Rental Opportunity of the Week: Everything Bad About Renting in London

What is it? Somewhere between a cell in a juvenile detention centre, an army barracks bunk and a room in a halls of residence building that everyone on campus assures you is "set to be demolished next year".
Where is it? I understand that last reference is hyper-specific (Bangor, 2005, Neuadd Emrys Evans, B414 roll through), but I also feel the experience is oddly universal. In my first year in halls I was assured the building I was in was set for demolition: some mornings I would wake up and, in the grey thin mist that surrounded me (Wales.), see the ghosts of builders in hard hats, rubbing their ruddy hands together in anticipation of wrecking my bedroom to pieces while I slept in it. Other buildings, with other friends, had their own rumours of destruction: sinks peeling off walls, windows cracked and un-repaired, the constant threat of explosion, justified decay. Only once did I ever see a building I'd drank a warm can of lager in once reduced to rubble. Every other building – essentially doomed from the moment I got there – kept creaking on, somehow, for years. Did everyone not have this? Or did I just go to an especially bad university? I know I whiffed my A-Levels, but I don't think I deserved to live in a condemned building because of it—
What is there to do locally? Oh right, yeah, just catching up: it's in Gloucester Road, in one of those SW-adjacent postcodes that exist, there, in the rich ether of untouchable London, and I obviously don't know what there is to do there, locally. Very slowly drive a Lamborghini through the traffic outside Harrods, or something. Casually buy a diamond. Accidentally walk between two Made in Chelsea regulars – season 18 onwards, though, not the boom days of Peak Spencer Matthews, instead the thin reedy crap new ones who are just hollowly going through the motions that the bois set before them, years and years before – arguing on a bridge. I don't fucking know what there is to do in west London, do I.
Alright, how much are they asking? £997 pcm, which doesn't even neatly divide into four for a sensible weekly rate. I mean, at this point just ask for a grand, isn't it. Asking for three pounds less than a grand is more insulting than just asking for a grand. "Hey: at least we’re not charging you a grand" – some cunt who is charging you £997. Be a grown up and charge me a thousand pounds.

I know I go on about double beds a lot, but I really do think that adults should sleep in them. Maybe this is because I am an extremely large human being, and normally my feet stick out from the end of beds, and a double bed allows me to sleep on a sort of diagonal that is incredibly annoying to sleep next to, sure, but it means my feet stay warm and cosy beneath the duvet: perhaps this is significant.

Maybe this is because I am a "sleep diva" (when I turned 30, I made exactly one resolution to segment the previous three decades of my youth from the brave new era I was entering into – "I will never sleep on a sofa again" – and it has been up among the top #3 decisions I have ever made), this I also admit. But also, in all my years renting in London, no matter how small the room, a double bed was always the default. A double bed is the minimum acceptable amount of bed to sleep in, I believe. You turn 13 and you get a double bed. From there on, asking someone to sleep in a single is akin to asking them to sleep in a cot. Sleep in a sling around mummy's neck. Anyway:

You will note that this is a single bed (if you squint and look, that's not even a full, sprung duvet: that's a long flat duvet-shaped cushion, which does not actually quite fill the single bed frame beneath it. This is 85 percent of a single bed), but this is also a kind of IKEA showroom, this-is-what-your-kid's-bedroom-could-look-like-if-it-was-ever-tidy arrangement that makes sense when you are, like, ten years old, and that's about it. Remember? Just before you morphed monstrously into a full teenager? That year where you were diligently well-behaved and always did your homework? Your parents got you that strange single bunkbed arrangement with the desk underneath it, so you could do colouring in on that before playing your allotted 45 minutes of Nintendo? This is basically that, but for adults, and costs £997 a month, and for that money you have to somehow pack every item you own, in the entire world, into it.

This is a fine storage solution/place to sleep if you own exactly one suitcase full of things, in your life, which some people do. And if you are new to a city and living out of a suitcase and need somewhere, anywhere, to sleep, a single bed built into a wardrobe that can – at a push – house about five items of hanging clothing would sort of work. But I would question why anyone working in a way that they can comfortably afford £997 a month in rent would choose to spend it on this particular room: a single bed, a cubby hole, an MDF structure that sort of works like a wardrobe, a phone telecom on your wall that I assume links to the shared front door and has no volume control on it and requires a simply extraordinary amount of piping to disguise the wiring of, a sick-coloured carpet, a laminated homemade fire exit sign on the door, a single bleak sink.

As the property listing states, this is one locked room within a house-share – "Fully Furnished Single Bedsit - All Bills Included; Fully Equipped Open plan kitchen (Cooker, Fridge, and Microwave); Sharing Bathroom and Toilet; Everyday Cleaning by housekeeper" – and I do wonder, again, about the psychological profile of someone willing to bunk in this room for a grand a month and still share a kitchen and bathroom for it. Maybe, possibly, if I were in London for exactly one month, and I was only there to scout and ultimately kill someone, incredibly clean hit, no paper trail, single bullet to the base of the skull: yeah, maybe, to avoid detection, I'd stay here and pay in cash. But to live here? To try to live a life here, in this room, sleeping on a wardrobe, waking up to a staticky brown carpet ("I'd like the carpet to be brown" "Like a tasteful chocolate brown?" "No. Like: dogshit brown") and a shallow sink that you just know has had multiple people's blood in it and a smoke-staled office blind and a mattress that isn't a mattress? For £997 a month? Not for me. I lived in a condemned building for a year, and this place is: not for me.

@joelgolby