She who is tired of London...

Dear London Borough of Tower Hamlets

I have - for the most part - enjoyed our six-year relationship. I am a big fan of your Columbia Road Flower Market, of your cherry-blossom lined streets, of Victoria Park and of the local arts scene.

However, recently I feel our relationship has turned somewhat sour:

- Your demands for £950 service charges left owing by the previous owner, four years ago, which you only decided to mention to me last week.

- The fact that whenever I turn my back on my car for more than five minutes, you tow it away and charge me £260 (which you'll only accept in cash) to get back. This happens immaterial of whether I'm parked in my own parking space outside my flat (which of course, you charge me for) or if I'm parked on one of the quiet residential streets in the neighbourhood on a Saturday afternoon. You then take 56 days to reply to my appeal.

- The speedbumps outside my property which are large enough to take out an average-sized tank.

- The decorators in our block who have been removing asbestos and redecorating for the best part of three months without seemingly achieving anything other than making the ceiling look a bit rustic.

- The fact I was offered drugs outside our flat last week (actually this was quite exciting and made me feel all urban and edgy, but I probably oughtn't to admit that. Nor the fact that I was on the way to book club at the time, which does make me sound a bit less urban and edgy).

- The fact that the entire Pakistani Under 18 community has decided that our estate is the best place to have their gang warfare. Whilst I appreciate, and am supportive of the borough's commitment to cultural inclusion, I'm not sure spray-tagging the walls with "Hoodyz rule innit" and lobbing bottles at each other is quite what you had in mind. Still, to be fair, this was all quite entertaining to watch, and better than anything Sky One had on on Easter Sunday. I was quite disappointed when someone more community-minded than me called the rozzers.

- The fact I had to phone six different numbers (and get cut off twice) before speaking to someone about the removal of the graffiti. Which still hasn't happened.

- The tramp that sleeps at the bottom of the stairs.

- The roof has started leaking. I would report this, but I'm not sure I have the mental energy to negotiate your Kafka-esque phone system, nor to speak to your half-wit employees, for whom Grunting (a little known dialect, involving noisy breathing and accidentally putting the phone down mid-sentence) appears to be the native language.

So it is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that I'm thinking of leaving you. We've had a good run - it's been my longest adult relationship with a borough council, and of course we've had some good times.

I hear the property market is pretty buoyant at the moment, so it should be pretty easy to sell up and move elsewhere, surely?