What is it? I have started to think of myself in a sort of Darwinian, anthropological role of late, the only person willing to leave their life behind, hop on the HMS Beagle and plough it hard towards the West, into the wilds of Gumtree, of Zoopla, of Spareroom, finding and categorising all the little species and sub-species of London property – the usual mutations: the kitchens with a shower in; or the sort of horned and warted old pigs, flats in the shape of flats with monstrous protrusions – and I write them all down in my little notebook and grow a big beard and ignore my wife for months and years on end and all the sailors around me hate me because I Smell A Lot Like Vinegar. And lo, here, on a white chalky cliff, among thigh-height wild grass burnt yellow like straw, with only the sound of the wind around me, I find a new, perfect, yellow little wildflower, a previously undiscovered genome: a “double studio flat”, which is a studio flat, but for two people;
Where is it? Oh, it’s only in Kilburn;
What is there to do locally? I’m not going to tell you what there is to do in Kilburn – look it up – but instead simply tell you that I cannot think of Kilburn (the London area) without thinking of Mr Kilburn (my most loathed teacher, History), a sort of walking Guinness shit of a man, with a bowl cut and cigarette fingers, who was always going on about having Mark Knopfler’s email address (everybody who has been taught by this man now instantly knows who it is; my DMs are open). My most vivid memory of Mr Kilburn goes like this: in a prefabricated humanities outhouse, towards the tail end of Year 9, in a post-exam non-lesson when I was still weighing up whether I wanted to take History or not at GCSE, Mr Kilburn held forth on the idea he’d had to make his millions: a self-heated toilet seat. The invention would, Mr Kilburn explained, help difficult messings pass from the sin of the body into the cradle of the toilet pan, a panacea for the constipated and the dads who complete crosswords while they do it – though he didn’t explain this with scientific terms, exactly. No. He said the following words instead: “IT MAKES YER POOEY COME OUT ALL NICE AND GOOEY.” There was a hand gesture involved, which was a little like plucking upwards into the cavity of a chicken and slowly sliming outwards. Later that day I went to the front office and changed my GCSE option to Geography, which I failed. Fuck you, Mr Kilburn. I could have been Dan fucking Snow by now.
Alright, how much are they asking? “It makes your pooey. Come out. All nice and gooey.” My god. Anyway: £1,080 pcm.
Studio flats, as I’ve said many times before, are sort of absolutely perfect in theory (a small and self-contained space for one person to live in, in the aspirational open-plan style you might expect from a typical sitcom New York loft), but in actuality (in London, at least) are becoming something changed from the intended meaning, i.e. studio flats now are just a room in someone else’s house that they put a toilet and a hot plate in so they can put a bolt-lock on the door, charge double-rent on it and never have to see the person they’re technically sharing a property with. So studio flats in spirit: good; but physically: often very bad. But they exist: they fill a need. Some people just very fundamentally need to live on their own for cheap for whatever reason. Small shithole studio flats can just about wad up that wound in the housing market. Let’s not get down on studio flats!
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This, however, is something else, something… well, I don’t want to say “illegal”, but I’m definitely going to go “illegal-feeling”. The majority of the flat fits into “nice enough but bit basic” – lots of overwhelming pine; that simply enormous canvas print of Audrey Hepburn that girls take to uni with them; a sofa that’s slightly too small for two people and slightly too shiny to sit on without getting that weird back-of-the-thigh sweat; the kind of incredibly basic shower cubicle you only get in hotels that get booked for stag dos – but it’s the sleeping arrangement that’s brought us here today. So here’s one of your beds:
Yes, that is a bunkbed above your living room with a flinchingly small amount of crawlspace above it. Hey, you’re an adult, right! You can sleep in a bunkbed above your living room for a few months, can’t you. In Kilburn. It won’t be the worst place you’ve slept! It will just be one of the worst. Anyway, pan to the left a bit:
Yeah, that’s… that’s another bed. That’s your flatmate’s bed. That’s where your flatmate lives, in this double studio space. I say “flatmate” because the entire idea of the separate beds pretty much negates all romantic partners (I know, I know, your mum and dad, but that was only for eight months). You have to find a flatmate – which, in this cursed city, is hard enough! The right balance of “someone you want to live with” and “a friend you don’t want to risk losing a friendship with because you’re a nightmare to live with”! – and you have to find someone willing enough to sleep, not in a separate room to you, not even in the same room, but on the same rough sort of mezzanine bunk layer, in a bed a few metres away, with absolutely zero privacy for masturbation, sex or watching Netflix until 3AM while eating cereal in bed. You just have to tuck up in your bunk and blow a kiss approximately one yard across a shelf to another adult human, who is rigidly sleeping there. You both pay £540 a month for this.
Now: you know I don’t like to tell you all how to live your lives. They’re your lives! You should live them how you want to. But if you decide to rent this flat in Kilburn – and, inexplicably, find someone else willing to go halves on it with you (“Ah yes, hey mate: you still looking for somewhere? Yeah, I think I’ve found just the place. Spacious front room. Big canvas print. Bathroom like a prison one. Patio that is advertised but not photographed. You in? You are. Sick. One caveat: we sleep a measurable number of centimetres apart from each other and I masturbate like I’m trying to kill myself with it. Anyway, too late, just wired the deposit over, you owe me a grand-and-a-half. 18-month tenancy”) – then I’m going to intervene. I’m going to sit cross-legged up on your mad little bunkbed and I’m going to intervene.
