London Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Bathroom in a Kitchen… in Pimlico!

What is it? Well, OK, let me put it this way: have you ever had a beer in the shower? It's not a cry for help exactly, but it's very rarely you at your peak, is it. You know how your mum’s got into FaceTiming you lately, from her big iPad? Mum, reclining in the garden, pair of varifocals on the edge of her nose, that special unflattering selfie angle that only mums seem to know. Your hair is wet from the shower and you're holding a can of beer and she goes – she knows, she already knows – she goes, "Did you drink a beer in the shower?" And even though you know it’s fine, to drink a beer in the shower, it’s also sort of not fine – it's the exact line of behaviour that is acceptable in real life but unacceptable to admit you’ve done in front of your mum – and you find yourself going, "… no?" in a very unconvincing manner, and she does that mum face where she purses her lips and goes hm. Anyway, we’ve got off topic. In this flat, the fridge is next to the shower so your shower beer is colder. That’s the joke—
Where is it? Pimlico, which I always assumed wasn’t actually a real place and was some London in-joke that Cockneys invented to trick American tourists with ("What, Buckingham Palace? You wanna go down the Pimlico then pull two lefts and a pony," that sort of thing), but actually no, just looking it up now and it definitely does exist, who knew;
What is there to do locally? Looking on the map, the area of Pimlico is about six streets and almost does not quite include the Tate Britain, so I suppose the answer is "walk to somewhere where actual things exist and enjoy doing your activities there";
Alright, how much are they asking? We veered off course up there, didn't we? £1,155 a month.

We'll confront the information that is going to arc and loom over the entirety of this flat analysis: yes, the shower is in the kitchen, and not even a small shower, a shower with a bath. The side of the bath is tiled like it would be in a bathroom, but it’s not in a bathroom, it’s in a kitchen. There is a fridge next to the shower. The fridge is directly next to the shower, as if the shower and the fridge are in a structural union. I’ve been looking at it a while, and I can’t quite understand the primary use of this room: was it a kitchen someone put a shower/bath feature in? Or was it a bathroom someone put a fridge inside?

A bathroom with a fridge makes more sense logistically (it’s easier to carry a fridge into a room and plug it in than, say, plumb in and install an entire bath w/ shower feature, plus tile the wall behind it), but then looking at the sink in the back corner, it’s a very kitchen-feeling sink: the space is kitchen-sized, it has work surfaces and alcoves and cupboards, and isn’t tiled and caulked and waterproofed like a bathroom might be. The floor is wooden like a kitchen would be, and not a bathroom. So, politely, what the fuck. This is like the chicken and the egg conundrum, but more baffling, because the logic that resulted in it came from the dark and contorted mind of a landlord: which came first? The kitchen or the bathroom?

I’m going to skim over the fact that there is nowhere apparent to piss.

Here, then, is one of the most erratic shelving units I’ve ever seen over the course of this column: a stack of shelves that go from low bathroom utensils (a set of scales; a neatly folded hairdryer), then up again through the grabbable shower essentials (shampoos, gels) and post-shower unguents (moisturisers, balms and sprays) until, at the top there, it zigs into the reeds and becomes full kitchen: three bottles of alcohol, one of them apparently Malibu or a Malibu equivalent. Have you ever seen a more bipolar set of shelves? Shower on the bottom, party on the top. For some reason the shower is shielded from the rest of the kitchen by a pair of what appear to be actual, and not shower, curtains. This entire flat does not know what it is. This flat is an identity crisis. This flat is the building equivalent of cutting a fringe in and retraining as a snowboard instructor after a particularly rough break-up.

The rest of the flat is normal – fine; nice, even – which makes it all the weirder that a space that can include an adequate and cosy front room and a decently-sized double bedroom can also, like, not include separate places for you to wash your body or microwave a cheese bake. Are there logistical issues to showering in a kitchen? Are there logistical issues to kitchening in a shower? Does the vapour of your steamy Herbal Essences shower imbue the food with any sort of atmospheric flavour? Do you sometimes get out of the shower smelling like a big tin of beans?

I know we’re the generation that is finally going to flout traditions – we don’t need the old genders, do we, or the old rules on marriage or monogamy or home ownership; we don’t need to take someone else’s surname! We don’t need to observe Lent! – but also I think some of the old rules ("Have one room for washing your body in and one room to make cheese-on-toast in") could and should still be adhered to. Maybe this flat is just modern and I’m an old-fashioned stick in the mud. Maybe it’s an abomination and we should be ashamed to live in a country with a single person who thinks that it’s worth £1,155 a month to live in! Sometimes it’s very hard to tell, isn’t it. Sometimes it’s just very hard to tell.

@joelgolby (h/t @bigfatgoalie93)