Photos via Gumtree
What is living in London like? Hell. Here’s proof, beyond all doubt, that renting in London is a nightmare.
Where is it? It’s near Notting Hill Gate tube station, which will mean something to you only if you frequently go to the west side of central London (i.e. you’re one of those people who goes to town to go to Harrods rather than the Big Primark: you and I are therefore ideological opposites, and cannot possibly have a thing in common) or, more realistically, you’ve queued outside it for the last train back after an absolutely thumping British Summer Time performance in Hyde Park, possibly by Robbie, but also possibly by The Strokes.
What is there to do locally? Someone got mad at me the other day for not having a comprehensive local knowledge of every single area in London to answer this frankly time-wasting bit of this column, suggesting I “Google Maps it” and “zoom in and see”, and what I can see from Google Maps in this area is: a Pret, a McDonald’s and a Leyland DIY store. This is all London is, by the way. Every time people in London talk about how great and vibrant London is, that is what they are really talking about: a street with a Pret on it, a McDonald’s nearby, and then a Leyland DIY store. “Sometimes IKEA do a pop-up event in Shoreditch!” we breathlessly tell our northern friends, who own homes and shiny cars and don’t have panic attacks when they go to the cashpoint. “Like once every 18 months or so! They did one where there were beds in a nightclub, aha!” Our northern friends quietly pause the full package Sky TV they have on their beautiful OLED television (all the sports; all the movies; crisp, crisp, astonishingly crisp 4K). “So it’s a bed in a nightclub?” they say. “Is that fun?” You don’t know, you say. It was a sort of ticket-only thing and you missed the drop. But you saw the queue. “I walked past the queue.” A nod. “And then the rest of the time it’s just Pret, McDonald’s and a Leyland DIY store?” they ask. Yeah, pretty much. “Hmm,” they say. “Pints up here cost ten pence—”
Alright, how much are they asking? £370 per week, which I make out to be £1,550 pcm.
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