However, one of the things that made the process was that after the first year, when you get thrown together in halls you tend to find yourself with a group of mates who are all in the same situation – i.e. needing somewhere to live, having a limited budget and needing to be close to the University.
I was lucky to have a group of friends whom I had met almost from the very first day in halls and we rented a house together. Others shared with people from their course or from a sports team or social club.
As part of my course however, my third year was spent working in industry. This was a very different prospect. Not only was I moving to a part of the country where I didn’t know a soul, but I wasn’t been mollycoddled as I had been when I first arrived at University with the relative luxury of an affordable private room in a prime location for the Universities facilities and surrounded by people who were also completely unfamiliar with the area and each other and looking for new friends.
No.. I was really cast adrift.
My sister and I went on a reccy of the area, which happened to be Slough to see how the land lie with respect to rooms to let in shared housing. We arrived in Slough after a long drive and went in to the shop to buy the local newspaper. However we had arrived on the wrong day, so there were very few rooms or house to let advertised and we were left to scour the classifieds.
I lost count of the number of times I read the words ‘non-smoking female professional wanted’ for house share.
I ended up finding somebody who was happy to take me in, but it was far from a match made in heaven. My new landlady was as mad as a box of frogs. She had several bedrooms that she let out, but was clearly not licensed to do so as she was scared to death of the neighbours finding out about her lodgers. This house share was never going to be a match made in heaven, and again I started to scour the small ads.
I found a room to let nearer to work, which was cheaper and perhaps more importantly away from the nutty woman. I wouldn’t say it was out of the frying pan and into the fire, but I certainly seemed to have jumped straight into another frying pan. My new landlady was quite a bit older than me and very house proud. Although she was pleasant enough, I never really felt at home, and I was certainly only there to help to pay the bills. I couldn’t see us ever becoming the best of friends.
As luck would have it, one of my colleagues at work was also on the look out for a new place to live, and as we had got on well together we decided to start looking for a decent place to rent that would be our home.
We managed to find a three bedroomed house a few miles down the road and within a couple of weeks we were in. The only problem was that neither of us could afford to pay half of the rent on this house for a sustained period of time and we really needed somebody to occupy the third room. You could say that the boot was now on the other foot and instead of looking to move into somebody else’s house share or flat share we now needed somebody to move into our spare room.
As we had found our perfect house, we found ourselves reluctant to open the doors to just anybody moving into our house and but found ourselves in a financial conflict as we needed help with the bills and fast. Again, we resorted to the small ads in the local paper quoting those dreaded words ‘non-smoking female professional wanted’.
Everything worked out OK for us, and it is with regret that I am no longer in touch with my original housemate as I always considered him a friend for life who I just never kept in touch with. If you’re reading this James, drop me a line.
I wonder if life would have been easier had there been ways and means of finding your housemates before you find your house? The internet is not full of websites advertising rooms to let, so there is no need to look through the classifieds of the local newspaper, and with sites such as www.abodewithme.com it is now possible to find your housemates online too. I think my experience would have been much simpler had this site been around then.
www.abodewithme.com