Beatles song title aside, this blog feels particularly equipped in describing the fact that the stable dynamic of the flat that I inhabit in Hoxton is going to be changing towards the beginning of next month.
Since I made a return to my home town of London as a live in landlord at the real tail-end of 2014, I feel that the 3 bedroomed flat that I call home has served me tremendously.
Indeed, the grand total of properties that I organised a viewing of whilst London was wooing me back amount to… Just 1. Well it hit the nail on the head you see, served all of my criteria and was exactly where in the world that I wanted to be based. This has not budged so much as one iota as of yet.
If the jumped-up “all property is theft” 17 year old that I was could see me now, what would he say? Realistically, he’d probably just be pleased. Yes, because like the vast majority of sanctimonious zealots in my eyes, context isn’t properly appreciated along with being safe in the assurance that their circumstances will just never afford them the opportunity to attain elements of life that they so chastise.
I worked in housing for the York based Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust for a relatively brief period and our country’s housing crisis being solved is one of my foremost priorities to witness my Labour Party rectify. Still, I appease my conscious on this somewhat by – in my own little way – trying to compensate for a country’s disgraceful shortage of council housing, through charging my tenants more affordable rent; the vast majority of my contemporaries are forced into a mug’s game of property rental.
Within the nigh-on 4 years that I have moved into my flat, I’ve now had no less than 6 different flatmates. For a 3 bed-roomed gaffe, I think that this is pretty sustainable going.
Sharing living quarters with somebody is always an intense and incredibly testing experience. Everybody is so unique and it’s been an overall highly successful period thus far. Variation is welcome and as long as you respect other people and are aware of the pressures of collective living, we’d be able to make fine housemates one day!
On the 6th of this month (October 2018), I glamorously jetted off to celebrate a top friend’s 30th Birthday. A wondrous time was had by all of our large group around the environs of Marseille. This boozy and foody weekend was adequately epic. Arriving back from a painful Ryanair #middleclassprolems flight to Stansted followed by an all too stylish National Express coach back, I was all too ready to hit the hay and get adequate sleep to spend the next day studying my integrative diploma in Therapeutic Counselling at City Lit college.
It was in the morning of this day that I was psyching myself up for, when the first of my beloved flatmates announced that she’d be off to new pastures with her girlfriend. Of course, this bombshell was met with my congratulations and approval. It makes complete logical sense, for their – after their cohabiting really well for a few months or so, in our flat as a supposed temporary measure – relationship to move this stage; both personally and in an economical sense. It was something mutually unprecedented by all parties and gained yet more gravitas with the disclosure that it was an especially hard decision for this flatmate to reach, given how happy we all were with the current dynamic of the flat.
Having a full day to be spent in college was something of a relief, as it meant that the harmony within my flat having to be reworked next month would not have to pervade my mind in a consuming sense.
The next day I placed my third post on soareroom.com. It received an overwhelming response; no doubt only boosted by the second departing housemate’s jazzing up of my otherwise all too lack lustre advert!
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice had the working title of First Impressions. The outcome of this novel surely only emphasises the inadequacy of placing any real merit upon your initial caption of anybody. In invaluable old hindsight, I saw far too many people. Still, what is the correct number of housemates to see, when there are obvious flaws in the logic of either all or nothing?
The position that finding somewhere to live places all parties in is something that I loathe – sycophancy, desperation and insincerity with self-interest to name but a small handful – though fortunately my predicament now seems to have been happily resolved. What most makes me squirm, was knowing that the vast majority of those expressing interest should have to be let down.
Some people may relish this equivalent of a little power trip, though status imbalances are things that I just find so awkward and are instances that deflate, rather than fuel my ego. It was returned somewhat by the warm gratitude that the surpassing 50 people expressed towards the room being taken by someone else is something that I found most warming; people are alright. Not being able to do what is requested of me is something that I find so humbling; in the majority of instances anyway.
Things tend to iron themselves out and are rarely half as intimidating as they may first seem are the main little morals of this story. Worrying’s for suckers, though me advising that is admittedly brazen double standards! Whether or not I have come to the best decision in terms of who I live with (this luxury is almost enough to celebrate in itself) is something that only time will tell!
Addressing this issue again in six or so months’ time is perhaps something that I should do, though I almost certainly won’t be bothered.