I’ve only done two of these columns, and one of them was the introduction. We’re only on the second actual property, and already I’m losing the will to live. I am, however, gaining a kind of icy fury, a gnawing sense of injustice, and an RSI. We are once again in Salford, where a landlord is offering the opportunity to rent a ‘student friendly’ flat share.
What is it? You know what I’ve always resented? The idea of ‘my house, my rules’. I remember being a kid and feeling like I was a guest who very rudely (I was 7 and refused to become a miner or jewel thief) didn’t pay anything towards running costs. I therefore had to simply accept the rules. I assumed, foolishly, that once I had a proper job, like a writer, or a ballerina, or an astronaut (I was fuzzy about potential career paths, but look at me now as I zoom through space, balancing on the shoulders of a pirouetting hunk of rock, writing) I’d be able to live without rules, or at least with rules that I set for myself.
And into this foolish, this childish, this idiotic daydream comes this guy. You see, even though you’re renting the space, you may not be a couple. You may not be a twosome, let alone a threesome, unless it’s for one night, though even the most charismatic among us might struggle to find the will, the urge, when the bedroom looks like this:
Naturally, I have questions. Here are the first three, in no particular order:
- Why is none of the furniture even the same shade of cheap, horrible MDF?
- How do you open the wardrobe, unless it’s by army-crawling to the end of your bed, stretching out your arms, and craning your neck to look at your three shirts and two skirts?
- Actually, same question for that tiny little set of drawers
How does this happen? How does someone construct a room so antithetical to being lived in? The answer, of course, is that they don’t live in these rooms. They probably haven’t ever visited these rooms. They sleep on piles of money, in coffins.
But how do they make their money? The answer is, somehow, by taking blurrry photos of a dump that has peeling paint and obvious damp and then getting people to live there.
And also by buying their showers from the same place.
Where is it? We’re in Salford, again, except the part closer to the university than the wetlands.
What am I paying? £475 of your British pounds per calendar month. £5,700 per year. For this. To watch the paint flake off the walls and the damp grow season by season. To lie in your box room with its unmatched furniture. To do this alone.
A bargain.
Caffeinated Punctuation 