Photos via Gumtree
What is living in London like? Hell. Here’s proof, beyond all doubt, that renting in London is a nightmare.
Where is it? Ruislip, which is out past Wembley, somehow (stuff exists beyond Wembley? I always assumed Wembley Stadium was some sort of greying Death Star, with its own horrible gravity, pulling in all forms of life that live behind in its shadow, and that all there is past Wembley is a complex rat’s nest of intersecting A-roads, with crumble-zones and bollards and special huge immoveable curves of concrete, bridges that somehow loop back in on themselves, and then maybe some of those flat strange fields where they put all the rubble of the Blitz, and thin reedy grass grows through it and the whole area doesn’t have any noise to it or wildlife, and it just collects old out-of-print Stella cans and blue plastic bags, and this miasma of metropolitan nothingness continues all the way up until you hit the next available town, which is Watford) (but apparently I was wrong and they have Ruislip now instead), and exists in its own grey nether-place of areas I have never heard of, no matter how far out on the map I zoom: Ruislip, near Eastcote, by Ickenham, which is near RAF Northolt, by Hillingdon, you know, out by Cowley and Hayes. The more I learn about the geography of “London”, the more I am convinced that maps are made up by the government to trick us into thinking Britain is richer and more varied than it is. The entire population of “North Hillingdon” was made up by the Tories to fake votes.
What is there to do locally? As mentioned, it’s near an RAF base, and what I always assume of a locale when it is built around an armed forced outpost is that the entire nearby economy is turned in the direction of fire, so my image of Ruislip is it’s just riddled with lads who can’t read without their lips moving and only have three changes of clothes, who are so damaged from the stress of making their bed in a way that doesn’t get them yelled at every day that whenever they are let loose in a pub, they end up in the car park damaging a meek local dad for the rest of his life by breaking a sticky pool cue over him, and as punishment when they get back to base they have to make their shoes really shiny or run a kilometre while wearing a backpack. Happy to be proven wrong, obviously, but I feel like I won’t be.
Alright, how much are they asking? It’s hard to tell exactly because it’s listed as £230 per week [*1], but by my calculations this comes out at £996 per month. I am quite, quite sure the landlord will happily round this up to a neat grand if that would make it easier.
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