Rollin' Dice in the Landlord's Lair
I received the email I had been waiting for late on Sunday evening. Adam had already dangled the carrot in front of my face with a text saying that he had found the perfect flat to share…but this was the full monty, photographs and all. One telephone conversation later and it was a done deal. We will put the deposit down on the place sometime this week.
I haven't even seen the place for myself, but I am more than willing to write a cheque for some hideous amount of money. Why not? I trust his judgement and he describes the place as fulfilling every demand we have for a flat. I am willing to take a chance, even after doing the same thing at university and ending up with a terrible hovel where the back bedroom was damp and the furniture was fucked and the bathroom walls were mouldy. It was a rotten place and forty quid a week rent was easily too much. The On button on the vacuum cleaner had to be taped On. There were no windows in the lounge. The locks were so poor that somebody broke in one evening simply by levering one of the back windows. It should be noted that, such was the state of the place, we didn't even notice for a week. In the end the fact the bedroom doors had their own locks resulted in practically nothing being taken. The main thing I remember about the incident was that it took a hell of a badgering for the landlord to fit extra locks instead of simply replacing the old one.
We came back after the Easter break to find that, instead of a television, there were temporary traffic lights. This was not a good development and took the student cliché too far into the realms of the absurd. This, though, cannot be blamed on the house or the area, and is entirely Ben's fault. We shall gloss over it, as we will the shaving foam fight, the paddling pool that lasted precisely three days, and the terrible and unwarranted outbreaks of nudity.
But our problems were surmountable and we were too busy to care anyway. In that case we had no choice but to go for the cheapest and nastiest housing available, something around which I can sidestep this time. That kind of place works when you are perpetually drunk, stoned or in love, and you don't care how much beer the carpets drink, how filthy the cooker gets and how pisspoor the posters on the wall really are…
But how long will this be the case? Students are presently the children of the eighties and have grown into a media-oriented world where image is paramount and higher education is a rich man's game. Will your average 19 year old with Strokes hair and two hundred pound ill-fitting jeans slum it in the future? Or will they all be locked away in nice, expensive student accommodation, as is increasingly the case? If there is one thing I took away from my university is that the average undergraduate is now completely faceless, an open wallet to these people. They are happy to build new accommodation because they can charge huge fees for the students and even bigger fees for corporate guests during university holidays.
Let us take one example from many. In my final year I returned to living in halls of residence. When I went back for the summer term at university my entire hall had been repainted the day before, and the place was virtually uninhabitable. They had been painted so late because otherwise it would have affected the amount of corporate guests they could have squeezed in. Sure, we could have been spared a week or so of headaches and dizziness if they had painted the halls earlier, but what's a few people falling down sick and missing exam preparation when there are corporate bank accounts to be milked? The greed of my university was, and is, legendary in the circles of higher education. And every so often they call me up to shake me down for more money. Balls to them. They are parasites. I owe them nothing. (The loans company is, of course, another matter.)
Ah…I appear to have wandered somewhat. I was talking about moving into a house I have not yet visited. But what the hell, anyway…I have already investigated the area in which I will soon be living, and I know what the inside of the average house there looks like.
If our path is as smooth as it has been so far, then we will be moving in at the beginning of January. This gives me three weeks off between finishing my current job and moving down to London, and I intend to make the most of it. Put simply, if I end up being able to remember the next few weeks, I will have failed.
I haven't even seen the place for myself, but I am more than willing to write a cheque for some hideous amount of money. Why not? I trust his judgement and he describes the place as fulfilling every demand we have for a flat. I am willing to take a chance, even after doing the same thing at university and ending up with a terrible hovel where the back bedroom was damp and the furniture was fucked and the bathroom walls were mouldy. It was a rotten place and forty quid a week rent was easily too much. The On button on the vacuum cleaner had to be taped On. There were no windows in the lounge. The locks were so poor that somebody broke in one evening simply by levering one of the back windows. It should be noted that, such was the state of the place, we didn't even notice for a week. In the end the fact the bedroom doors had their own locks resulted in practically nothing being taken. The main thing I remember about the incident was that it took a hell of a badgering for the landlord to fit extra locks instead of simply replacing the old one.
We came back after the Easter break to find that, instead of a television, there were temporary traffic lights. This was not a good development and took the student cliché too far into the realms of the absurd. This, though, cannot be blamed on the house or the area, and is entirely Ben's fault. We shall gloss over it, as we will the shaving foam fight, the paddling pool that lasted precisely three days, and the terrible and unwarranted outbreaks of nudity.
But our problems were surmountable and we were too busy to care anyway. In that case we had no choice but to go for the cheapest and nastiest housing available, something around which I can sidestep this time. That kind of place works when you are perpetually drunk, stoned or in love, and you don't care how much beer the carpets drink, how filthy the cooker gets and how pisspoor the posters on the wall really are…
But how long will this be the case? Students are presently the children of the eighties and have grown into a media-oriented world where image is paramount and higher education is a rich man's game. Will your average 19 year old with Strokes hair and two hundred pound ill-fitting jeans slum it in the future? Or will they all be locked away in nice, expensive student accommodation, as is increasingly the case? If there is one thing I took away from my university is that the average undergraduate is now completely faceless, an open wallet to these people. They are happy to build new accommodation because they can charge huge fees for the students and even bigger fees for corporate guests during university holidays.
Let us take one example from many. In my final year I returned to living in halls of residence. When I went back for the summer term at university my entire hall had been repainted the day before, and the place was virtually uninhabitable. They had been painted so late because otherwise it would have affected the amount of corporate guests they could have squeezed in. Sure, we could have been spared a week or so of headaches and dizziness if they had painted the halls earlier, but what's a few people falling down sick and missing exam preparation when there are corporate bank accounts to be milked? The greed of my university was, and is, legendary in the circles of higher education. And every so often they call me up to shake me down for more money. Balls to them. They are parasites. I owe them nothing. (The loans company is, of course, another matter.)
Ah…I appear to have wandered somewhat. I was talking about moving into a house I have not yet visited. But what the hell, anyway…I have already investigated the area in which I will soon be living, and I know what the inside of the average house there looks like.
If our path is as smooth as it has been so far, then we will be moving in at the beginning of January. This gives me three weeks off between finishing my current job and moving down to London, and I intend to make the most of it. Put simply, if I end up being able to remember the next few weeks, I will have failed.
posted by Jamie at 12:20 PM
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