I have been living in Vauxhall for almost nine months and I consider myself one of the luckiest people in London. I pay a reasonable amount of Money for leaving really nearby down town. Probably the key factor is the need to be flexible, and my desires to be a princess changed radically since I moved in this city. I used to live in a house with two lovely and clean girls, swimming pool, tennis area, garden and garage in Spain. I changed that for paying more, living with five English people not very clean, I don’t want to overreact just in case they are reading this, the screams and music of my Latin neighbours and some drunk guy from the street waking me up because he wants to kill some one and he is swearing around. Nice picture isn’t it? And remember, “I am lucky”. Living in London changed me a lot, and my tolerance with cleaning, flatmates is much wider.
My friend Juan has an interesting theory: every single flat has a defect when you are not ready to pay more than 550 pounds and my experience says Amen to that theory. For example my friend Moncho found a flat for 400 pounds in Angel, but he wakes up every morning with the curry smelling of the fifty years old Indian couple who live in the living room, of course they don’t have living room because is rented. Talking my mind, I must say is not the best atmosphere for a 25 years old young professional. We can see the practice application of Juan theory’s.
But the scariest thing in the whole world is when you go to have a look to a flat. You never know what are you going to find and who.
My friend Emma and me wanted to live together, so we spent the last month searching for places. In general, the rooms that looked palaces on Internet, when you visited you wanted to run miles away from there. And if you have the chance to see a decent place paying tremendous Money, you must pass a selection process twice hardest that the one I made for the international company Ogilvy. Your hands starting to sweet and after the third rejection you start thinking: It’s something wrong with me? Emma and me offered to some girl my discount in Oddbins just like an incentive for being the desirable flatmates. How desperate is that?
Once I was having a look to one place in Kennington, when I arrived I found the typical flats built by the government, well I swear I read in the advert that they wanted someone clean, and it was the most near place to a pigsty I have ever been, without exterior light, and the landlady was scary as well. A cute Italian boy was checking the place as well and we looked each other in the visit around the house, with knowing looks, laughing and wondering what we were doing there. Both of us run away after an innocent interchanged of telephones, don’t think wrong I have boyfriend, but is funny how can you meet someone nice in a really spontaneous way.
The conclusion of all this mess is that although I love this city, every day more and deeply, doesn’t stop surprise me that the high price of the rents doesn’t allow people living alone, independent from your flatmates. For sure the English people leave their parent’s house earlier than the Spanish and Italians but if you don’t have a couple you can’t not afford living alone, the rents force as to live in shared houses.
After all, Emma is moving to my place because life’s ironies one of my flatmates is moving to Madrid, so after all the sufferings, and the rejections. HABEMUS HOUSE together as we wanted since the early beginning.
