Tag: Builders

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Student Accommodation Can Be Rather Tiresome

Something a bit special is happening on the 7 Reasons sofa today. For the first time ever, one Lee is being replaced by another. I, Jon, am stepping aside and handing control of 7 Reasons over to my brother, Rob. This may backfire quite substantially, but for the sake of me having a day off , it is a risk I am more than happy to take. If you enjoy Rob’s ranting you may be interested in reading his first book, Shattered Souls. It contains no ranting, but does feature a place called RedFjord. Amazon are also currently offering a very generous 90p discount which is quite a bonus. Right, here’s Rob. I’m off out to buy some more asterisks.

1. The Fridge. The fridge is always too small. Always. What is it about landlords and small fridges? Do they not think that their tenants might want to buy food? We don’t all survive on takeaway and ready meals y’know. Some of us can even use rudimentary kitchen utensils, or combine ingredients that aren’t cheese, tomato sauce, and frozen chips. Despite this, it’s always a case of having one shelf in the fridge. I don’t know about you, but cheese takes up about half the space in mine, let alone any other food. And no I am not willing to freeze it. Frozen cheese is an abomination. Step one, get bigger fridges.

2. The Builders. Why is it that student landlords always have builders doing ‘things’ with the house? Things which are seemingly unnecessary, and even these are invariably done badly. So the landlord is called; he/she is forced to come round; then they call back the same builders who did it wrong in the first place!* Even worse, they give them keys to the property. Yes, do go in, don’t mind them, they’re just sleeping**. The landlord comes out with things like ‘don’t lock your door so my builders can get in’. What? I’m not leaving my door unlocked in a student neighbourhood – I may as well just leave my valuables on a park bench with a ‘Take-Me Big Boy’ sign. I’m also not letting some Charlie I’ve never met, wander about, knocking bits out of the place I’m living, without someone there to stop him. (Or her. We’re very broad minded here).

3. The Neighbours. Student housing has neighbours. Invariably only about two feet away from you and separated by a wall about as thick as a cream cracker. This is not good when one wishes to sleep. Especially because the neighbours always seem to be nocturnal and have absolutely no taste in music. Music which they broadcast to the entire street***. Neighbours shouldn’t be allowed.

4. The Parking. There isn’t any. Many students have cars so they can move their collection of road signs, traffic cones, novelty hats and foreign vodka from one place to another. Lots of cars and no parking is an equation that doesn’t work. It also means walking anywhere becomes a game of car-dodgems from idiots who, having shared their lack of taste in music with the street, have decided to drive down the one you’re walking along.

5. The Bathrooms. There’s only ever one. This is annoying when you’ve just got in from a post seminar drink and discover you have to wait half an hour to use the facilities. Either that or you nip back round the corner to the local public house to use theirs and nearly end up locked in because you’ve discovered the only pub in the area which kept to a closing time of 11pm when all the rest changed to an hour before dawn****.

6. The Annual Quest For Housing. Unless you happen to be lucky enough to be in a house which is not leaking, falling down, being sold to a private individual who doesn’t want to live with students, being sold to another landlord who seems to think letting to undergrads will be easier than letting to postgrads, a pit, too small, too big, too expensive, neighboured by idiots called Nelson who keep getting stoned and wandering about outside shouting ‘Hash’ at 3am in the morning***** and then playing their music so loud that industrial-level earplugs make no difference, then you invariably find yourself moving. (Insert breath here). This effectively entails scouring housing lists on the internet and engaging in the blind battle that is finding the only decent place before all the other people do. This process is annoying, especially because it also means parting with large amounts of money in the form of deposits which you’ve only just got back from the last place******.

7. The students. There’s far too many of them*******.

*Not all builders get it wrong, some are very good at their job, however, student landlords like it cheap. Cheap and good don’t go together in building work, ask the bridge builders of Delhi.

**No, not as you may imagine at 3pm in the afternoon, but in fact at 6am when the banging starts. And by banging I don’t mean another apparently favourite activity of the undergraduate student.

***Unhappily half the time much of the street is broadcasting back, and Classic FM it certainly isn’t, it’s not even Radio 2.

**** This may or may not have happened. It does not particularly help if you just returned from a smart do and are dressed in black trousers white shirt – the staff may think you work in the cellar. This also may or may not have occurred.

*****This did happen. Many times. Many many times (a little classic comedy nod there, if you know what it refers to then I’m sure Julian and Sandy will see you right).

******Yes, everyone renting has to pay deposits, so feel free to join in being annoyed about this point even if you’re not in the university system.

*******As a postgrad I don’t consider myself a student, especially since I teach the little terrors (ahem, the academic future of this country) too. Postgrads are excluded from the above rants. Unless Nelson ever becomes a postgrad. I won’t worry about him reading this; I don’t imagine he knows how to read.

October 30, 2010
7 Reasons That The Banging is Probably a Good Thing.

The house next door to us, having stood empty for some time, has finally been sold and my wife and I met the new owners and several of their dogs last weekend. They seem like a nice couple and, not unreasonably, they want to get on with renovating their house before they move in. The builders – unannounced – started work at seven o’clock this morning. They started with a sledgehammer in the bedroom, pounding on the party wall, several inches from our heads. This was a surprise. Still, I always try to see the positive in every situation and, to that end, I decided to write 7 Reasons That The Banging is Probably a Good Thing.

1. Efficiency. My wife always complains that she never gets enough done during the summer holidays but now – as she’s up at seven o’clock, rather than nine – her day will be 12.5% more time-efficient. It’s only day one of the banging, but she’s already accomplished many things in her extra two hours. These include: Swearing like a dock-worker; slamming every door in the house; winning a light-welterweight boxing-match with the sofa (TKO: Round 6) and preventing her husband from murdering a man in a checked-shirt. If the banging continues for more than a week she will probably solve global warming, bring about world peace, organise her shoe-rack and discover a cure for cancer, though experience tells me that one of those suppositions is fanciful.

2. Numbers. The banger, bangs steadily and rhythmically in sixes, leaving a six second interval between bursts of hammering. 1-2-3-4-5-6…1-2-3-4-5-6…1-2-3-4-5-6…. I think in sevens, so my numerical horizons are being broadened by the banging. This can only be a good thing, though it is always a relief when our numbers coincide at forty-two. I have taken to celebrating every forty-second bang by growling like a walrus and bellowing, “SHUT UP YOU BASTARD!”.

3. Discovery. As I wound the duvet tightly around my head, to lessen the sound of the banging, I discovered a lump between duvet and cover. On further investigation, it turned out to be a missing purple sock. So now I know where the missing socks go. They’re in my duvet cover. At last, an age-old mystery solved, all thanks to the banging. I also found an orange sock that I didn’t recognise: Feel free to email me if it belongs to you.

4. Décor. The banging isn’t just improving the house next door. It’s improving ours too. We were never entirely sure if the framed Japanese print above the fireplace in our bedroom was the right way up, and we both had opposing views on whether it was. Now that it’s lying on the floor though, with its frame shattered into a thousand pieces, it will no longer be a bone of contention and we’ll have a more harmonious marriage as a result. Yay! Thank you, banging.

5. You. I do a lot of my best creative thinking while lying in bed. If it weren’t for the banging, you’d have been reading something rather more considered and rational right now like 7 Reasons That The Age of Enlightenment Was Anything But, or 7 Reasons That France Should Invade The Vatican but, as a result of the pervasive, over-bearing din that is currently preventing me from pursuing any logical thought, or using the toilet (though you don’t really need to know about that), you’re reading about the banging instead. So we’re all benefiting from it.

6. Comparison. Another unexpected benefit was that the unremitting cacophony of the banging, when combined with the sound-baffling properties of my duvet-turban, and the low, wailing sound that I was emitting made listening to Nicky Campbell on 5Live Breakfast almost tolerable. I didn’t even want to punch him.

7. The Relief. The wave of domestic-serenity and abject calm that washed over our home when the banging stopped at eleven o’clock was indescribable. The euphoria I felt at the cessation of the tumult was almost worth having endured the prior four hours of torture for. And that was my opinion until 11:20am, when the banging started again.*

*Coming soon: 7 Reasons That The Punishment for Killing Builders Should be a Stern Look and a Cursory Slap on the Wrist, M’Lud.

August 5, 2010
7 Reasons You Know Spring Has Arrived

1. Cheery People. As soon as the sun comes out people start smiling and being happy. It’s so annoying. At least it seemed to be for the cashier in WH Smith yesterday. All I said was ‘Good Morning’ and she looked at me as if I’d just molested her cat. (Not that I know what that look is. Obviously).

2. Chuggers. Or to give them their more politically correct name, tossers. Okay that maybe a bit harsh, but there are bloody millions of them now the sky is blue. It’s hard not to feel resentment towards them when you have to get past what seems like the gauntlet from Gladiators everytime you want to get to the tube station.

3. Legs. They are beginning to protrude from shorts. I am not the biggest fan of men’s legs – you’ll probably find a whole other sex who prefer them more than I do – but it is the men who get them out first. It’s that musty aroma you can smell.

4. Near Death Experiences. This may sound cruel, but I strongly oppose mobility scooters – when I am outside. When the sun is out, the brightness makes it much harder to read the cricket score on my phone. Therefore I am going to be concentrating more on getting the angle right than looking where I am going. Under such circumstances I have a habit of not walking in a straight line and so venturing into the path of a mobility scooter is not so much a possibility as a certainty.

5. Australians. Yes, they are arriving. In droves. They seem to disappear during the winter months – probably to hibernate – but now they are back. And why do none of them seem to work? All they do is sit outside the Walkabout, drink and watch me play dodgems with mobility scooters. What am I? A tourist attraction?

6. Builders. Not that it is particularly unusual to see builders, but it is unusual to see them working. Hopefully they’ll get a bit done before they have to stop again in June due to the dangers of sunstroke.

7. Smoke Alarms. This might sound strange, but the warmer it gets the more regular the sound of a smoke alarm. Usually mine. I would like to blame this on an electrical fault, but no one is going to believe that. It’s more to do with the fact that I put cheese-on-toast under the grill, head off to open the windows and accidentally become distracted in front of the mirror.

March 16, 2010