I suspect it is the sheer horror of my current situation that has prevented me from writing recently. Back at university and facing another year of working so much to pay the rent that university flashes by in an unremembered blurry struggle, I had the opportunity to take the other route into keeping the old head above water in London: endurance. Endurance of terrible living conditions to limit outgoings.
You may well not remember the time back in China when I had a friend stay who I found so unbearable and unmanageable that I had to subtly kick her out. Well, fate brought her to England, in as much as a sorry state as I am in, and we are in a role reversal situation in which I find myself the imposing guest. Except this time we have a tiny room, not a huge apartment, and this time the lodger (i.e. me) is expected to contribute towards the rent Frankly speaking, this is like a never ending sleepover from hell. Sure, I could move out, but I'd have to double my work hours, so for now I'm just biting the bit and pulling my duvet over my head for most of the night as my insomniac friend taps away on the computer, before finally embarking on her 4 hours of sleep a night. I'm sure there will be many gripes to come about my dear roommate, so at this point I will return to the rest of the flat.
Like my room mate, the 3 boys who we live with are also the fall-out of the single child policy. Unlike my room mate they aren't really highly strung and fairly easy going, but on the negative side they have never looked after or cleaned up after themselves in their lives, and consequently find it impossible to maintain even the lowest standard of hygiene. Dishes are never washed, the cat litter tray for their pet overflows behind the kitchen door and fills the room with the odour of cat poo. The presumably once-white bathmat by the toilet make one wonder whether they even had assistance in peeing back home.
The darkest period of my few weeks here occured several weeks ago when the drainage pipe in the bath (over which the shower hangs) became blocked. The calls and visits to the letting agent were to no avail, but what can you expect from an aggressive man who screams down the phone for overdue rent and takes only cash. I never would have signed a lease with a agency like that, and one of the benefits of this unsettled life is that I don't have to enter any kind of contract or hand over any deposit to the almost invariably corrupt landlords who seem to control every flat that is let out to the anything-less-than-stinking rich of London.
When the blockage cause the pipe to leak and pour water into the flat below a plumber from the estate came to inform us that should we use the shower again before the matter is dealt with, we would be responsible for the repair fee, and sorry no he couldn't do anything to help as this flat is a private rental, not a council flat.
Two weeks passed. I hummed. I grabbed a weekly shower at a friends house, and felt barely human. The turning point came when I woke one morning to find that my flat mates had decided to use the shower despite the fact that all the water now ran directly onto wooden floorboards, and that the kitchen had reached shocking levels of chaos. At first I had indulged my young friends, as I was once a rather grubby BA student, and had cleaned the kitchen. Sometimes that inspired/shamed them into picking up some of the rubbish that carpets every floor and surface. But that day was enough. I cast the dirty plates, pans, shrivelled vegetables and wrappers into the hallway and then cornered one of the trembling boys in his room and demanded that they either make the landlord fix it or I will help them find a plumber and they can pay for it.
You know, sometimes it feels really good to fly of the handle.
That evening I got back to find the flat unprecedentedly clean (which was still pretty grubby nonetheless) and a couple of days later a sheepish message was relayed via my room mate that they wanted me to find a plumber. That was another big PITA as I had to sort it all out by phone during intervals between work and classes one day as the plumber informed me that my flat mates couldn't speak English, and he didn't know whether he was supposed to do the job or just give a quote. But all is well that ends well. We can wash.
So that is just one of the 'highlights' of the flat. We also have gas and electricity on a pre-paid meter, which means it constantly stops at undesirable moments.
But I may live in squalor, but I am no longer time-poor. Indeed I have time to study, and have even taken an extra class for recreational purposes. And I no longer have to ration out my vegetables to save money. I am truly the queen of the bog of eternal stench.
