Great and small

‘I’m not going to your place, it looks like a crack den.’ It’s not exactly a vote of confidence when your mother describes your home that way. Admittedly, the bedsit I have lived in for ten years is tiny. There is no central heating. The white blinds have faded to yellow. It’s not much good for house parties: I could fit four people, five if I sat between the sink and the microwave.

However, I would like to defend living in bedsits. Whenever I hear people complaining about housing in London, I wonder whether they have considered a bedsit. I’m autistic and work as a part-time carer, but even on my salary I was able to go on holiday abroad four times last year, thanks to my living arrangements.

In London, rent is my biggest expense by a huge margin. It comes to £80 a week.  Tobacco was my second biggest, before I gave up smoking. But my rent is a bargain. I live in zone three, just ten minutes’ walk from the nearest train station and one hour on the train from Islington, where I tend to socialise. The rent includes council tax and use of the light and taps.

Almost everything else in my life is dirt cheap. My mobile broadband is just £20 a month with unlimited data, so I have never needed a TV or landline. The only water bill I have to pay is for showers: 20p for six minutes. Most astonishingly, my electricity bill for the whole of last year was £24. Admittedly I charge my gadgets at work, but it is still astonishing that a year’s electricity could be cheaper than half a week’s rent. As for food, a nutritious jacket potato can cost 25p; steak and kidney pies are 50p.