Just remembered this one...
I'm posting this on behalf of a friend who doesn't use B3ta.

We'll call him James, for that is his name. He lives in a very nice cul-de-sac in a four-bed detached house. Opposite is a house that was, originally, virtually identical to his own. The owner, a hotshot banker-broker-investor type, had done virtually every type of extension and upgrade imaginable to the house, from electronic gates to a swimming pool. Apparantly, he was trying to get the house's value up to an even million, which is quite difficult when he bought it for £400,000 and the area isn't exactly Notting Hill.

Two months ago, he packed up and ran from the nation. James knows this because he had a private investigator knock on his door, who had been hired to track down the geezer and hopefully the many thousands of pounds he owes to various creditors. (Private investigators are cunts, by the way. Imagine trying to intimidate someone by pretending you're as powerful as a policeman, without actually being one.) So yes, this virtually-million-pound property opposite James is currently sitting abandoned. Technically, if I squat in it for ten years, it'll become my legal property.

There's something surprisingly poignant about the whole thing. For this poor chap, success was obviously the worst thing that ever happened to him. Paradoxically, it put him on the path towards bankruptcy, and has cost him his good name, his house and any hope of reentering the real world legally. There's just this house, sitting empty, probably for years to come. Life, eh?
(CerberaSpeedTwelve, Mon 29 Aug 2005, 1:44, Reply)