You will probably relate to these London flatsharing horror stories
So you’re moving to London. How original of you. You’re terrified, naturally — from what you’ve heard, rush hour is literally worse than the Hunger Games and you will have to sell your mother to pay for your poached-egg-and-avocado-on-rye-bread from that artisanal boulangerie chain in Peckham (because hey, no one said gentrification was cheap). ‘What are Londoners like, then?’ my sweet country friends have asked, their souls pure, their knowledge of the metropolis — Ubers, roadmen and such — cursory at best. With flatsharing fast becoming the future for any hopeful movers, what Londoners are like is now a more important question than ever before: you have to live with a horde of them, probably strangers plucked from the depths of the Internet, and how the hell are you supposed to know that they won’t be leaving pubes in your pesto for a funny/hilarious/fucking weird joke? Well, to ease your anxiety, I asked a few London flatsharers about their more colourful experiences of searching for that corner to call home. This, apparently, is what Londoners are like.
The electricity thief
Story submitted by Sean
One flatmate grew weed in the house to pay the rent
Good flat?
“This guy had plugged an extension cable into the builders’ electricity upstairs, and that’s how he powered the whole flat. He had written the numbers of all his drug dealers directly onto the walls — free for my use, magnanimously. He said he grew weed there to pay the rent.”
Good flatmate/s?
“He wore an African kaftan and a beanie in the height of summer, and worked as a chef at a strip club. Hate to judge a book and all that, but I can’t say he seemed like my kind of guy.”
Good deal?
“It was something like £700 a month for a room without windows. It had a makeshift wardrobe which was quite literally a pole stuck into the wall. So no, not a good deal.”
The flatmate with the dead-baby t-shirt
Story submitted by Aiden
Some flatmates have unusual hobbies
Good flat?
“It was actually really decent. Recently decorated, nice spacey living room in Balham. It was, like, the fifteenth place I had been to see, and walking in, I remember thinking ‘I bet this is the one.’”
Good flatmate/s?
“You could say that. He wore a t-shirt with a dead baby on it, and I’m certain he hadn’t showered in at least a fortnight. Just as I was thinking, ‘how bad could he actually be?’ I went to use the toilet and found none other than a collection of rape-fantasy poetry in the bathroom. The highlight, without a doubt, was reading his poem ‘(Moth)er’ — accompanied by a picture of a woman’s head on a moth — while I had a poo.”
Good deal?
“I can’t remember how much it was, but no force on Heaven or Earth could have made me stay there long enough to be turned into one of his creepy insect/human hybrid illustrations. Not even if he was paying me to take the room.”
The overly intimate couple
Story submitted by Ruby
Good flat?
“Aggressively mediocre, at best. It was a small-ish place in Crouch End.”
Good flatmate/s?
“They were a couple. A very tactile one, at that — I did wonder if I had unwittingly entered myself into some creepy threesome gig. Not a great thought, considering the woman looked like Rod Stewart and the man — unnaturally hairy (like seriously, I’d get carpet burn) — was laying into a doner kebab for breakfast (it was 11am). When they weren’t talking about how much they wanted to buy a sword, they were legitimately trying to engage me in a conversation about philosophy. Nope.”
Good deal?
“The room wasn’t a bedroom. It had a tumble dryer and washing machine it — it was a literally a utility room with a shit little bed cramped into it. £350 a month. Maybe they thought I’d be kipping in their bed most nights anyway, what with all the threesomes we’d be having.” 
Magical, magical stuff.
Don’t be disheartened, though. Yeah, your parents were married with a mortgage by this age, so what? OK, so they both had cars. They had skills and knowledge from their free degrees, and they were putting them to use in careers that were, by this point, already well on track. Fine, so you’re nowhere remotely close to any of that. But you have just broken 200 followers on Instagram. Did they have 200 followers on Instagram? No. So peaks and troughs. It’s fine. You’re fine. Totally fine.
Don’t risk the above happening to you.
