So, my first blog! Honestly I don’t know what took me so
long since I was an incredibly keen MSN space updater... (please someone tell
me they remember that? Was it just me?) Well, of course I would decide to give
this a go at the most crucial, pressured and stressful time of life – in my
last year of university. Being in my last year is something I don’t like to
admit or dwell on too much as the thought of moving my things out of my student
house in Bristol and back home to Aylesbury brings tears to my eyes and fear in
my heart.
It wasn’t always like this. I had a shaky start in first
year, amid severe homesickness and phone calls to my Mum such as claiming my single
bed sheet is ‘way too small, you’ve definitely bought the wrong one’ for my
single bed. This was greeted by a lot of laughter from her with the realisation
she probably should have made me participate in a few more chores at home (only
child syndrome, sorry not sorry) and a sharpish visit from a flatmate who
proceeded to do it for me. However, now I have settled down and made home in
the comfort of what we lovingly refer to as 46, our student house for second and
third year. After claiming I never want to leave, I will now go on to explain
why I very much want to leave. I’ve come to realise I am living in the epitome
of the student cliché.
46 in all its glory
I should probably admit to you now that, furthering the
student cliché, my flatmate and I were incredibly hungover when we attended
this house viewing. Weeks of looking at dingy
above-a-corner-shop-and-smelling-like-weed properties, we finally found a house
in a great location and for a reasonable price. So we did what any rational
person would, booked a viewing for first thing on a Thursday morning and proceeded
onwards to our favourite Wednesday club night. Fast forward a few hours (and I do
really mean only a few hours) and we are zombie-like, propped up in the
doorways of rooms and mumbling ‘mm good size’. Potentially with alcohol still
in our systems we, looking back rather rashly, headed straight for the estate
agents and put down our unreasonably gigantic deposits. Moving in day rolls
around and feeling like I’m in an episode of Cribs, I think to myself.. ‘Wow.
We’ve done pretty well here guys. It’s clean, it’s fresh, it’s modern. Everyone
is going to wish they were us. Where do those horror stories of gross, mouldy,
rat-infested student houses even come from?!’ … I’ll tell you.
1. We have mould. We have a lot of mould. Our landlord thinks a suitable solution to my angry, concerned for my life emails (don’t you know Brittany Murphy died of mould in her mansion?!) is to send over Nick, who I will return to later, to paint over it every couple of months and to ‘keep the door open’. Which is obviously great advice for the most private room of the house where it is most of the time imperative that the door is shut.
Exhibit A
2.
There are rats in our garden. Over the summer,
our ‘garden’ (in the loosest term of the word) turned into an overgrown weed
pit where the table and chairs quite literally disappeared underneath the huge jungle
of bushes. One day, my flatmates were having lunch. One says to the other ‘oh
my god, there’s a RAT!’ The other worriedly replies ‘where?!’ ‘In the garden!
Look!’ ‘Oh right I thought you meant here in the room. Ah well.’ Not fine. Also,
not the end of the wildlife situation in the household.
3. Slugs. We have slugs (plural) inside our house. This was the last straw for me, having been sheltered by an incredibly house proud mother whose house is dominated by white carpets, we barely had so much as a fly to visit at home. Cue another angry email to our landlord from me, with photos of the slugs attached so she can absolutely see the severity of the situation. A reply. ‘Put down some repellent, it’s the time of year’. Right. Apparently I didn’t get the well-known memo that it was the season for slugs to invade your house and move in with you. I wasn’t standing for this, so again she sends Nick round to check out this situation. Nick, the mould-painter-overer and general handyman of the house rocks up and into my room without any warning and in his thick Bristolian accent states, ‘landlord said you had a flood’. Confusion is on his face and worry in his eyes. This is a big plumbing deal. ‘No Nick’, I reply, ‘we have SLUGS’. ‘OH!’ He chuckles to himself and walks away and with not even a hint of sarcasm tells me, ‘that’s alright then’.
Just
in case you were unaware of what a slug looked like. Exhibit B----------------
So lessons learnt:
1) Never go to your house viewing hungover.
2) Never move into a student house if you can possibly help it.
And 3) always, always move into a new property armed with slug repellent for when that infamous time of year rolls by.
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