As soon as I arrived in London, I thought, “This was a mistake.” I hated the place from the moment I got off the airplane until the moment I left ten years later. It was in such sharp contrast to Dublin, which I liked, in spite of the shitty circumstances that I was in.
So I take a taxi from the airport. For the entire journey, the Cockney taxi driver was complaining that I was taking him away from “the football”. “I wanted to watch the football! I’m missing the football”. Well, I’m sorry that you have to do your fucking job. I didn’t know that you wanted to watch a bunch of men in little short pants chasing after each other and fondling each other’s buttocks. Had I known, I would have taken a different taxi.
There’s a fucking soccer game every fucking day. Probably many times a day. They’re all totally inconsequential. And it’s the most boring sport in the fucking universe. But this guy REALLY wanted to watch the game.
So I get to the Royal Bayswater Hotel. Sounds fancy. The queen herself probably stayed there.
But when I arrived, it was just scumbags staying there. There was a big fat South Asian guy sitting on the floor of this twelve person dorm with his legs spread out at a 90 degree angle. I greeted him and he said, “This is my bed” and pointed to the bed that was behind him. Well, okay. I didn’t plan on climbing over him but he was apparently concerned.
At night, there would be loud parties going on and in the morning, you would see a huge mess in the communal areas.
I stayed, I don’t know, a few days? On my last day, I saw a pimp talking to two prostitutes in the lobby. Maybe it wasn’t a pimp because it was a white guy, but it seemed like a pimp. And it was a South Asian woman and a white woman.
I went to a few different hostels. They were all god awful. Unimaginably bad. You wouldn’t think that it’s possible to have hostels this fucking bad, not just in a Western country, but anywhere.
Some of them would stack not just regular bunkbeds but three story high bunkbeds. So there would be a tiny fucking room, that in any normal situation would only fit one bed, and they would cram four of these three story high bunkbeds. So twelve people in a tiny room.
I walked down the stairs of one place and some South Asian guy who worked there started yelling at me. “We’re painting!” What do you want me to do? There’s only one exit. And I saw that you were painting so I was careful not to touch anything.
There was some creepy old gay guy working at one of the places. He was the only person I ever saw working at any of these places who was over the age of 30.
That reminds me. There was literally a hostel that advertised itself as a place to meet gay men. And the owners were two gay men who used the hostel as a place to have sex with the guests. Let me look this up. I don’t think I could post this even if I found it but let me check.
No, I think that I can post this. The place is closed now. But it was called London House Gay Hostel. So they weren’t hiding anything. You can do your own research. Anyway, I didn’t stay there.
At first, I tried to stay in mixed room dorms, hoping that I could get something going with a sexy lady, but nothing happened. So later, I tried to stay in dorms with just guys in order to avoid any of the petty drama that comes with women. They’d complain about shit. People turning the lights on at night and whatever. I mean…yeah, it’s obviously rude and the accommodation is atrocious but this is just how it is. Complaining won’t help. And these scumbags are from all over the world. They have different levels of civility. And we’re paying like £10/night for this shit. What can you really expect?
There always seemed to be a problem with the showers at these places. Communal showers. Like prison style. There were probably partitions and maybe even like cubicles but I don’t remember.
What I do remember is a woman asking me if the showers were working. She asked me this while we were in the bathroom together. This place had co-ed bathrooms, which is insane. So I said, “Yeah, they’re working.” So she said, “Thanks” and then proceeded to take her top off, get undressed, and go into the shower. I wish that this story had a sexier ending but I just tried to play it cool and went about my business. Like I see women taking their clothes off and getting into the shower every day.
I eventually settled on one hostel. I stayed there for…fuck. I don’t know. Maybe six weeks. I think that it was £50/week. You got a slight discount if you paid weekly.
I was really burning through my money. Throughout all of this, I was looking for work every day but I wasn’t getting much of a response. I was getting way more interviews in Dublin.
I was moved to a dorm that had long-term guests, like I was. Immigrants looking for work. But then some shady English guy moved in, presumably a junkie, and he stole my Game Boy Advance and I had a couple of games. There was no place to lock your stuff but everybody there seemed fairly trustworthy. We knew each other and would talk.
So I go to reception and say that my Game Boy was stolen and I told him who I thought did it. It was all Australian people working there, by the way. This guy couldn’t give less of a fuck. So I said, “Should I call the police or what?” He said, “Do what you want.”
Then he says that this place isn’t for long-term living and how long do I plan on staying here. I said, “Until I get a job.” He wasn’t happy with that answer.
So I started looking for a place to live. I was looking for the cheapest possible places. £50/week was pretty much the low end of the scale.
I found a place, I called them, and they said, “Yeah, just come over at (whatever time) and we’ll show you the place.”
I get there. I’ll give some pretentious detail that will only mean anything to people who have lived in London. It was a big tower block (large apartment building) that used to be council housing (government-owned properties for poor people) in East London. Bethnal Green was the name of the borough. It’s a place where impoverished immigrants have historically lived and the current main immigrant group there was…I don’t know. Bangleshi? Middle Easterners? Loads of women in ninja gear. That’s all I can say.
There were also some really, really, REALLY poor white English people living there. But not many.
So I get to the apartment. There are three rooms (two bedrooms and a living room that was converted into a bedroom) and two people in the two normal bedrooms and one person in the living room/bedroom. The guy in the living room/bedroom had the lease for the property, and he sub-let the place out to everyone else. This was a common thing to do in this rock-bottom segment of the market.
It was a guy from Lithuania. The sub-letters were a guy from the Czech Republic and two women from…I don’t know…Eastern Europe, somewhere.
So this guy from the Czech Republic showed me this tiny, dilapidated property. Mould all over the bathroom walls. Mould in the bedrooms. But whatever. I said that I’d take it. So he told the Lithuanian guy, the Lithuanian guy approved, and that was that. I gave them a £50 deposit, £50 for the first week, and I was free to move in whenever I wanted. This guy from the Czech Republic would be my roommate.
It was the first place that I saw and it was a total dump but I was just happy to finally be able to get out of these hostels.
Throughout all of this, I was getting benefit (welfare) money. It was like £59/week. I applied like two weeks after I arrived. It’s crazy that this worked. You have to show that you’re living in the country but is two weeks enough to prove that you’re living in a country? I filled all of the information out honestly and I got the money so they must have thought so.
£59/week is not sufficient, though. You’re also supposed to get your rent paid. This £59 was for any extra expenses.
But I didn’t really have rent. I was living in hostels. I suppose that they should have paid for the hostels. But I didn’t want to chance it so I just applied for this £59/week. Also, I was moving to different hostels a lot. And really, every time I moved, I was supposed to apply again in the new borough where the hostel was located. I didn’t know this. But every borough has their own system and you’re only supposed to get money from them if you live in that borough.
Anyway, the £59/week helped because I was almost out of money when I moved to London. I needed £50/week for the hostel and then I used that £9 for food. If I ever needed to take a train or bus, that £9 for the week would be wiped out.
This hostel bullshit was all behind me, though. I was finally going to live like a human being again, or so I thought. I must have stayed in the hostels…I don’t know…for three months? Something like this. Really, really terrible. I wouldn’t recommend it. But if you’re a young person and don’t have money and you’re moving to a foreign country and you don’t know anyone, it’s the only way to do it.