Naive, young and vulnerable; the delicious recipe for 20111's budding student intake and the wholesome dinner ready to be devoured by rotund landlords and money hungry estate agents. I see right through them. Now. Not so much last year and this is why I want to project a little 'Do or Die' list for future students who are going into rented accommodation.
DONT DO IT.
I'm Kidding, its fun, fabulous and the epitome of freedom. You're landlord will scream, you're fire alarm will probably scream louder and unfortunately your housemate on the opposite side of the wall to your bedroom, may even scream louder than that. Rule number one. Buy some earplugs and forget that they're in there. Lecturers use visually interactive aids such as power points anyway (just to patronize us students further)
Unfortunately my whole relationship with student housing has been somewhat unbalanced and therefore we are currently on a break. Its a bit one sided, I give a lot, the powers that be take a lot. And that's it.
It was the end of a beautiful summer of an alcohol induced coma when I found out that I was going to Royal Holloway University of London; it was my second choice (No i'm not going to go into a rant about that as i'm grateful that I didn't end up in that tunnel of what is bound to be incestuous relations with my peers because the place is so bloody stuck in a bubble- oh look there the rant is...) and therefore I didn't get student accommodation. I cried. I cried. I drank away my hollow sorrows. And I cried some more.
Its crazy how when put into these dire life or death situations (here comes dramatic 15 year old me again), your mind reacts. And thankful I went into proactive 'FIND-SOME-SANE-HOUSEMATES' mode (I feel the capitals aided it in its heroic quest ambiance a little). I scoured Facebook groups related to the university to find lost ducklings in the same position as myself and after hours of picking each and every one of their photos apart I found three normal looking girls who I felt safe to say guess did not have Bipolar, Schizophrenia or any mentally related illness' which may jeapordise my likelihood of making it alive through my first year.
FIND-SOME-SANE-HOUSEMATES DONE!
Going into my second year and finding accommodation likewise was not pleasant. With a new landlord that resembled Frank Butcher enduring the Big Mac Challenge and was 100% the leader of Staines' finest gypsy clan/mafia it's easy to guess that the guy tried to diddle us left right and centre. And thankfully that is not a euphemism- but I wouldn't put it past him.
In a heated exchange where I took the guy on, boxing ring style, Loz the Bloz Vs the Bibbinator- spectators et al (including one of my housemates mothers who stood by and reveled in the carnage) our face off ended with me reciting the contract line by line and him backing down like a puppy dog. From that moment on I kept the leash tight and he respected me like Queen Latifah on crack. KNOW YOUR CONTRACTS AND KNOW YOUR RIGHTS. Landlords often see students as merely a money sign in their eyes. DING DING. The only DING DING Loz the Bloz was hearing was the sound of a definite KO at the end of Round 1...
LOZ THE BLOZ KNOCKOUT- DONE
From then onwards funnily enough Loz sent his younger and thankfully more articulate son round. How far can the apple fall from the tree? Down the Grand Canyon in this case I think. I had no problems throughout my second year of student rental apart from in the closing stages of the tenancy. MAKE SURE YOU DO EVERYTHING AND DO NOT TRUST ANYBODY. Pessimistic...me...never. 15 Emails, 19 Phonecalls and many the irritable texts later and I still have not received final bills which were promised to me by the estate agents. The prospect of not having to pay final bills is fabulous. See ya never house, see ya never Bills, see ya never bloz I am FREE from responsibility HELLO summer in the Middle East and Road Trips in Tatty Bo Brumbles (my shagadelic Corsa). That is until two years down the line when you decide to be an adult and request a loan for a mortgage and realize swiftly when they shoot you down like a Bad-ass criminal that your name has been blacklisted for the debt collectors. It's worth paying those final bills, least to save the humiliation of any kind of rejection!
The absolute epitome of my encounters with Landlords and Estate Agents has to be during this testing time. I was told when leaving the property that the estate agents would take final readings and inform the utility suppliers. I was told this. Words of the English language specimen exited the disgusting painted lip lined mouth of an over tangoed estate agent, travelling through the beauty of sound waves into my intently listening ears and I ingested the information feeling quite satisfied that I got the jist of what would happen. Apparently not. Apparently when Estate Agents say they will do something what in fact they do is the absolute opposition. Or Jack Shit. OR and gosh I hadn't thought of this previously- Some kind of information sucking death eater had escaped from the fictional wonder that is the Harry Potter novel, sucked all of this information out of the airwaves and regurgitated it back in the form of utter bullshit. When I reinstated what was said to me two months later, their reply was this- 'Are you sure...that's what was said...like absolutely sure..cause I don't think we said that' (imagine a gum-chewing chavette with poker straight hair and down-syndrome eyeliner). Obviously I was incredibly grateful that they had jogged my memory in such a way to remind myself that I was an utter mental case and tended to just fabricate situations in my head. Oh, and my father of 45 years old, an ex-CID Police officer who could remember a number plate within seconds of reading it, was present also.
Bibbinator Vs. Loz AND Estate Agents... TO BE CONTINUED. In The meantime students stand up for your Rights.
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