Yes of course you can stay at my house – I have a spare room. “Great”, I thought “
I will save myself the cost of a hotel.” However, when I got there I realised that my friend’s house was little more than a squat and he admitted than even he moves out to a hostel sometimes because he cannot bear living there!
Here we go – it is on the seventh floor and there’s no lift. Each stairwell is littered with broken bits of furniture so it’s a bit of an obstacle course to get to the flat. The shower needs to be plugged into elec for 20 mins before showering and then plug to be taken out if you don’t want to electrocute yourself. No water in bathroom sink – you have to use the kitchen sink.
The kitchen sink floods the kitchen so there is a towel permanently on the floor to mop it up. The water in the kitchen is only cold so if you want hot water for washing you have boil the kettle and wash using a bucket.
The chairs are camping chairs. The TV doesn’t work. There is no heating or air-conditioning. Unusually he doesn’t own a computer. He says he is worried someone will come in a steel it!!
I was surprised that the bathroom door had plain glass but he explained that it was not plain glass but that there was no glass at all. The light fittings were hanging off. The light in the bathroom was broken as was the one in his bedroom. There was no mattress for my bed, no curtains and the Buddhist temple next door bonged their bells on the hour all through the night.
I had a duvet but no sheet, duvet cover or pillow cover so I had to roll myself up like a sausage roll. The next day the water in the flat stopped working altogether.
I made an excuse the following day using “I don’t like bars on the window – everything else is fine” and checked out into what the literature says is the 9th best youth hostel in the world. And yes, it was fantastic. £16 for a double en-suite room. And everything worked!
