London Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Fold-Down Bed in Kilburn

What is it? Honestly if I told you that we could just end the article on the first line which, yes, economical, but let me go through the rigmarole at least—
Where is it? Kilburn, north-west. You know how sometimes you’ll turn a corner in London and it’ll just be, like, a random high street with a branch of every conceivable supermarket on it, somehow? Costa Coffees, as far as the eye can see? Loads of places to buy off-brand phone chargers? Kilburn.
What is there to do locally? Only time you’re ever getting dragged to Kilburn is when your mate’s two-piece electro experiment does a support slot there on some weird Tuesday night battle-of-the-bands and it’s just you, standing there in Converse trying not to get them too greasy on the floor of it, drinking lukewarm beer out of a plastic pint glass, wondering if maybe there could be a single better use of your time than this, and realising that – in your case – no, there absolutely could not
Alright, how much are they asking? SPECIAL OFFER: £1,240 p.c.m., down from £1,575

I don’t know if you ever had this but at about age 14 you hit this weird pocket of developmental turbulence and decide that actually, as an adult now, with pubes and an erratic voice and everything, that you are no longer comfortable in your childhood room – all these posters, these toys, these childish things, that weird sweet pissy smell – and that actually you would be much happier redesigning the whole thing, top-to-bottom, to align with the more mature and pubic you. You tell your mum this plan and she tells you to “fuck off” or “absolutely fuck off”. You make plans and draw out redesigns. You download a weird shonky 3D software thing that litters your computer with viruses and try and plot out a new room, a new you. You get a little tester pot of black paint that manages to surround the bit around your radiator and that is about it. You fold down all the pages in the Argos catalogue that have nice cupboards in them. You get obsessed with it, is what I’m saying, as only a teenager can do. Finally, your mum relents. “Fine,” she says. “We’ll go to IKEA and your budget is exactly £80.” She looks at your wild plans for it, scrawled out like a maniac in the back of a maths book. “You’re absolutely not having a fold-down bed, though.”

Well fuck you mum, because—

The fold-down bed has a certain vibe. It says, “this man is very committed to his bachelor lifestyle”. It says, “I am trying to fall asleep on this boat”. It says, “serial masturbator”. It also says, “I find the fundamental concept of carving out a permanent space where I sleep to be distasteful”. It says, “the act of sleeping – something I do without fail for around eight hours a night – is secondary to me needing this bit of floor space here to like, do stuff in”. You could set up a whole Scalextric track in that space, instead of having a bed. You could… I dunno, do a jigaw on the floor or something. You could put a load of newspaper down and paint your Warhammer models, sitting on the floor cross-legged. There are myriad possibilities, versions of your life you could live, if only you didn’t have a pesky bed there, slightly in the way of the floor.

Fans of this column (all of you) will notice running themes by now: sprawling, intricate damp patterns; electrical sockets inexplicably installed halfway up a wall; trailing TV cables; microwave—hob combos; minute sinks; impossibly small corner shower stalls. But the main running theme is the ongoing battle between practicality and space: the idea that, with savvy enough planning, an intelligent landlord can carve a liveable space out in a fundamentally unliveable space: that, using alchemy and building tricks, they can stretch and expand the fixed dimensions of a studio flat to encompass a bed, and a cooking area, and a bathroom, and cover the whole thing in grey carpet and hope it’s for the best. “You do not, truly, need space in which to live”, the landlords of London are telling us. “You just need enough innovation to make what small space we give you work for you.” And lo, the fold-down bed of Kilburn.

Thing is: this place has, as the advert describes, “recently completely refurbished to a very high standard”. It’s a beautifully outfitted flat which is completely unfit for purpose, and it’s just been kitted over to appeal to the more affluent single renter. Consider that your rental budget is £1,240 a month (a month!): you gonna live here? On a fold-down bed? Alone, with an underfloor heated tiny shower, watching your rigidly wall-mounted TV? You know you can rent spaces in London for that same amount that, like, have space for a separate bed and sofa? Room for a washing machine and dryer? The concept of separate rooms? Consider that this is advertised as discounted rent, from the usual market rate of £1,575: who, exactly, is this flat for? Who is earning so much that they can spend a grand-and-a-half on rent a month, yet also has standards so low and baffling that they are happy to do intricate Tetris-work on their own bed so they can walk down the slim corridor of their house without banging into anything? I simply cannot imagine the mental profile of anyone willing or able to live here. Well, I can, but sadly they are all in prison for murder.

@joelgolby