Living in a strange place

It’s late on Satur­day night on a deftly cold August eve’, my feet feel as if they were ice blocks and I am rela­ti­vely lonely and bored in an unfa­mi­liar town. Yes, I shall be living out the rest of my sum­mer holiday’s wor­king in Cam­bridge for a little known com­pany entit­led “Moto­rola”. Mirah’s “Advi­sory Com­mit­tee” com­forts me as I con­ti­nue to feel a little dis­con­cer­ted with res­pects to my new resi­dence. Upon first look the place may seem plen­ti­ful for a brief 7 week stay. The room is of good size and see­mingly appro­pria­tely fur­nished; I also have my own sho­wer and coo­king area. Yet I am not sett­led, even after being here a week already. The ove­rall nice­ness of the place is off­set by the oh so subtle horrors, indeed the devil is in the details. 

To begin with, my room; it con­tains an old bureau, a chest of dra­wers, a new Ikea bed, a new fridge and a few lights. It is a downs­tairs room loo­king into the con­cea­led front gar­den and is of good size. And of course loo­king around everything is see­mingly sound. Howe­ver, having lived here the slight pro­blems begin to mount. First the little things; the bureau is old and desig­ned for paper and pen usage, it does not accom­pany a desk­top com­pu­ter well which beco­mes a par­ti­cu­lar pro­blem with regards to cables and their rou­ting; the bed’s mat­tress is inset in wood which pre­sents par­ti­cu­lar dif­fi­cul­ties when chan­ging the sheets, this wood extends down­wards – so whilst sto­rage space is visi­ble under the bed the bor­der pre­vents anything from being slid beneath and it’s unsha­pely form pre­vents a lift and slide tech­ni­que; the chairs are old and uncomfy, the dra­wers are light and flimsy and the room is always inc­re­dibly dark with a fil­te­red soft light akin to sta­tion ligh­ting where sha­dows become blurry. These are mere phy­si­ca­li­ties that I can live with.

Con­ti­nuing on, the door to my room glee­fully boasts two large win­dows pro­vi­ding clear sight into my room and des­tro­ying any pri­vacy I may hope to have. They have kindly pro­vi­ded a blind but this does not block out the light at night – the light from the corri­dor which is per­ma­nently lit and relit should I turn it out, the blind also has a slight kink pre­ven­ting full cover. The room is not sound proo­fed in the sligh­test so that every move outside can be heard and visa versa, par­ti­cu­larly anno­ying when a grand­father clock ticks inces­santly in my ears at night or when a dog barks in the morn. Further­more the house has no insu­la­tion – the floor is woo­den, the win­dows are old and sin­gle gla­zed and the room is next to the front door – which lets in draughts a plenty. You wouldn’t think insu­la­tion would be a pro­blem in August but I am very cold and would dread to spend the win­ter here. Moving onto the sho­wer, situa­ted under the stairs – a power sho­wer yes, but one of those Ita­lian sty­led hole in the floor job­bies such that using it wets the toi­let seat, toi­let roll and the entire cavity. To make mat­ters worse the door is gar­nished with more win­dows, this time they pro­vide a little dif­fu­sion and have pretty colours yet as the sho­wer is directly in front of the door, which is in the corri­dor downs­tairs (the main through­way) all pri­vacy is shot to pie­ces and no ana­to­mi­cal fea­tu­res are left to doubt. 

If we carry through to the kitchen – a con­ver­ted wash room com­plete with sink, elec­tric coo­ker and washing machine. The odour of dog water and washing pow­der is thick and work­top space is mini­mal. To exa­cer­bate things further the oven door opens in such a dif­fi­cult man­ner in a tight arran­ge­ment so that if you wish to use it you must pre­sent your face to its front so as to slightly grill your nose. There are cats and dogs that are old and mise­ra­ble, there is no safe place to keep a peddle bike and I can­not get over this unsett­ling fee­ling. If this place was actually affor­da­ble then maybe I would not be quib­bling. The icing on the cake occu­rred when, as I was watching an X-files epi­sode in my ongoing marathon, all power was lost and everything tur­ned itself off – but only for a brief second. The lights came back on and everything was run­ning again, except for the com­pu­ter which was still ree­ling. It all see­med to hap­pen when the fridge clic­ked on. So I inves­ti­ga­ted, it turns out the exten­sion cables (as pro­vi­ded) that I have plug­ged my desk­top into and various others that power the lights and fridge all run into one exten­sion under the bed. This exten­sion comes up from the floor­boards beneath and powers everything. The plug soc­kets in the room do not actually work. It’s not like I can turn the fridge off when using the com­pu­ter and visa versa and I need the fridge (which also likes to freeze my salad!). This has hap­pe­ned twice now and it con­ti­nuously worries me such that I attempt to power manage as best I can – tur­ning on lights only if I have to and using spea­kers, CD dri­ves and hard-drives conservatively. 

At least the family I live with seem quite accom­mo­da­ting, albeit there is a veil of mys­tery about them. Oh well, rant over, now I will sleep.