Special Post #49: Accommodation Series #19: Mind The Gap

and they all lived happily ever after. Except Charles who had one small problem to contend with...

#11: Mind The Gap

I have to move our of my current house on the 30th June, but the contract doesn't start in Imhotep until the 15th July. So I'm homeless for 2 weeks. Luckily, my first port of call was just the ticket.

Anne and Viv, who I lived with last year, are living together in a posh apartment in Guildford, about 20 minutes walk from my current house. I asked them if I could be so cheeky as to pinch a spot on their floor for 2 weeks and they did one better. Since Anne was actually not going to be in Guildford at all for those weeks, I could stay in her room! There is a little bit of you scratch my back here since they both lived with me for a week in my current house while they found somewhere to live... So it's a little like returning the favour :)

So the stage is set. All that worry's me now is the amount of time I might be in Switzerland in the coming weeks while I'm trying to move all my things around and live in several places. There's also several weekend trips that all add to the kerfuffle, including a long weekend in Scotland, if nothing else the next 6 weeks of my life are going to be eventful!

Special Post #48: Accommodation Series #18: Imhotep Is Born

part five of the nearly completed accommodation mini-series about my trials and tribulations to find a house for final year…

#9: Imhotep Is Born

We now have 6 people, a house and a contract. Operation house-for-final-year was nearing completion. The last piece of the puzzle for me was to meet the one housemate I didn't know... Simon.

Simon, like Katherine and Liz, is a Mathematician going into his final year of study. He seems like a really nice guy and I finally got to meet him just a week after the deposit gubbins when it was Liz's turn to get a year older.

We all met at a local pub and ended up having a really good evening. if Katherine had been there we'd have had a full house, but it was still a great chance to chill out as a collective for the first time.

There's just one small detail left in order to call the mission accomplished: a name. Every good house needs a name. Being a house of geeks, which is what we essentially are, we all love a little show called Look Around You. Produced by the BBC last decade, it's a spoof educational series that mocks those videos you used to watch in school when you had a substitute teacher. If you haven't watched any, and you like Monty Python, Blackadder, or Brass Eye, then I highly recommend it.

Our favourite episode is Maths. And since half the house are studying maths next year, it seems very appropriate. Skip to 2:46 if you just want the reference, but our new house name is IMHOTEP.

#10: Boat Bondage

To get to know everyone a bit better, and get a taster of how easy it was for us to live together, I suggested we go on a boat trip. And that's exactly what we did at the start of April. A week-long excursion from Swiss life to live up the Birmingham countryside... It seems a bit backwards to take a holiday from Switzerland in Birmingham, but I had a great time!

We all got on like a house on fire, so to speak. It's really made me look forward to living with them all! But the trip made me realise that something like that is what was missing from my house this year. I just turned up one day and started living there. No big hello, no trips, no parties... And that's maybe why our house has never felt, to me, like a home. We all go off and do our own thing, rarely around enough to wear the carpets down. While this year has been great, I'm now itching to move in with my new housemates.

Coming soon “Mind The Gap”

Special Post #47: Accommodation Series #17: Don’t Panic

part four of the very long awaited (and highly anticipated) blog post telling the remarkable tale of one man’s search for Final Year university accommodation…

#8: Don’t Panic

So, quite excited with the girls find, we all convened over breakfast to discuss our next move. Breakfast being several varieties of cake of course… We all loved the house, the rooms were big and there's bucket loads of communal space. We spent a bit of time looking at who'd have each room (since there was a much bigger room and a small room to sort out) before calling the landlord and tell him we were interested.

For a few days it was quite exciting to think I had a house, and then it came time to pay the deposit. Sadly, it also came time for one of the girls to back out...

Charlotte had been unsure of where she was going to live next year, and paying a deposit on a house she wasn't sure she wanted did seem a bit crazy. So she left the group and left us with a bit of a situation: we still had a deposit to pay to secure the house...

Who you gonna call? The one person I knew who needed a room: Julie of course!

I still felt bad about abandoning Julie just days after Soph did the same thing to both of us (yep, I'm still rubbing that wound :p), so this was the perfect chance to help her out! The room we had going was the smallest, whose rent we'd reduced to make it fairer. But Julie, being the dancer that she is, didn't really fancy a smaller room all that much... and the communal space in the house is apparently no place to be practicing your ballet moves (although I did mention I had no problems with scantily-dressed girls in the living room). So Julie gracefully declined. But that still left us with a space to fill…

“Will received a text from Charlotte early in the day, and so made plans to head into Guildford to talk with Charlotte face-to-face, and talk with his remaining IMHOTEPians about a plan of action. When he arrived at Guildford station (from Chobham) he happened to see a guy called Simon having a cuppa tea whilst waiting for his train. Katherine and Liz know Simon from their course (as he is a fellow Mathematician). A more superstitious man would cite fate for this most chance of meetings... So Will put forward the situation to Simon in about 3 minutes flat, with a promise to contact him if Charlotte was really backing out…” (Will’s personal account)

and the rest, as they say, is history. 72 hours later the deed was done and the deposit was paid. Imhotep, was born…

coming soon: part nine “Imhotep Is Born”

Special Post #46: Accommodation Series #16: Proposition 101

part three of the longest awaited post in the history of this blog. So what are we waiting for, let’s do it…

#6: Proposition 101

They say what goes around comes around... Well several weeks after helping Katherine and her housemates pair up with Mike Frazer (of Mike Frazer fame), I got a phone call...

Will (one of my old housemates from last year) called me up and asked what my plans were for final year housing. I explained to him about Julie and how it wasn't exactly going to plan. Will on the other hand had paired up with Katherine and Mike, making their cohort a nice round 5, which is a good number for a student house in Guildford, hence why my last 2 houses have had 5 people. But they had a problem, Katherine and her housemates (who will be given names I promise) had been looking at a lot of 6 person student houses and wondered if I would join them...

Since this was only a week after Sophie had dropped out of our plans it was hard for me to decide to leave Julie too, since what kind of friend would I be kicking her while she's down. But after a looooooong conversation with Julie, she understood that it made sense and she'd just have to find another house to live with.

So I called Will back up and signed myself in to the group:

Katherine - Mathematician, does Madtv
Charlotte - ex-mathematician, now a waitress
Liz - Mathematician, ginger :p
Mike - Civil engineer, founder of Madtv
Will - Chemist, ex-housemate, also ginger
And Me - Electronic engineer, does Madtv, not ginger

All this happened the weekend back in January that i went to Cardiff, and the following weekend was our first house viewing!

#7: If the hat fits…

Ok, so i say it was our first viewing, technically the girls had looked at a few others already. But this was the first one we all looked at together.

I had my reservations right away when I found out how far away from uni it was, but I persevered. Unlike other 6-bedroom houses, this house had a very reasonably sized living room, and dining room for that matter. A modern kitchen, 2 bathrooms, a veranda… A VERANDA! We have to get this house!! So we did.

coming soon: part 8 “Don’t panic”

Special Post #45: Accommodation Series #15: The Hall Theorem

part two of the longest awaited post in the history of this blog. In this post I start the story in the same way any good teacher would, with the theory.

#3: Pizza & Planning

Sophie, Julie and I had been talking about getting a house together for a while, but it was awkward to organise house viewings when none of us lived in Guildford (ok, technically I do, but it's kind of become my second home to Switzerland in the last 7 months).

We organised a few international Skype chats to talk about places we’d like to live, which usually involved me getting a takeaway from the local pizzeria (no shortage of choice!) but it was all a bit slow moving...

#4: Meanwhile… 2 Forces Meet

While this was all happening, a couple of my other friends were getting a house group together. Katherine (who I know from MADTV) and her 2 housemates needed another person (or 2) and came to me. Since I had already paired up with Julie and Soph at the time, I put them in touch with Mike Frazer (also of MADTV fame).

^ Mike Fazer, also called: the lazer, eyebrows, “that man off the telly” and many more…

#5: The Wheely Bin

Back with Sophie and Julie, we were still struggling to agree on houses, and decided that we’d really need a 4th person for this whole thing to work. So we started looking for a 4th person… to no avail. We were alll a bit stuck with what to do, then Sophie made the decision for us.

Because she is on an un-paid placement, she decided that since living on campus would be the cheaper option in long run, that she’d settle for that. So she essentially abandoned Julie and I to fend for ourselves! (I’m going to make as big a deal out of this as I can because I know Sophie reads this blog :P) She screwed us both over for her own selfish gain! Ok, I’m only joking… It all works out in the end, just keep reading.

Julie and I briefly toyed with the idea of finding 2 other housemates before we realised we both are massively short of any friends who want to live with us… So we decided on the next best thing…

Guildford council wheely-bins are surprisingly spacious, and come in two different sizes. They offer location-flexibility in a waterproof, easy to access package. Sorted.

But, just as Julie and I had resigned ourselves to the fact that we were without a paddle, I got an offer…

coming soon: part six “proposition 101”

Special Post #44: Accommodation Series #14: The Prequel

part one of the longest awaited post in the history of this blog. This first post comes some way in explaining why it’s taken me so long to get these words on here… sets the scene for the posts to come.

#1: The Prequel – House 63

As many of you have guessed by following this blog, the last few months of my life have been a big crazy. And while House 63 has been somewhat of a base for my life, it’s also probably been where I’ve spent least of my time.

Between Switzerland, London, Amsterdam, Italy, Weymouth and boat trips I have seen sweet little of my existing housemates. The extent of my interaction seems to be notes on the front of my door saying when I’ll next be around. Time in the house consists of unpacking, packing and sleeping (sometimes not even the latter if I’m rushing off for the weekend). So it’s quite shocking to think that in a few short weeks I will be leaving this place for greener pastures, having never really lived here…

Ironically I am around in the coming weeks, just in time for me to start packing my things. And now I’m around for once, my housemates have coursework and exams and dissertations… we are destined to never socialize together. In many ways it’s hard to miss what was never fully realised, but even the possibility will soon be impossible.

But then looking forward, mid-July is a new start and a new life in many ways. I’ll have stopped going to Switzerland every week and I’ll have new housemates and a new house to contend with.

So let’s start at the very beginning…

#2: The Hall Theorem

Let’s not be mistaken, this is the start of another new era. My final year at university starts in October and back in March I started to look at houses for my final year…

Initially I always thought I'd live on campus in my final year, since the university let final year students apply for rooms not occupied by fresher's. And indeed I applied and got offered a place, but it didn't feel right. For me, the freedom of living in a house with a few mates is far better than going back to halls. I liked the idea of meeting new people, but it's a lottery as to weather they'll be nice. I count myself exceptionally lucky to fall into Cathedral Court House 2A in my first year at the University of Surrey, I still stay in touch with Sophie and Lauren and I can't imagine my university life without those late night chats in the kitchen and random objects appearing in the hall after drunken nights out.

But living in a house last year and this have been such a blast that going back to halls feels like a step in the wrong direction, so I was very keen to find some housemates and find an amazing house we could call our own for what is sure to be one of the most exciting years of our lives...

coming soon: part three “Pizza & Planning”

Special Post #36: Accommodation, Part 13 – Come In

A new chapter in my life started last week. I moved in to my new house 10 minutes walk from my old house. Come in and take a look around…

My room is on the ground floor with a big window looking out over the street. My room is much bigger than last year, it has a double bed (!) and a fireplace (!!). I’d put up some pictures, but it looks like a tip since I haven’t fully unpacked yet. Part of making the room a home has been putting up posters and a new cork wall above the fireplace.

The cork wall is about 1m by 1m and I’m planning on filling it with lots of pictures, ticket stubs, receipts and quotes from the last two years. I owe this idea to Sophie Dean :) Much like I did for my summer last year, but on a bigger scale. I’m really looking forward to creating it and having something to affirm my identity and all the good times I’ve had at university the last two years :)

My room shares a wall with the lounge which has a couple of sofas and a TV. Unlike last year in ZION, I can imagine spending a lot of my time in the lounge this year because it’s so cosy and used by everyone.

At the back of the house is the kitchen. It’s smaller than last year, but then it could hardly have been bigger. All the usual things you’d find are in there, even the kitchen sink :P

Upstairs is 3 bedrooms and the bathroom, and on the top floor is the largest room with an en-suite.

This year I’m living with 4 girls: Frankie, Claire, Sophie and Tamsin. Frankie studies Maths, Claire and Sophie study English and Tamsin studies Politics.

I know Frankie and Claire from MAD TV because they both present stories and have positions on the new committee. Claire is actually the new President of MAD TV next year and Frankie is the Treasurer, so I’m going to be very much in the loop as to what’s happening. I’m really excited to be in a position to join in with MAD TV, not as much as last year, but definitely in a helpful capacity.

Left to right: Claire, me, Frankie (mar ‘10)

Sophie Jones and I are good friends from first year, I can’t exactly remember how we met, but she’s a good friend and a great laugh to be around. She came on the recent boat trip at Easter and was the source of much amusement :D

Sophie winding a paddle on the boat trip (mar ‘10)

Tamsin is someone I didn’t really know until I moved in last week. She’s studying Politics and about to go into her final year, as are the other girls. We’ve got on really well in the last few days and seem to have a similar sense of humour.

I’m really looking forward to this year, it has the potential to be a completely different experience to university so far, but still really interesting and fun.

I’m the only one in the house going on placement, while the girls are going to be in their final year. I’m not sure how that’s going to affect things in the house, but we’re all going to be pretty busy so I can’t see it being a problem.

Talking about placement, I have my first day tomorrow! I know! Kept that one quiet didn’t I :P So you can guess what tomorrow’s post is going to be about. See you then :D

Special Post #35: Accommodation, Part 12 - The End of Year 2: Part 6 – A Change of Plan

Another post in the on-going series about all things to do with where I lay my head at night. It’s also part 6 in the almost-over-series about the week following my last second year exam, which was also coincidentally my last week in my first ever house, and the first few days in my second house!

In a post a couple of months ago I talked about my plans for living on my placement year. It was a hard decision to live in Guildford, but Basingstoke is only an hour’s commute away and getting to spend another year close to all my friends at university had to be done.

Josh had been asked by his best friend, Chris Nash, to live with him next year. Together with Chris Nash’s housemate Chris Ashton and me, we had enough people to get a house. Ashton and Nash looked at houses and eventually found one they liked. Josh and I looked around and agreed to get it. It was really exciting to know that I had a house with Josh next year, but even better given how great the house was!

Since then we’ve got together once as a house to meet the estate agent and pay the holding deposit for the house.

The tenancy for the house didn’t start until the middle of August, so between the end of June and mid-August I had nowhere to live. At first I was going to go home for 6 weeks and commute to Basingstoke from London, but then a few of my friends told me that they had a spare room I could use…

Frankie and Claire from MAD TV had a room in their house that they hadn’t found a housemate for yet. They needed a 5th housemate for the whole year and I was their first choice. At first I declined living with them for the whole year because I was already planning on living with Josh, but I told them I could live there for 6 weeks over summer. This made the commute a lot easier, and meant being in Guildford for Guilfest, Phil’s graduation and other things. It was a done deal, all they needed to do was find someone to take the other 11 months and I could pay them back the months rent.

The reason I declined to live there for the whole year at first was because I didn’t want to let Chris and Josh down by backing out of the house deal now. The Thorpe Park trip last week was meant to be a time to meet Chris and Chris and find out more about the people I was going to live with for a year. In the end, Chris Ashton had to cancel and Chris Nash spent the whole day with Josh and Jess and not everyone else. That was the chance I had to get to know my future housemates before living with them. That evening I did a lot of thinking.

Since my other friends still hadn’t found a 5th housemate, and I still hadn’t signed a contract for the house, I was in a position to make a decision. Do I stick to my guns and live with Josh in a great house, but possibly not get on with Chris and Chris? Or do I live with Frankie and Claire, who I know I get on with? There were other factors that went into the decision that aren’t fair to go into on a public blog, but it’s fair to say it wasn’t easy, at all.

A month prior I had to make the same decision when Claire and Frankie asked me for the first time. Since then I’d kind of been regretting saying no, but at the same time knew it was the only choice without a lot of hassle which I couldn’t deal with on top of my exams. But a month later, with a fresh head and new information, I changed my mind.

I chose to do what I wanted to do rather than what I had to do to please other people. I told Josh the following day and he understood that I’d been thinking about it for a while.

If you’ve managed to follow all of that then well done, it was a spaghetti of a situation and I’m still untangling the ends. but the long and the short of it is that I’m living with a different set of people next year in a different house. I’ll write a post very soon about them all and the house, but tomorrow is another post about my last week in Zion :) So much happening…. phew!

Special Post #34: Accommodation, Part 11 - The End of Year 2: Part 5 – Goodbye Zion

This is part of the on-going series about home sweet homes. It is also Part 5 of the also on-going-but-not-for-much-longer series about the rollercoaster of events that took place after my last exam in year two and in my last week living in my first ever house!

For the last year I have been living in a 5-bedroom house about 20 minutes walk from campus. We dubbed it ZION.

Zion was, and will forever be, my first house. It’s been a fantastic experience, and even better given how good our landlord has been with any problems we’ve had.

A top tip I’d give to anyone looking at sharing a house ever is to get a joint account. We used it to pay rent and bills. Just by putting an extra £30 in each every month meant we could easily pay bills without having to chase people up about money every month. However, save your sanity and avoid Natwest at all costs!

I’d also suggest anyone to get a rota for cleaning. We didn’t and it definitely showed. Over time little jobs like the washing up become mammoth tasks, but if everyone had done a little bit every week then it may have worked out a lot better for everyone.

You learn so much about people when you live with them. I didn’t really know Anne, Will or Viv before living with them this year, yet I can’t imagine it without them. Looking back now, I’ve only ever known them as housemates, potential housemates or otherwise, and it’s going to be strange going forward staying in touch as just friends. But I have this year and Zion to thank for introducing us (and Josh of course :P). I know that we will all stay friends for life :)

Josh, on the other hand, was my best friend last year, so I already knew his as a friend before we decided to live together. But even then, this year has only strengthened our friendship. I had my doubts that being on the same course and living in the same house would be overkill, but it was quite the opposite. It’s been so helpful with coursework and revision that I literally don’t know how I’d have coped half the time if Josh wasn’t only a walls width away. Especially in the year after Christmas when we’ve been in the same lab group and doing lots of work together.

As this great year comes to a close, I can’t help but think how unique this experience was. It couldn’t have been better, I wouldn’t change a thing and I couldn’t have wished for better housemates. I’ll miss tickle time, Anne laughing at nothing, Will’s strange eating habits (how many times I watched as he cooked fish finger sandwiches I don’t know), Josh’s wall knocking and singing in the kitchen and Viv’s weird noises. Forever Zionites.

The next part in the accommodation series, and the End of Year 2 series, is about my new house and housemates and why I’m no longer living with Josh next year…

Special Post #32: Accommodation, Part 10 – A New Adventure Awaits

It’s been a long time since I gave an update on the housing situation, so here it is! This is, of course, the very-on-going series about houses and me.

So far this series has focused on my experiences searching, finding, getting, arranging, moving into and subsequently living in my first house. It was a rollercoaster journey, and still is in some ways, although now I’m just living the dream rather than making sure the dream happens.

My current house is great, my housemates are amazing and the landlord is very helpful. It’s been a brilliant home for my second year at university and a completely different experience to living in halls last year. So much so that I think I’ve actually enjoyed living in the house this year more than living in halls, just because there’s such a nice atmosphere here. I might be a bit biased because I also love cycling to university everyday, it’s such a great way to get your head in gear and wake up before the day starts.

Next year is going to be completely different again, with my placement at Sony in Basingstoke lined up for 12 months. Since the start of 2010, when placement hunting really kicked in full time, I started to wonder where I’d live next year. It was a very hard question to answer at the time since I had no way of knowing where I would be working, and until that was set in stone, looking for houses would be like looking for a shoe without knowing the wearer.

I didn’t want to get a house in Guildford if it would be easier to live at home, and Josh was in the same position. We talked about it often and one day came to the conclusion that doing something was going to be more productive than doing nothing. At the time Josh knew two other housemates looking for a house in Guildford who needed two more housemates to get a 4-bedroom house. Josh was good friends with them both, so we agreed to be a four for the time being.

Josh’s friends then started looking at 4-bedroom houses. All the while Josh and I were still looking for placements. Occasionally Josh was told that they’d looked at a house, but they didn’t want it; and this continued for weeks.

Then I got the Sony placement. A week and a half later, Josh’s friends found a house they wanted to live in. Josh went to have a look and said it was amazing, so the following day all four of us met up for the first time and viewed the house together.

It was the first time I’d met my housemates, and the first time I’d gone to view a house this year. Believe me this house is amazing. The rooms are much bigger than the ones in our house at the moment, and it’s getting a new kitchen for when we move in. It’s closer to uni than we are at the moment (and closer to the railway station). I was blown away.

As for Josh’s friends, Chris and Chris (who I will now refer to as Nash and Chris to avoid confusion), I’d met Nash before and we get on really well, and Chris and I had an interesting talk and got on immediately. So it was a done deal.

That evening Josh and I went to their house for dinner and I got to know them both a bit more. Nash is a second year Maths student, and has just stepped down as president of the Christian Union. Josh and Nash lived in halls together last year and are pretty much best friends. Chris is a first year PHD student working at the Surrey Satellite Centre and currently lives with Nash.

Chris is going to be our lead tenant and he is very kindly organising all the paperwork at the moment so we can sign the tenancy for the house ASAP.

We are going to move into the house mid-August, so I’ll be living at home for a few months when I start work at Sony.

Overall, the decision to live in Guildford again next year, instead of living at home, was tough. But in the end, being close to my friends who aren’t going on placement, and being able to live with Josh for another year is going to be incredible, and made it a no-brainer!

Special Post #21: Accommodation, Part 9 – 1 Month In

So I haven’t done a special post in a while, so enjoy this one. Funnily enough this is the 10th post in this multi-part series-now-more-of-a-category set of posts about living in my first ever house!

I feel like me and my housemates have come a long way since the start of this journey. It’s a tough task just finding housemates to start with, but I can see now that it couldn’t have worked out better.

We all moved in at the start of October, give a take a day or two. And for the first week we weren't all seen in the same room at the same time. Fresher’s week was like that. So lets meet the gang:

• Anne. The resident Doctor Who fanatic. No seriously, you’d be hard pushed to find anyone as enthusiastic about Doctor Who as Anne. But to say that this tells you anything about Anne would be very wrong. Sure, she’s into comics and films a bit more than the average female, but she’s also very focused on work and very caring towards everyone. If you can’t get on with Anne then there’s something wrong with you, she really is Momma Anne…
• Viv. Completes the line-up of girls in the house. I have to be disappointingly honest when I say that I haven’t spent that much time with Viv. This isn’t by any means an active decision because Viv is a great housemate. She has an slight addiction to Mafia Wars, but she’s a great laugh all the time.
• Will. President of the Chemistry Society, which not only makes him a very busy man, but also means I get to meet lots of Chemistry people I never knew before! He loves electro-dance music and walks in the rain (I made that last part up).
• Josh. The one on my course, the one I knew before and the one I call my best friend…. whatever you want to call Josh he’s a great guy. Very active member of the Christian Union, which takes up a lot of his time, but also plays Rugby and Football in his spare time. We go to lectures together and help each other with work.

How do I get so lucky with my housemates!

As for the other things you worry about when you live in a house, they’re all happening well so far. Rent has all been paid on time using our joint bank account, and once bills start coming in we should be good to go for paying them.

We turned the heating on for the first time last week. It was me who caved, but I was really cold! It comes on in the evenings and hot water is set for the mornings and tends to stay hot for the rest of the day.

Getting to uni is great. Josh, Will and I have bikes that we use to cycle in, it takes me about 4 minutes now from door-to-bike rack. It’s good times, except when I get a puncture which has happened twice now…

It seems that we’re all quite busy so we don’t tend to all be in of an evening very often. But there are occasion when we end up sitting in the living room with our dinners and catch up with what each other has been up to.

Shall I compare thee to last year? It’s hard to because they’re very different experiences. Living in halls was very sociable because everyone was so close, and I got on so well with my housemates that we would just spend hours and hours talking (I’m largely referring to Sophie there…) I’m really enjoying this year, going to other people’s houses and meeting up with friends for lunch, it’s a very different feel to last year but in a good way. Last year was what it was and this year so far is even better!

Special Post #15: Accommodation, Part 8 – Part 2

Let me explain that… it’s part 8 of the accommodation series, and the title of this part is ‘part 2’ because it’s a follow on from the post I did yesterday. Got it? never mind…

On Sunday I had the mis-pleasure of not having the car to carry my life to the house. Instead, I'd worked through a compromise. I took what I thought were the essentials for living in a house for a few days that had no cutlery or plates or anything. Sleeping bag and a saucepan should do it. Then Mum would travel down on Tuesday with the rest, at witch point I could stop living in the house like a homeless tramp.

So i bore the journey to the house using a Bombay mix of public transport, finishing the journey my foot. I was welcomed with my landlord fitting a new toilet seat and his wife cleaning the kitchen. Good times. They showed me around (probably my 4th showing by this point) and I moved my ridiculously small suitcase into my new room.

A few minutes later, Will arrived with his girlfriend. We took another tour of the houses (but who’s counting?) and then chilled in the garden. Then Gibbo turned up. Gibbo isn’t one of the housemates, but he’s staying while GuilFest is on.

We looked in the drawers of the kitchen expecting to find bare wood, but instead found an IKEA of cup, plates, bowels, cutlery, pans…everything! Then, after giving us the obligatory speech about when the rubbish is collected and where the breakers and meters are, the landlord left.

Get the grand tour of the house in 60 seconds (ok, 80 seconds… but we tried)

What’s that? You want to see pictures detailing every last inch of the house? why, of course!

 

my room

the view of the garden from my room

Viv’s room

 

The upstairs corridor

Josh’s room

 

the rest of Josh’s room

Will’s room

 

garden

 

Anne’s room downstairs

 

Living room

 

the amazing kitchen

 

the other end of the kitchen, with Gibbo taking a picture. Behind Gibbo is the toilet

the door to the garden

the house from the garden (excuse the pile of leaves)

in my room :)

I love the house! The only problem I’ve found with it so far is the shower. It spits out small splashes of water, and the ones that are lucky enough to find your body cause 3rd degree burns. It’s a very intricate art to find the balance between smoulderingly hot and freezing cold. One I'm yet to master…

Special Post #14: Accommodation, Part 7 – Another way

Another post in the very on-going accommodation series about the foibles of getting a house

By now you should know that getting a house is a lot of work. Since signing the tenancy agreement a couple months ago things have been crawling along nicely. On the 5th July we will officially be able to live in the property. This is good because it happens to coincide with GuilFest, the Guildford music festival that I’m working with stage crew for. This is bad because it means paying rent. This is bad because it means having a bank account organised to pay rent from. This is bad because of NatWest. I feel a story coming on….

Our landlord wants us to pay our rent together. In order to do this we needed to find a way we could all pay into one bank account and then use that account to pay the rent. Simple, right? Well, in order to make it as fair and “jointly liable” as possible we opted to go for a 5-way joint account where all of us were account holders. This would avoid a situation where the person who the account is registered to is constantly chasing everyone else to pay up because it’s their neck on the line.

To make things as simple to manage as possible I decided to open the account with the NatWest on campus, so if there were any issues down the road, it was only a short walk away to fix them. So we all got together in the last week of term and went off to the bank with our forms. One of the things we all put on our forms was that we’d like to setup online banking to make it easier to manage the account. We managed to open a joint account with 2 account holders, but everyone else couldn’t be put on because they didn’t have valid proof of address (we’re supposed to have a recent bill addressed to our home addresses, but because we’ve been living at uni, it was hard to get them). Either way, we had the start of an account that we could use for now.

A week or so later I got a load of letters from NatWest with all the account information, including how to register for online banking. So I followed the instructions and registered. However, the website showed that their we’re no accounts. It wasn’t working. It turns out that you can’t have online banking for joint accounts. So why do they give you the option on the form! So there must be another way to check the balance of your account, right? Well, yes, there’s telephone baking. Ah, but your account doesn’t exist. Excuse me? Yes, there is no such account number. So that’s good news.

I’m left in the position where I may or may not have a bank account which may or may not have a standing order to the landlord and may or may not accept payments into it. All with only a week before the first rent payment is due. Good times. Thanks for nothing NatWest, all I can hope is that there is “another way”…

Special Post #9: Accommodation, Part 6 – “Sign here: ____________________________”

That’s right, it’s back! This is now the 6th part of the 5 part series. The first 5 parts covered all the key points up to getting a house: getting housemates, looking at lists, looking at houses, not getting a house, looking at more houses and finally getting a house. Now the story takes its new turn: living in a house! But… before we get there (because we’re not there yet!) we have to cover the final piece in the ‘getting a house’ puzzle: signing the tenancy agreement and meeting the landlord. Enjoy :-)

Today we signed the tenancy agreement on the house! We met with the landlord at 7pm to ask questions and do the deed. Earlier in the day we’d all met up for the first time since our celebrations over 6 weeks ago. We caught up and read through the agreement together. Also talked about a few things that were bothering us like who’s room is who (now sorted) and about paying rent.

Signing was very painless, but its good to finally know that we definitely have a house: signed, sealed and delivered. We met the landlord and his wife who seem very friendly about everything and very good landlords. One of the current tenants also said how good they were at fixing things, so that gives us a good impression. We also took the opportunity to take another sneaky peek around the house. This time Will took pictures of every room and even a video! So I’ll get that up here as soon as I have it.

It’s becoming more and more apparent how great this is going to be next year. The more I get to meet everyone, the more we seem to get along. Stay tuned to hear about how life is living in a house! I know we’ve got plenty of time yet, but a little anticipation never hurt anyone!

Special Post #7: Accommodation, Part 5 - Zion

This is the 5th and final part of the now infamous multi-part series about the quest for a place to live in my second year at the University of Surrey. The story continues where it left off with me and Josh looking at houses early on Wednesday…

Here’s the map from the previous post so you can follow along:

This is a map of all the houses we went to visit that day. Houses in visited order: top right in cluster of 3; top left in cluster of 3; far left; bottom left in cluster of 3; far right.

The second house was about 10 minutes walk from the first. It was on a quite residential road and was even offset from the road so as to include space to park a car.

Inside the house was really great. Downstairs had one bedroom (the largest in the house), a small-ish lounge with room for 5 people, a table and a TV. The back of the house had a long kitchen with the bathroom off it. Let me explain:

This is the ground floor. The toilet has a bath and shower. The kitchen is new (2008) and therefore has new hobs, cooker, fridges (yup, there are two!) and freezers (yup, that’s two as well).

 

The second bedroom is apparently the smallest, because it also has the water tank in it, otherwise all the bedrooms upstairs are of a similar size. They all have a washbasin in them, which I thought was a useful addition.

Me and Josh loved it! We both thought it was a great house, great location, good price, and an overall good place to live. After we’d viewed it I immediately rang the landlord to express our interest. Sadly, yet again, someone had beaten us to it…

Only kidding! We’d got it! He said that we had to pay our deposits before we were guaranteed the house, but that we were the first to say we wanted it. The problem now was that only me and Josh had seen the house. We can’t guarantee that the others would like it and we certainly couldn’t ask them to pay a deposit on a house they hadn’t even seen!

Either way, me and Josh returned to the university (a 20 minute walk) to get lunch. Then, at 2pm, we met up with our fellow housemates to tell them the good news.

The plan for the afternoon was to look at a few more houses (just in case) and then show everyone else the good house. We also had a “back-up” house that was in town and was quite expensive, so we only considered it as a last resort if we didn’t like any of the other houses.

The next house was in Park Barn, which has a reputation for being a rough area. It was an alright house, but it was a long way from the uni and the current owners had trashed it somewhat.

After a short walk we arrived at yet another house, this time only a stone’s throw away from the house me and Josh had loved that morning. This house was almost identical to that house, but with a few small differences:

1. It had been decorated in lighter colours which made it feel more homely
2. The lounge was larger and squarer
3. The kitchen wasn’t as modern
4. It had two showers and two toilets, but no washbasins in rooms

Overall, everyone really, really liked it. So much in fact that I rang the landlord to show our interest. Unfortunately, the house had already gone less than an hour before we called. So now all me and Josh could hope for was that everyone would really like the house we’d seen that morning.

We stepped in the front door and everyone was shown round like me and Josh had been that morning. They loved it! Even more than the last house because the kitchen was better and the rooms were slightly bigger. So I rang the landlord to confirm that we were still at the top of the pile, and we were!

That evening we all got an email asking for a deposit for the house.

A few days later, 12th March, we’d all paid and we finally got confirmation that we had the house! All we need to do now is to sign the contract, which we’re doing after Easter.

WOW! That’s it. Your up to date. Only 16 days late. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about this journey as much as I have writing it and experiencing it.

PS why was the post called Zion? See if you can guess and I’ll tell you the answer in the next blog post.

Special Post #7: Accommodation, Part 4 – Going, Going, Gone – Part 2

Try and wrap your head around that title!

This is the second half of the 4th part of a multi-part series on the fight for second year accommodation. If you’ve forgotten where we left off, I don’t blame you, so had I. Basically we’d just seen a house none of us really liked, and were on our way to the next house…

The second house was on Hornbeam Road and turned out to be AMAZING! The rooms were HUGE, we came up with: 1 triple room, 1 large double room, 2 normal double rooms/large single rooms and a small room. However, the house was being renovated, as in they were still building the kitchen and hadn’t finished any rooms yet (although the rooms upstairs were nearly there). Here are some pics:

The triple room

One of the double rooms

The lounge?

So we were quite excited and rang the landlord to get the house. But guess what, yup, it had gone. And not only that but it had JUST gone. He’d just that second got off the phone with the other group. Sad faces attacked us from inside.

That night I rang a lot of landlords who had 5 bedroom houses only to find that they had ALL gone. I gave up at 8pm and rang home.

Dad gave me the willing to go and and I tried a few more landlords before I went to bed. The miraculous thing was that the last 3 landlords I rang ALL had a house still available. Result! So I began to arrange viewings for the next day…

Wednesday came around (this is the 25th February for those interested in how slow I am about revealing this information) and I rang a few more landlords before going to my lecture.

By 10am I had arranged 4 viewings for that day. By 10:30am I had a 5th. So me and Josh set off to view a few houses.

The first (a good 25minutes walk away) was alright. Essentially a 4 bedroom and a closet. So we moved on.

This is a map of all the houses we went to visit that day. Houses in visited order: top right in cluster of 3; top left in cluster of 3; far left; bottom left in cluster of 3; far right.

The second house was amazing…

And we’ll have to leave it there for now folks. Join me again next time as we conclude the story of the great accommodation race, with a post titled “Zion”.

Special Post #6: Accommodation, Part 4 – Going, Going, Gone

This is the fourth part of a multi-part series about the wacky race to find a student house for next year before everyone else!

So after the failure of last weeks monstrosity, it was time for the university to issue the private accommodation list. I waited up until midnight to see the list (when I say waited, what I really mean is that I realised that it was past midnight so I checked it out).

The list had over 40 5 bedroom properties on it for us to consider. So I started making a list of all the houses that I liked.

When I woke up the next morning it was straight off to lectures. The problem was that Monday is a very busy day for everyone in the group so not much could be done in terms of looking at houses or ringing landlords. That evening I sent out a few emails to landlords, and Josh sent a few texts, but that was pretty much it.

On Tuesday morning it turned that that Josh had received a reply from one of the landlords about a house that was about 5 minutes walk away. We went down and had a look around (just the 2 of us because the others had lectures). As soon as we arrived the person showing us round (one of the tenants) told us that a group had already paid a deposit so the house was already taken. We looked round the house anyway so we had something to compare the other houses with later. The house was a bit small, but the rooms were an ok size. One of the rooms was really small and the lounge was pretty much a converted corridor.

Once we’d left the house Josh received another text from a landlord who had 2 houses that we could look at that afternoon. As Josh had labs and everyone else was also busy, I said that I would go it alone.

However, when we got back to campus it transpired that Will, Viv and Anne had managed to finish their labs half a day early, something that until now was unprecedented. So they said they’d join me in looking at the houses. Unlike the house me and Josh had seen that morning, these houses were about 20-30 minutes walk away from uni.

We got to the first house and had a look around. the bedrooms were a decent size and the living room was good. However, none of us were impressed by the kitchen nor did we particularly like the location.

After deliberating we decided that it was live-able in and we’d probably be happy to live there if we had to. With that in mind we went to see the second house…

Sorry, but we’ve ran out of time. I’m off to catch up with some old friends from before uni so I’ll continue this later.

Bye!

Special Post #5: Accommodation, Part 3 – The Quickening

This is the third post in a multi-part series of about the great adventure of looking for a student house for next year. We left off with the university’s plans for getting everyone accommodation…

So it’s Monday 23rd February. The university list for sublet property has just come out. That night me and my future housemates got together to go through the list and put down houses that we liked. It was interesting to see what factors people considered as the most important when looking for the houses. I was putting distance to university as my number 1 factor. It had to be within 10 minutes walk. Most of my housemates agreed that this was definitely a big deal, but some other factors bubbled up too:

• Price. Obviously this was the deal clincher. If it was over £85 a week all inclusive (ie, including all bills) then it was too expensive. Currently, we were all paying about £80 a week, so this seemed reasonable.
• Washing machine. It only seemed fair that the house should have a washing machine. If it didn’t then it needed to have a very good reason. Luckily all the houses on the list seemed to include a washing machine, so this wasn’t an issue.
• Double Glazing. Now this seemed reasonable considering the varied weather and how cold it would be otherwise. Somewhat surprisingly (to me, anyway) was that double glazing wasn’t in all the properties.
• Broadband access. I know! some of the houses didn’t even have broadband! This immediately wrote them off my list. Urgh! How can you live without broadband? (*cough* Graeme *cough*)

Overall, I thought the list would be about 30-40 houses long. But it turned out that there were only 10 5 bedroom houses on the list. Cutting it down to 7 wasn’t too difficult, but it was an interesting experience having to discuss these sorts of things to each other for the first time. Anyway, we managed to get the 7 and then it was just a matter of submitting it.

The next day (called Tuesday by those in the know) me and Josh went to the accommodation office to get a form. While we were there we were told by the guy about the process (see last post). He said the draw would be on Friday and then you have have to view the house over the weekend and decide by noon on Monday whether you wanted the house or not. The problem with that was you didn’t have a chance to look at any houses on the private list before you had to make a decision on the house.

Wednesday Josh set about filling out the form with everyone’s details, which was no mean feat considering that he needed to get the full names, courses and university numbers of each of us. However, by Wednesday evening Josh had done it!

It was only late Wednesday night that Josh realised something horrific. The applications were due in at 5pm on Wednesday. Profanity ensued…

First thing Thursday morning me and Josh go down to the accommodation office to beg and plead our way into the draw. Unfortunately neither of us are women, nor do we have the necessary skills required to seduce a 20-something male into letting us post our application. So we left not empty handed, but with the application form held tightly. Profanity ensued…

Never mind. There’s still the private accommodation list, right? There’s bound to be loads of houses on there that’ll be perfect and we can easily get. Surely…

Found out next time on Accommodation, Accommodation, Accommodation.

Special Post #4: Accommodation, Part 2 – University plans

This is the second post in a multi-part thriller about the rollercoaster journey that was (and still is!) house hunting. IF you haven’t already read the last instalment I’d advise you read that first.

The university have a very specific outline of how they help students find accommodation. Firstly they release a list (online) of all the “university managed housing”. This is essentially houses that the university rents from private landlords and then sublets to students on a fixed term. This list becomes accessible to all students at midnight on 23rd February.

Luckily the university have more sense than to make it first come, first served so instead each group can fill out a form to express interest in up to 7 houses on the list. The university then draws a ‘raffle’ where a first and backup group are randomly selected for each house on the list from everyone who was interested in renting that property. This seems like a very fair system in principle but it does mean that one group could potentially be selected at the first group for all 7 of their chosen houses.

Another down shot of this is that once selected as the first group for a property you view the house and then have 2 days to decide whether you want it or not.

But the university also release another list a week later, the private landlord list. It is essentially a list of all the student accommodation in Guildford. Any reputable landlord has their property and contact details listed. Unlike the university managed list, this one is first come, first served. It’s a matter of who can ring the landlord, arrange a viewing, view and get their deposit down before anyone else. Sound fair? Sounds deadly.

So you may be able to figure out that as I’m writing this the private landlord list has been out for 5 days. So did I manage to get a house? Was it easy? Was I chosen in the ‘raffle’ to get university managed housing? All in good time……

Stay tuned for part 3 - “The First List”

Special Post #3: Accommodation, Part 1 – Who?

This is the first of a multi-part series I’m going to write in the next few days about housing. This first part outlines finding my new housemates.

Back in December, me and Josh decided that we wanted to be housemates next year. But you can’t just have 2 people sharing a house, so we needed to find some more. We knew at the time that a group of 4 was ideal, and that one person either side of that was the limit.

Michael was our next call. I know Michael because he lives in Cathedral Court too. We watch Heroes together occasionally and go to comedy night. Michael agreed that living together was a great idea, so now we just need one.

Then Christmas came and went. It was now February. Knowing that we would need to be organised soon so we could start looking for houses, we set out on hunting once more. But wait! Michael, over the course of the Christmas holidays had made arrangements with other people (on his Chemistry course) to live with them. So it looks like back to square one.

Asking my current housemates bore no success: Sophie had found a group already, Mariana and Lauren had teamed up with one of Lauren’s friends from climbing club and her friend to create a group. Adam and Chris had both joined separate groups of people also.

It was time to ask people on our course. No luck. Stage crew? nope. And then we got somewhere…

Josh goes to church on Sunday’s with someone called Anne who does Chemistry. She is part of a group of three who are looking for someone to join them. Luckily they we’re OK with the idea of having a 5, so me and Josh met up with them.

Together we formed a group of 3 guys and 2 girls who were 2 engineers and 3 chemists. It looked like a plan.

So we all met up to see if we got on. There really great people. We like the same things (mainly geeky stuff) and had a great time meeting up.

This was on the 17th February. All was going well. But there was a fog looming…

Watch out for the next post to find out how the process the university uses to help us get accommodation, and how it wasn’t as simple as it first appeared………