We probably should have guessed that somewhere touting “24-hour hot water” as a special feature didn’t have a lot to recommend itself. But, nonetheless, Chris and I optimistically turned up to be shown around yet another shockingly bad flat in the East of London.
After having quite enough of listening to next-door pee less than a metre from my pillow, and of my decidedly odd French housemate who, from what we can fathom, spends most of his day sitting in his bare room silently growing a beard, I decided that my time at Bianca House was swiftly coming to an end.
In a lucky bit of timing, my decision to move precisely coincided with my friend Chris’ discovery of a thriving colony of maggots in his kitchen bin, prompting him to vow to his 27-year-old self that he would, from this moment forth, live with people better suited to his maturing hygiene standards.
So we’re moving in together (plus my cousin Anna, who is currently going very brown in France while we have our serotonin levels sucked dry by landlords called Fabio.)
While we had the choice of the whole sprawling city, it was pretty much a done deal that we’d remain amid one of Earth’s most bizarre communities, in Shoreditch.
As Chris said after several pints, “it’s, like, where it’s at right now, isn’t it. And, while we’re still young, we so should live at where it’s at, right?”
Well exactly.*
After six months living amid the ridiculousness, there is the massive urge to escape the city from time to time, and run, gasping, to the coast; but, right now, home is when you pass the man sporting red dungarees, pink DMs, a ginger moustache and a bowler hat.
And even though your average Shoreditch Shorebitch (pouting willowy clones laden in preppy-vintage trying desperately to look as ‘not bothered’ as possible) is unlikely to become my best mate, she is totally harmless as long as a constant supply of quirky bars, light beers and rolling tobacco are on offer.
I know this isn’t a sustainable relationship. This place is rundown, relentlessly busy, relentlessly polluted, and thoroughly ridiculous. It will most likely end in plummeting self esteem, rapidly disintegrating general health and a rushed move to Brighton. But, for the moment, I’m utterly addicted to the circus.
The problem, however, is that Shoreditch landlords have well and truly caught onto the attraction of this funny little area, and now charge over the hilt for the grottiest of properties.
And so, at 11am on a Sunday morning, there Chris and I were, being lead into a sparsely windowed, brown-carpeted dingy den, by a 16-year-old agency representative who knew very little about the property other than they wanted £500 admin fees on top of rent and deposit.
After well and truly disturbing the younger members of the occupying family’s Sunday lie-in – three sets of bunkbeds crammed into one room all with little feet sticking out from under each cover – our guide swings open one closed bedroom door, only to swiftly shut it again.
“We go in there in a minute.”
Suffice to say, we gave no money, and that particular place is not our future home. But, after a somewhat depressing couple of weeks, we have found it, our place, in a block of East London flats (not dissimilar to something out of The Bill), three minutes’ walk from the curries and bagels of Brick Lane.
No Jacuzzi or butler just yet, but we’ve a clean, simple space, with no trace of previous life embedded into any furnishings, and a matchbox balcony from which you can see the gherkin poking out amid the regimented bank buildings. And, to top it off, our new address is Ramsey Street – a massive childhood goal quite accidentally accomplished.
* Chris does not normally sound like a 16-year-old stoner
