How do you find shared flats in London? I looked online and there seems to be conflicting recommendations with some services even charging a fee.
The overall impression is it's a minefield even with a global pandemic on. I'm not a chancer looking to pay pennies for a palace, when I moved to the London from my parents house I started renting a studio flat for myself, a nice place but not somewhere you can really take a lass back. Cost is what it is but I didn't want to fuck about with nightmare housemates when I was getting serious with my career. Years later and I was planning on buying a house this year but will need to do at least another year of saving on top.
As an aside, it also seems tacitly demanded that I'll need to join board game nights - all the ads from my last look implied this. I mean being social is fine, I'll have a brew and maybe do dinner some nights but is this some kind of filter or code?
>>3597 It depends on how big the studio is. Shagging is doable in a London studio flat but there's not the space for two people to just hang out, it'll get stuffy and you'd better hope you don't need to take a fat ogre shit. Plus the neighbours are universally the sort who enjoy peace and quiet.
So what normally happens is I end up spending my weekends at her place. Particularly if we go anywhere and come back late.
>>3598 Let us know what you're looking for and when, I suspect my 2 months notice might nix anything. Still, there's some pretty nice places we could get if you fancy clumping in together.
The bedroom looks horrific but the kitchen I could live with. I'm not saying it's great but it only looks like a day or two of not bothering to clean anything.
Right I'm thinking of biting the bullet and handing in my notice to the landlord today. I need to give 2 months notice so do you reckon I start looking right away or do I wait until the final month? Should I hold off on a move until January given than December is likely a bad time to move?
I've found with the gays, at least gay men, that their homes are either oppressively orderly and tidy, or exactly as bad as OP image. There is no inbetween.
>>3641 Tenancy terminated. Now I just need to find flatmate/s who aren't complete insufferable weirdos and also avoid ending up homeless come December because nobody wants to be my friend.
>>3644 Oh God, nobody is responding to messages on spareroom. I have 6 weeks to move out and if worst comes to it I'll just use rightmove and find another studio but still.
What time should I start to panic and find a place? Are there anywhere decent areas left in that London?
>>3644 It's usually down to being gay and being OK with it and the same, but being ashamed of it. The latter point is more to do with the general mental health crisis we face, but it's compounded by sociatal guilt around what we like to fuck.
Talking of being gay, I sucked my first cock last night and it was fun. No idea why I felt the need to post that, but I can't exactly tell my dad, and you two are all I have. Cum tastes a bit rank though.
>>3651 I think I recall that old gem of a class called PSHE, and being told that you couldn't catch HIV from swallowing cum because your stomach sorted it out.
I definitely recall being sucked off by a guy the same year, but I didn't really feel it and couldn't cum, so he just wanked himself off in the cubicle afterwards while I stood there. What a fond formative memory.
It's almost impossible to catch HIV from oral sex unless you're a crackhead with rotting gums.
You can't catch HIV from someone who is positive if they're on effective antiretroviral treatment, because the amount of virus in their bodily fluids is effectively zero.
If you plan on having a cock binge and want the reassurance that you're protected, make an appointment at your local sexual health clinic and ask about PrEP. This is an antiretroviral treatment that can be taken daily or before sex and prevents you from catching HIV.
It's also worth remembering that HIV is no longer a life-threatening or life-limiting disease. HIV positive people who are on antiretroviral treatment have the same healthy life expectancy as HIV negative people. Obviously it's sensible to take precautions, but don't let the fear of HIV spoil your fun.
>>3654 Sajid Javid will go on TV and say that while plenty of people are still dying of AIDS, we can't live in fear of the virus, and the economy needs to open up again because that's more important, and someone needs to suck Sajid Javid's cock right now. Yes, he will refer to himself in the third person.
Within the gay community, it's a bit complicated. There's still an obvious stigma about HIV and the community has a kind of latent trauma from the late 80s when it seemed like everyone was going to die horribly.
On a practical level, people know that it's not a big deal and you'll often see people mention their HIV status on dating apps. The safest person to have unprotected sex with is in fact someone who knows they have HIV and knows that they have an undetectable viral load. On an emotional level, a lot of people still have a hard time reconciling that with the stigma, especially if they come from a homophobic family or culture that stigmatises homosexuality.
PrEP has changed the game, but it's more about psychology than behaviour. Knowing that you're protected takes away the nagging low-level worry after a sexual encounter, which often stirs up feelings of shame. The switch from a nihilistic-hedonistic attitude of "fuck it, if I catch HIV then so be it" to a more confident "I'm protected, I've got nothing to worry about" tends to affect people far beyond their sex life.
Lads, what life would you pick between these two options? By bizarre coincidence they have the same commute time, same train price, same underground line, both new builds. The cheaper first one starts 6 weeks before the moving out date on the address I'm at now.
Will probably pick one at 10pm tonight to seal the deal.
>>3658 Depends on what there is to do in the evening / weekends in that area. If that is London, I would say NW is a much nicer postcode to live in than E.
>>3658 For an update Waterfront was a tease; was ready to sign but had to agree a time to meet the other housemate that they never got back to me on. It really is like dating.
NW had odd vibes, the guy started talking about it not currently being a joint-tenancy and he had his desk set-up in the living room which struck me as a power-move.
Going to get up early to go look around a flat that would be sharing with a 45 year old gay man tomorrow. Not really what I was looking for in being social but I don't want to be stuck in a months time without a place secured. Anyway, something I've noticed is that there are A LOT of flats with gay men - most are pretty obviously are picking only gay housemates which is annoying considering how many places that cuts out.
>a nihilistic-hedonistic attitude of "fuck it, if I catch HIV then so be it"
Those were almost the exact words of Freddie Mercury in the early 80s. Asked by a close friend what Freddie thought of that worrying new disease and if he was making sure he protected himself, Freddie allegedly flung up his arms and said, "Darling, fuck it. I am doing everything with everybody". This was at the beginning of his solo phase as a musician, when he was frequenting all the renowned gay clubs and bars in New York City, which was an epicentre of the early HIV pandemic. And that's probably where he got the virus at some point.
So I just put down a deposit on a place. The new housemate is sound and the location is fun albeit one of those joke houses that is a conversation on a conversion, he's spending most of his time at his girlfriend's or looking at places to move to in a few months.
Anyway after my new housemate took the ad down I realised he has a mezzanine above the kitchen/living room rather than walled a room upstairs. I didn't think to ask because it seemed so illogical for him to live there. For Fucks Sake.
Hey lads, either of you know much about Aberfeldy Village in Poplar? I was thinking of a move but it looks like the area is still largely being developed.
>>3786 Until July, I worked at the company that owns and operates the district heating for all of Aberfeldy Village. It's a shit show. Sometimes an entire building will be without heating and hot water for several days, and they'll only get around £2 a day compo.
When we realise there's an outage, we tell affected people to tell their neighbours not to call as it's all in hand. But then if they raise a formal complaint to get proper compo, we deny them it because "if it was so bad why not raise a complaint?". At a different one of our locations, we've had a guy who routinely has no service for 1-2 days a week, and he's been raising a new formal complaint each month and we've still not sorted it
The conditions are shit for the engineers, and there are only a handful of engineers to service thousands of properties in each area they cover. Engineer retention is low. Last winter if an individual home was without service, it was a two week wait for someone to come sort it. I had a woman who had no hot water but she had heating, this was over Christmas, and I was told by management I couldn't get her an emergency appointment as she "can just boil a kettle".
The customer service team's management are more concerned chasing debts than they are with providing customer service and getting people's problems sorted. They also have "Debt Week" where the person who recovers the most debt wins a prize.
They were relatively good to me, so this isn't bitterness. I just think they provide a shit network and subpar service, and I would avoid their district heating like the plague.
>>3787 Tah lad, there's limited news online but I can see hints to back it up. I knew something was off when the rent was £1,050 pcm and bills only being £100pp for what looked like a nice room.
