Living like a Londoner

First arriving in London is like meeting a new man. There is the initial excitement, the uncertainty and also a little shyness, but also the desire to get to know more. You are awestruck by the famous places, which look so familiar, thinking ‘I can’t believe I’m here’, you are humbled by the history of the place and you look in amazement at the people thinking ‘You are so lucky to live in London.’ The honeymoon period doesn’t last long though. The first horror you experience is the accommodation. Nothing can prepare you for the squalor you are forced to live in, simply because you aren’t an Al Fayed or a Windsor.

The employment agency organised a hostel for me, which looked dirty when compared to my dog, Tyson’s, kennel. However, you must remember I am still awestruck and somewhat jetlagged, so it doesn’t seem so bad. As the Gods would have it, I didn’t need to sleep there for the first few nights. My friend Heidi was already living in London and insisted I stay with her. I thought to myself, sensational; a comfortable bed and a clean bathroom. Oh, how wrong I was.

Heidi moved from her unfurnished flat due to a domineering and bitchy flatmate to a fully furnished flat owned and lived in by a work colleague. She was desperate to find somewhere to stay and knew it would only be for a few short months. And when she saw MD’s flat, she thought she had struck gold. It wasn’t until she saw the finer details, that she realised no place in England could possibly be clean by her and most other species’ standards.

MD had a shag pile carpet covering for his toilet seat, not the lid but the actual seat. Each time she went to the toilet she nearly gagged. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what life forms had set up shop in this grotty piece of filth. MD often complained about the toilet paper being used up so quickly, wondering what it was that Heidi got up to in the bathroom. She didn’t have the heart to tell him, that she layered the seat with loads of loo paper before she sat down in order to prevent any disease or species infiltrating her body.

You can imagine MD’s surprise when the loo paper virtually disappeared after I moved in as I was also forced to take protective measures. I believe this was the only toilet in London, where the seat was left up after the females of the house had used it. MD also had a habit of lying on the couch wearing nothing but his bath robe, which may seem quite ok to some but not to the female population of Sidcup.

Is there any wonder then that we nicknamed him Muff Daddy?


My level of comfort did not end there. The room Heidi had in Muff Daddy’s apartment was smaller than my broom cupboard. The door couldn’t fully open because the bed was in the way and you almost had to walk sideways to the bed. And this became the room I also had to sleep in. I couldn’t possibly imagine where but Heidi had it all sorted. Muff Daddy had a fold out mattress, which looked like 3 couch cushions sewn together. This was wedged into the narrow floor space between the bed and the wardrobe and this is where I spent 3 sleepless nights.

It wouldn’t have been that bad as once I’m asleep I don’t really move. But Heidi's doona seemed to be a King sized doona (or duvet as the Brits call it) on a single bed. So where did the excess doona hang? On my face of course. So if the claustrophobia wasn’t going to kill me, the suffocation was. Ah, my dreams of luxurious hotels whilst travelling weren’t being fulfilled.

The Brits also have various other household habits, which I, as an Australian, found to be a little strange. Washing machines are kept in the kitchen, dining tables are non-existent and they put a plastic tub in the sink to wash their dishes in. Is the stainless steel sink too clean for them that they need to use a plastic tub, which absorbs the colour of tonight’s curry? I just don’t get it! Please write to me if you have an explanation for this bizarre phenomenon.

So when I stayed with Heidi I had to contend with a semi-naked old man, an infested toilet seat and then to top it off, a cushion placed into a 4 x 5 inch space, which doubled as my bed. It wasn’t the most comfortable of stays, let me assure you.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Heidi headed off to Belgium for a stint in a brewery advertising for big boobied women. Instead of going back to the dive of a hostel I spent a few nights with a friend of Heidi’s, Jacky – soon to be dubbed Forrest (Gump).

Forrest lived with 3 men, all Brits. Men can sometimes be hard to live with due to their unclean habits, but add their British background and it’s a recipe for a pigsty. I was relegated to a sponge mattress in the lounge room, but Forrest had neglected to tell her flatmates that they had a houseguest. I was fast asleep, when suddenly I was awoken by 3 drunken men who wanted to continue their revelry in their lounge room. I could hear Forrest bolting down the stairs as fast as her little legs could take her. (She was a short little thing, prone to falling down). She loudly whispered at them to keep it down and stay out of the lounge room as she had a friend staying there. So what should happen next? The lounge room door flings open, all lights came on and 3 burly men were staring down at me, pointing and asking “who are you?” I stayed hidden under my blanket not uttering a word. As all sportsmen do, they soon lost interest and left. However, somehow when I woke up the next morning, (this was due to them coming in and turning the tv on loudly) I was covered in rugby bandages, jock straps and pizza boxes. When and how this happened, remains a mystery.