Manchester Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Bed in an Alcove in Gorton

What Is It? Bed in an alcove in Manchester. A lot of people are looking at this alcove and going, "That is a bed under some stairs," and then going, "Like what was in Harry Potter." But it's more complex than that. We'll get to that.
Where Is It? Manchester, home to Europe's largest collection of men who still think mod haircuts are alright.
What Is There to Do Locally? Get a mod haircut, walk down some stairs really slowly as if you've just shit yourself, go to Manchester's famous Canal St and buy a leather vest.
Alright, How Much Are They Asking? £380 pcm, bills included.

Ah, Manchester, with your two football clubs and your guttural accent. Manchester, with your Oasis and your MEN Arena. Manchester, where everyone wears "kecks" and refers to each other as "our kid" and enjoys, night after night without fail, a "chippy eggy tea". "Ey up, there's gravy in me pie barm!" they say fondly, in Manchester. "Ah didn't want gravy in me fuckin' barm, wanted it on't side of me barm!"

Manchester, with your bed beneath the stairs in a spare room in Gorton.

Now, consider this bed beneath the stairs. Because when you say "there's a bed under the stairs" to me, normally I think of a musty coat cupboard with a mattress sort of wadded in and a thin fibre duvet on top, a snivelling and grubby-faced orphan child sleeping filthily upon it, waiting to be rescued by a secondary school for wizards or a Panorama episode. But this isn't that. This is an alcove with a mattress in it – and I can tell you with some confidence that the mattress is not an actual mattress but is actually a bit of foam someone found and cut to size – and, look closely now: someone has taken the door off a cupboard to make room enough to lie down and put your head in it. So this is not only a bed under some stairs: this is a bed under some stairs that is half in a cupboard. This house-share in Gorton just took the idea of a bed under the stairs and somehow amplified it, made it more terrible. I am extremely here for it.

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Thing is, we're used to cupboards under stairs in London. Actual quote, from the VICE UK office, when this cupboard under the stairs first came up on our screens: "That's not so bad, is it?" This is the state of our property expectations now. At your age your parents were already married and had you on the way. They had a mortgage and a garage and they were working towards a second car. Your dad had just taken up golf. He had slumped into middle age a thousand years – a hundred-thousand years – too early. But he never had to think, "You know what? I think I could sleep on a foam mattress under some stairs. Especially for £380 a month, bills included. That's cheap. Plus: near a Tesco. Yeah. I'm not home that much anyway, am I? Yeah. Fuck it. I'll be the mattress-under-the-stairs guy. Cool."

For their part, the PR team at Spareroom.co.uk – who, by now, must have an entire fucking department dedicated to "generating a fun quote about a destitute living situation" – note that it isn't just a bed under some stairs; it's an actual room, too. "We have taken down ads in the past from people trying to advertise Harry Potter-style spaces under the stairs," a spokesperson told Manchester Evening News, "but it looks like this one's a whole room, just that the bed is built into an alcove to make best use of the space. We are contacting the advertiser though to check and will remove the ad if necessary."

That said, the place is still, as the French say, "Un shithole." There's damp on the radiator and a wet office chair in the bathroom. An office chair. In the bathroom. Look:

I'm speculating, but: the kind of person who puts an office chair in their bathroom is not going to be that bothered about doing the washing up or doing the bins every Monday, are they? They are not going to respect the communal butter enough to not leave crumbs from their awful rounds of toast. I mean: why would you even need to sit down in a bathroom? Especially in a padded office chair. That office chair is a tattered, mouldy indicator of mania. Ignore the bed under the stairs and the C3PO figurines that watch you bathe. If you agree to pay £380 to live with someone who has an office chair in their bathroom, you're asking for trouble. Proper "wake up at 2AM with them looming over your makeshift foam stairs bed with a knife because you put the heating on too high" sort of deal.

Still: £380 all-in is kind of hard to argue with, isn't it? Especially when it's that close to Ryder Brow station and a Big Tesco. When London eventually becomes consumed – either with the inevitable floods, or just a load of people doing viral racist chants on all forms of public transport; London rapidly just becoming entire buses of racists shouting and people with smartphones recording them; Boris Johnson occasionally wobbling through on a bike and saying something like "chongy" – and we all begrudgingly have to move to Salford, catch your boy hitting up the streets of Gorton, asking quietly if he can kip in his kecks on a foam mattress under some stairs, slightly too polite to ask the man at the pie barm shop not to put gravy in his pie barm.

@joelgolby

More Rental Opportunities:

A Toilet Up Some Stairs In Stoke Newington

A Black Metal Dungeon

A Fucking Shed