When quirky stops being charming

I like quirks. We saw plenty of beautiful, beige flats when we were flat hunting. But the eccentric qualities of Fox Corner, like that unusual kiwi tree, the bottles embedded in the brickwork of our living room, and the knackered tongue-and-groove walls in the guest room, seduced me rather. I thought it was all quite charming, if a little rough round the edges.

Five months in, the charm is wearing off, and fast.

My British friends might say I've been spoiled by life in the US. The rabbit hutch was pretty high spec, for starters. And if the loo mysteriously became blocked, we just asked one of those nice doormen to fix it while we were out. Likewise if a lightbulb went, or when the blind cord snapped. It was fixed within a couple of hours, and without  us getting our hands dirty.

Malibu was decidedly lower spec. The electricity sometimes cut out if, for example, someone used a hairdryer while the telly was on. But it was easy to step outside to the fuse box - rusted from constant exposure to sea spray and salty air - and flip the switch to get the power back on. And while you were out there you heard the crash of waves and thought 'I bloody love Malibu', so that was nice. We had to use a dehumidifier constantly in that flat too, because of the constant sea mist - but again, you put up with these things as a consequence of living right on the beach. No grumbling.

Anyway, those are really just niggles. To be fair, if something actually broke, the landlord fixed it within a day. In California it is standard practice to re-carpet and repaint between every tenancy, too. So you always move into a shiny, new feeling flat.

It's amazing what you'll put up with when this is part of the package

What renters in the UK put up with is rather different. When we were looking for flats back in March some of my British friends raised an eyebrow at TLOML's insistence that he wouldn't live anywhere damp or draughty. 'Well, you expect a bit of damp in a ground floor flat, don't you?' they'd say. Or 'These old London conversions, you expect them to be a bit draughty, don't you?'

Well, no. Americans don't expect or intend to put up with dampness or poorly sealed windows. Or with flakey landlords. And yet... begrudgingly, or through lack of alternatives, TLOML has become a bit pragmatic, 'stiff upper lip' British about some of the shortcomings of Fox Corner.

When we moved into Fox Corner it was decidedly unready for us, but we overlooked that because we were so happy to be somewhere semi-permanent. The fact TLOML had to fit half the window locks himself we saw as a minor snag, since this place is a bargain and frankly we were running out of options. The annoying way the backdoor deadlock sometimes locks you out - and there's no key to the front door - we have found coping strategies for (TLOML puts his hand through the cat flap and unlocks it that way). We overlooked the standing water in the drain, which the landlady has ignored for 2 months, because we ran out of energy to bug her about it. We think the landlady's refusal to pay a gardener to prevent the aggressive kiwi vine from wrestling her pipes from the wall is crazy - but we decided to suck it up and pay for it ourselves, just this once, since it needed doing. We've looped a couple of miles of extension cable around the flat to make up for the fact there are no power sockets on half the walls. And so the list of 'quirks' and irritations continues.

We've coped... But we may just be at the end of our collective tether.  There are only so many times you can say 'ah well, it's cheap and it's big and isn't it fun to have a kiwi tree over the door?'.