up homeless before I realise that I probably should have put more effort into the whole 'searching for someone to live with' thing.

or

2. Everything will just sort itself out as it always does, so what's the point in stressing about it?

I like the idea of reason 2 so I'm going to go with that one. And if worse comes to worst, I'm sure I can buy a ladder from Homebase as a back up plan.

Anywho, my point was that I will have stuff to talk to you guys about during the month of November, and now that I have found my way back to the internet, I really don't want to disappear again.

Also, after 6 months of procrastinating in what I have labelled "The World's Biggest Procrastination Of All Time" I have finally bought a new screen for my iphone so I shall be at least at a place of being able to tweet my frustrations over not being able to reach my word count goal each day for all of you lovely people to read. (You're welcome once again).

After mentioning the above procrastination, there is also a very real chance that, instead of writing this novel, I could just end up writing on this blog five times a day about random crap that doesn't mean anything... you know... for a change.

Peace out my lovelies.