Bedsit
Bliss
Picture this..
You're just about to move into your first 'studio' apartment. An exciting
life of Japanese minimalism and Habitat furniture awaits you. You look
forward to a new era of independence, peace and quiet, the chance to pursue
your hopes and dreams . space to 'find yourself', time to explore a budding
creative talent, perhaps. A fresh way of living that offers a tantalizing
mix of 'modern' and 'Zen' - all contained within a compact, functional
urban living space.
Not
The 'Lovely, fully-furnished one-room flat (suitable for a quiet working
lady or gent)' turns out to be a squalid pit the size of a broom cupboard,
with a clinically insane landlord, a rotting sink-surround, disgusting
brown stripy wallpaper, a floor with a 10¡ gradient and a smoke alarm
with a hair-trigger disorder.
And it's way more than you can afford
"Six-fifty a month" says the mad Landlord, with the smug expression of
one who knows he has the upper hand, despite his obvious need for daily
intra-muscular administration of a mood-stabilising pharmaceutical 'cocktail'.
A second job, perhaps?
You stand there trembling with indecision, until a mental picture of the
stampeding, cannibalesque queue outside flicks into your mind like a scene
from 'Night of the Living Dead'. They want this flat and nothing will
stand in their way.
In the current housing crisis (caused, incidentally, by the sudden, and
to be honest rather unfounded trendiness, glamourisation and subsequent
overpopulation of a previously quite grotty and boring city), hordes of
desperate accommodation-seekers, with a vicious glint in their eyes, camp
for days outside dingy hell-holes like this. They all have steady office
jobs, glowing references, enough stashed in the bank for a month's rent
plus six months deposit, and various forms of personal bribery up their
sleeves. They are (again, quite incidentally) displacing all of the people
who used to work in the shops and the trades and the factories and the
bars, and who can no longer afford to rent property anywhere near their
place of employ. Competition is rife. You know, you've been flat-hunting
for weeks. The only reason you're in this room now with the mad landlord
is because the ten people in the queue before you were so horrified at
the sight of the iridescent green mould in the communal shower that they
failed the 'barf-factor' test, balked at the 'positive visualisation'
water-hurdle and legged it at the earliest opportunity. You have a choice.
Green Mould
Homelessness.
Green Mould
You have standards. You do not want to sleep in a doorstep, covered in
newspapers and cardboard boxes, tonight.
Green Mould
You spotted a very cosy-looking skip on the way over here . At least the
roof wouldn't leak.
The Landlord's instincts have been honed through many hard years experience
of foisting unsafe, and indeed downright unhygienic, abodes onto intelligent
people who should know better. This is a sellers market, and there are
fifty people outside waving cheques around, but old habits die hard. His
twitching, ferrety muzzle almost seems to smell the vacillations of your
mental struggle. Sensing the precise moment at which you are weakest,
he chips in with his killer negotiating skills: "Look, you even get a
rocking chair".
He prods the item in question, which rocks once, creaks painfully, then
shudders to a standstill and threatens to disintegrate on the spot. Through
the cracked, dirty window, with its indescribable 1960's floral curtains,
(which are hanging slightly skewed, and suspended by one thread, like
a kid's tooth that's just about to fall out), you see an almost palpable
aura of malevolent hostility forming around the queue. They shift from
foot to foot impatiently. One of the more visibly aggressive creatures
begins to slaver.
Inevitable
"I'll take it." There, you've done it now. The landlord, with lightning
efficiency, pockets the deposit, explains in a businesslike fashion how
to navigate the dicky floorboard and the fact that the shower meter only
accepts old shillings or Hungarian Forints, warns you never to go onto
the third floor, it is forbidden, then hands you a key and makes a rapid
exit before you can come to your wits, see sense, and attempt to snatch
back the precious cheque from his sweaty grasp.
He dons his riot-gear, hoists a shot-gun over one shoulder, and stepping
out into the front garden, slaps a handwritten sign saying 'flat taken'
onto the front door, then fires a warning shot over the heads of the crowd.
With the butch determination of a young Charlton Heston, he shoulders
his way through the scurrying mob, leaps into an armoured vehicle and
roars off into the post-apocalyptic sunset before they have time to regroup.
They hang around outside for a few hours, scratching piteously at the
glass and begging for you to let them in through your window, but you
are wise to the perils of inviting revenants into your home. Like Heathcliffe,
you are stern and unyielding in your solitary resolve.
Unlike the poor unfortunates outside, you have now officially qualified
for membership of the city rental accommodation pecking order. You have
a home.
Your home
Your bedsit.
You sit down, take some deep calming breaths, and relax. Like the conquering
monarch of a new realm, you lean back and survey your hard-won prize.
The rocking chair creaks, groans once, and collapses.
Reality bites.
Oh shit.
by
Emma Pearson
6th July 2003
Emma Pearson is a freelance writer
who's working on a self-help guide
to living in a bedsit. She's interested
in hearing from anyone who might
want to publish it. Email the
Ed to
contact her.
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