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? So this is how I inevitably find myself living for a month here, in this, in Acton, isn’t it. I can see this unfolding in my future like a prophecy foretold to me through smoke and dreams by a witch. The WiFi signal is so patchy that I have to go to the EE store and buy an overpriced dongle just to get online. I’ve had to selectively choose three base outfits and one pair of joggers that I wear on a loop because there’s no storage for my clothes when they are dry, and even less when they are being laundered (I live currently in a reasonably-sized flat, and if I mistime my weekly laundry loads – cram two overlarge loads too near to each other that they both have to dry at the same time, for instance – I use a fairly large swathe of my usable space because it’s just taken up by damp T-shirts, and I dread to think how much that problem is compounded in a space like, for example, this). I am cold and I am miserable and my curtains don’t reach the bottom of the window, so I wake up when the sun comes up, whether I want to or not, and when I leave the house I am still in: Acton.
What is there to do locally? I can just see this being my reality in 2021. “People don’t trust you anymore,” they say (another meeting – the article I wrote in the first month didn’t “do enough numbers”). “They know that you don’t live in a shit-hole.” But I live in a rented flat in London, I say. When I try to cook food on more than one hob, the top of the oven just starts beeping and both pans sizzle in useless pulses, doubling the time it takes to cook each thing. Somewhere, in a deep bank account held onto by a landlord, close to two grand of money I don’t really have is being held, and I’ll be punished via it if I make a single mark on the floor or walls or carpet over the course of 14 months of living here. Is that not good enough? “That’s not good enough,” they tell me. “The audience basically needs you to— well, not die. But be unhappy.” I have to go back there. Slowly, I learn that Acton has half-price sushi after 5.30PM and a reasonably well-reviewed crazy golf course. Another meeting. “Yeah, that one didn’t do so well,” they say. “How do you feel about living in a car for six weeks?” I sigh. What make and model—
Alright, how much are they asking? £725 pcm.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement