Student flats

My daughter recently moved into her first student flat. It's in a part of town close to the university and renowned for its student flats. I googled the address when she told me about it and, as I zoomed in on the map, I was hoping her flat wasn't in one of the houses I first spotted. It was. It looked it might get sunlight for about an hour in mid-Summer.

Unfortunately, Google Maps didn't prepare me for the worst. It was only when we moved her in that we discovered the steepness and narrowness of the street. We'd hired some movers to take her bed, dresser and desk from home and it was well worth the money not to be the ones trying to manoeuvre a van and find a nearby parking spot. Fortunately we'd found a spot right outside and when the movers turned up - from the wrong direction, despite my instructions - we moved our car out for them to park. Compared to some places in town, the path from the street to the house wasn't too bad - a dozen steps, and a switchback, broken path. We lugged her boxes down to the house and let the movers do the big stuff. Of course her room was in the back of the house. I did mutter to the moving guy not to worry about hitting the walls on the way through - I doubt you could damage the house more.

The house is at least a hundred years old and it's wearing its age badly. The boards of the front porch are on the ground. My daughter's room is a reasonable size with high ceilings and a skylight - perfect for heat dissipation. The floor isn't level and, until she got some mats, she had to hold on to her desk to stop her chair careering across the floor. She showed me the rest of the flat and the floors are consistently inconsistent in level. The bath in the bathroom outside her room is tear-drop shaped and quite possibly original. Tacked on the back of the house - on the 'sun-ward' side - is a ramshackle conservatory used for 'smoking'. When she first told me about the flat she kept referring to it as an 'observatory'. Fortunately the flat has some redeeming features. There's a woodburner in the lounge, an ancient dishwasher in the kitchen, and a drier in the laundry! They also have two fridges but are debating if they can afford to plug both in. The drier is a necessity but two fridges is a luxury.

Thinking back to my university days I realised it wasn't a lot worse than my final flat. I'd had the luxury of private boarding in my first year, and flatting with a working relative in my second year. That flat had been pretty nice. It was only in my third year that I regressed to a truly seedy classic student flat. It was an old house opposite a brewery. Many unsuccessful plans were made to tunnel across the road and run a beer-hose into the flat. I can't recall how many bedrooms the house might have had originally - mine was subdivided (surely illegally) to create a passage way through to a sun-porch when our resident arsonist lived. I could barely swing a cat in my room but it was of a similar size to both my bedroom at home and the sun-porch I'd boarded in during my first year. Other flatmates had more generously sized rooms - one managed to fit a king-sized waterbed in hers! Nine of us lived in that place somehow.

We had two bathrooms - one most of us never used as the boys in the flat did a poor job of cleaning it. The pubic hairs in the drain were possibly sentient. The other bathroom was off the lounge. This was the bathroom we discovered the cat liked using. We had inherited a black cat called Mephistopheles from a previous tenant who was rumoured to be a witch. This cat was quite possibly her familiar. It used to climb the walls at times - although that could have been also due to the pot smoke it ingested while hanging out with one of the flatmates in his room.

One day we were 'studying' in the lounge when we saw the cat walk through to the bathroom, heard the sound of urinating in the toilet, and then saw the cat stroll back out. We looked at each other in disbelief then went to check. Sure enough, the surface water of the toilet was disturbed. We were intrigued and determined to catch it in action. And we did. Some weeks later we saw the cat heading through the lounge and into the bathroom. A flatmate and I crept to the door of the bathroom and peered around. There was Mephistopheles perched on the loo seat peeing in the toilet. He was not impressed to be caught at it and fled...without wiping or flushing.

So I wish my daughter well in her student flat. The first thing I made her put up in her room was a smoke detector though. I was pleased when she told me they also have an extinguisher and fire blanket. I also slipped a four-pack of toilet paper into her packing. Loo paper is always tradeable. She's looking forward to seeing sunlight briefly in January...if she's home from her part-time job in time.