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Nothing can make or break your peace of mind and general health than where you live and when it comes to prior accommodation I’ve had some "interesting" experiences on that front - most of which revolve around my time in Hull.

Immediately after graduating from University and with the increasingly looming end of my current tenancy I desperately needed to find new accommodation. With few funds and very little in the way of real job prospects available to me (other than seasonal work or low wage bum jobs in soul destroying environments surrounded by people with mostly no passion, perspective or one iota of self-awareness) my options were limited to say the least.

Having ran into an ex-student from the university, who had been one of the few not caught up in the whole student lifestyle, I learnt of a flat that was available and set about contacting the landlord to view the property. Within a couple of hours I was stood outside the location (an old house converted into a series of flats) with the landlord’s representative. Almost immediately we discovered that the door code didn’t work properly and could be accessed by any combination of numbers.

Hmm, good gig if you’re a burglar.

Definitely not the most auspicious of starts to viewing potential accommodation but, after quickly scanning the ground floor flat that I was being shown, I decided that as I really didn’t have any other options available to me and viewing this as a hopefully temporary solution I’d take it as my next residence.

The chances you are forced to take when your options are severely curtailed by lack of finances/resources.... :-(  

Unwelcome stay

I moved in the next day, dropped all my possessions off in the living room and then took a trip over to the city centre to sign on which was something I hated doing. I had hoped to be working on some commissions prior to leaving university but all my applications, telephone calls and efforts had come to naught and now I felt reduced to being another face in a line of people in a city that provided very few tangible opportunities for self-improvement. I knew what I wanted to do and I was more than happy to put the hours in to get there but the channels were very limited to say the least and so it was that I had to endure job advisors trying to steer me into work that would have been anything but worth my time and efforts. Work that in many cases would have left me worse off for having been employed in those roles (never a pleasant nor inviting prospect).

Returning back to the flat I started to unpack my various possessions and allocate them to the appropriate rooms. I had no illusions about the quality of where I was now living but when I came to the bedroom I was gobsmacked by the sight that greeted me. Having quickly scanned the bedroom in relative darkness when viewing the flat with the landlord’s representative I was not prepared to see what it looked like with the curtains opened.

On the walls all around the bed, at roughly eye level, was what looked like a perimeter of what can only be described as dried sperm. I did a double take to make sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me and even after the fact was firmly registered I still stood there in disbelief. The walls immediately circling the bed were very clearly and obviously decorated with the previous occupant’s semen. The splatter pattern, its transparency, height and location ruled out other possibilities instantly. Whoever this person was, and whatever their motivations for doing that, must have spent hours working on this unique addition to the decor. The line extended all the way around from the left hand wall, across the rear wall and onto the right hand wall for what must have been at least 20 feet if not more. I was simultaneously impressed by this person’s dedication to their work and immediately horrified at the prospect of having to sleep in that room from that point onwards.

This would have been unpleasant enough were it not for subsequent developments which included, amongst others:

• Mail going missing on a regular basis
• Being woken by music being played full volume by the upstairs neighbour who, despite being paid a couple of friendly visits to discuss the situation, still persisted with being an inconsiderate arsehole for the rest of my 3 months there (and don’t neighbours cause almost all of the hassles involved with accommodation?)
• Leaving an opened can of tuna near the kitchen sink only to return from the bathroom to find a mouse dragging the tin across the work surface
• Having my bedroom window broken
• Chasing off 2 men who were attempting to break into someone’s car on the road immediately outside the property

Living in that location was not a high point in my life but where I was to move to next really pushed the boat out for bad experiences with accommodation. 

From bad to worse

The summer had ended, the seasonal job that I had recently procured at the parks had also drawn to a close and now my tenancy was about to expire as well. After speaking with the landlord’s representative (I never did get to meet the landlord during the year that I rented properties through him) I was invited to view another property not too far from where I was currently residing.  

Upon being told that there were two properties available, both the ground floor and first floor flat, I decided that the upstairs flat would be better in terms of security and less noise (as nobody would be above me to disturb my peace and quiet) so I asked to be shown around. No sooner had the representative opened the door leading to the upstairs flat than he closed it, looked at me with surprise in his eyes and said, ‘someone’s still living there!’

Now it’s fair to say that the landlord and his representative really didn’t have a clue about the properties they ‘managed’ (as the landlord had simply inherited the properties from his father and didn't pay much attention to what was going on as he was busy with his legal career). Again - the bind of circumstances - I really didn’t have any options available to me with almost zero finances and no employment opportunities so I took the ground floor flat.

The next day, upon being handed the keys by the landlord’s representative, I was asked if I could contact the upstairs tenant and inform them that the landlord wanted them to get in touch. A couple of weeks went by before I saw the guy who was living upstairs and after briefly introducing myself I relayed the message that I’d been given. His face went white and he started shaking his head. 

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘I haven’t paid the rent for almost 2 years’ he replied.

I was stunned.

How could you not have paid the rent for 2 years and not have anybody notice I wondered? That takes lack of attention to business and incompetence on the part of the landlord and his representative to a new level.

‘You’re going to have to do something now that the landlord’s making inquiries’ I replied.

He looked at me with wide eyes, ‘I can’t afford to pay 2 years rent! I’m going to leave before he comes round.’

I smiled as sympathetically as I could, ’He’s a Queens Counsel Barrister, he’ll know the laws and how to track you down and whatever charges he wants to bring against you he can make it stick to.’

‘That’s a chance I’m going to have to take.’

And with that we concluded our brief conversation. The next day he was gone. I never saw him again and to this day, over 20 years later, I don’t know what became of him and his efforts to evade the landlord. Living rent free for almost 2 years? That blows my mind thinking about it now, particularly when the landlord of said property is highly skilled in the legal profession. I can’t think of a worse person to try and avoid settling payments with when they have all the knowledge and tools available to legally box you in and take you apart.

Now this is the problem when you have very little social mobility in a local economy that’s relatively impoverished. You find yourself forced to accept certain circumstances that, if you had the money and opportunities available to you, you would immediately reject. And so it was that for the next 8 months or so of my stay in this particular flat I came to experience some particularly dysfunctional, unhealthy and VERY stressful scenarios.

Environmental health

Not too long after the previous upstairs occupant had fled a relatively young family moved in and they were anything but sociable. Neither of the adults ever made eye contact or spoke with me, preferring instead to avoid and ignore. The male only ever went out for roughly half an hour or thereabouts every day. The female never seemed to go out as far as I can recall and their baby was always crying. They both looked unemployed and unemployable and generally came across as quite obnoxious and unpleasant.

The months passed and I never heard or saw them again which wasn’t something that I felt particularly mournful or sad for. One morning I staggered into the bathroom half asleep, my lower legs itching from what I thought was a sweat rash brought on through being quite hot for late spring. I looked at the bathtub and wondered why the surface was entirely black. That didn’t make any sense given my obsessive attention to cleanliness and hygiene in the flat. What was going on here?

As I bent down to take a closer look the entire black surface of the bathtub leapt up to meet me. I ran out of the flat, repeatedly brushing my head and face with my hands while screaming in shock. 

Fleas?!

I had fleas?!!

You had to be joking! Fleas??? How could I have fleas? Where had they come from? I didn’t own any pets. No animals had ever been in the flat since I had moved in and I was always hoovering and cleaning to keep the place clean. Fleas??!! Damned fleas??!! How in God's name had that happened?!!

During a very urgent call to the local environmental health department the spokesperson requested a sample of the fleas to inspect so they could determine the best course of action. A sample? You wanted me to go back into that flat and obtain a sample? Was this guy for real? I didn’t want to go back into that flat ever again. Now that I realised that the previously suspected heat rash was actually flea bites I felt horror at the prospect of having to venture back into that place. Too bad that I had nowhere else to live and that I needed to nip this very serious problem in the bud before it got any worse.

With great trepidation I ventured back indoors, my skin crawling and my mind very alive to the possibility (and very likely reality) that with each passing footstep I was being dined on by my newly realised, and extremely unwelcome, guests.

I must have emptied half a bottle of Mr Muscle into the bath as I frenziedly sprayed the surface of the bathtub in an attempt to stop those little fuckers jumping up at me again. Grabbing a roll of Sellotape from the kitchen, once I was satisfied that the fleas I had sprayed were dead, I quickly placed a strip cut from the Sellotape face down over a selection of the black slurry of dead fleas, folded it over itself to seal them in and promptly took the sample down to the local environmental health office.

Inspecting the fleas embedded within the Sellotape strip the environmental health officer made a noise of contemplative and satisfied exclamation before turning towards me to say one word...

Cats.

Now that he had established they were cat fleas (and I had no idea at the time how cat fleas could possibly have got into the flat) he proposed a course of fumigation that could take place within the next 4 or so days.

4 or so days?

You mean I had to wait in that flea-infested flat for 4 or possibly more days before it could be cleaned???

That did not sit well with me but there was nothing I could do to change that...and so it was, for the next 4 days (thankfully I didn’t have to wait any longer for the fumigation to take place), that I spent as little time in that flat as I possibly could. When I did have to spend time there I was literally bathed from head to toe in Dettol to try and disinfect myself and minimise any subsequent flea bites and their potential health repercussions. A pretty dysfunctional and somewhat intense situation I’m sure you’ll agree but such is life when you’re in an unpleasant and economically deprived rut.

Once the flat was fumigated I was understandably relieved although I was far from impressed at having to pay for that out of my own pocket. The landlord would have nothing to do with it when I raised the issue with him which I thought was exceptionally weak, selfish and incredibly mean on his part (he obviously didn’t care and was a condescending prick anyway), and the money had to come out of my giro for that week. When you’re living close to the poverty line every penny matters and to have to shell out what was for me, in those circumstances, a significant amount of money really doesn’t make matters any easier (especially when I was not responsible for the situation).

Still now the flat was fumigated I could start to relax again...or so I thought.

Drugs and debts

It can’t have been more than a fortnight afterwards when, in the early afternoon, I was startled by someone hammering on the front door of the building of the flats. Whoever it was was clearly not going to go away and started hammering at the door with an even greater intensity that made me wonder if the lock wouldn’t break under the pressure. With rising anxiety, and wishing that whoever this person was they would just go away, I wandered into the hallway and through the relative safety of the vertical letterbox of the front door proceeded to engage in conversation with this clearly angry stranger.

The conversation went something akin to the following:

‘Let me in.’

‘I can’t do that, I don’t know who you are.’

‘Let me fuckin’ in right now!’

‘I don’t know you and I can’t let you in. Why don’t you tell me what you want?’

‘Just fuckin’ let me in or I’ll break the door down!’

‘I don’t know you. Why don’t you just tell me what you want and I'll see if I can help?’

Eventually after what seemed like an eternity of this back and forth conversation the overly aggressive idiot at the door (who bore an uncanny and frightening resemblance to the character of Dog from the Guy Ritchie film Lock, Stock & 2 smoking barrels) finally relented from threatening to smash the door in and disclosed the reasons for his being there.

It turned out that the previous occupants upstairs, specifically the adult male, had borrowed a thousand pounds from my 'friend' on the opposite side of the front door and now that he wanted his money repaid they were nowhere to be seen.

Great....that left me having to deal with this situation even though I had nothing whatsoever to do with creating that in the first place.

Eventually he walked away after I assured him that I’d speak to the tenants if they came back but I didn’t think that was going to happen as I was fairly certain they’d absconded. Satisfied with my reply (and his probably knowing that if the Police got involved as a result of threatening to break the door down they’d want to know what the business with the money involved and that wouldn’t look too good for him) he left me alone.

A couple of months later and my tenancy expired which left me feeling somewhat relieved to be away from there. Although I had further issues with sourcing accommodation ahead of me (which is another story in and of itself - unfortunately involving a brief spell of temporary homelessness) it felt great to get away from what was clearly a poisonous and extremely dysfunctional environment. Was it something about that location? Some strange energy field or history about that place that seemed to generate negativity? I really don’t know but it was a strange and disturbing environment to live in, that much I do know.

Some explanations and further twists

A couple of weeks after relocating I popped back just to check that all the letters and correspondence for my postal mail redirection were being sent to my new address. The new tenant for the ground stairs flat where I had previously lived opened the door and after my explaining who I was and why I was there he welcomed me in.

I collected the few letters that had been sent there before the redirection had kicked in and the man and his partner started to relate to me their experiences when viewing the property. He explained that they’d viewed the upstairs flat only to find that it was riddled with fleas and that there’d been a large inflatable children's swimming pool in the living room surrounded by hydroponic lights....all of which was there to help a particular type of plant to grow.

I couldn't believe it...the previous residents had only been growing their own cannabis right above my bedroom!

So, after being bathed in dettol and enduring cat fleas, courtesy of my short-lived upstairs tenants, I also had to contend with an enraged drug dealer, who wanted to smash the door in, who the occupants had ripped off in order to start their own drugs business which was taking place directly above my bedroom! 

And to add even more layers of just-how-much-more-dysfunctional-can-this-experience-get I had it on good authority from one staff member, while doing my teacher training at the local college, that this guy that I had spoken with who had moved into my old flat was also a student at the same college and was actually dealing drugs himself to some of the students! I suspect this was likely the remaining cannabis that had been grown above my bedroom....clearly not someone to let an opportunity go to pass.

I kid you not - every word of the above is true - and the mind boggles at the irony of a landlord whose main occupation as a barrister was upholding, or being seen to uphold, the law, yet who had, in his properties, large numbers of tenants who were thieves, drug dealers and outright criminals themselves....and I was caught up in the middle of this through no fault of my own.

If there's a moral to this story I certainly can't find it but I can thank God that those days are consigned to the past now.

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