It really is grim down south

I went to look at my first flat this week.

It was billed as being a 'flatshare on the Old Kent Road in a completely gay household, with five guys looking for a sixth'. Don't get me wrong; I'm not looking to live with gays because I am gay-exclusive, I just felt that if I were to move into a gay household, one of the guys in the house is likely to have a gorgeous friend that I can date and Doormouse is probably going to fall for one of the others in the house and then we can both be seeing significant others. It just adds up.

None of my friends or family were overly enamoured with the idea of me moving south of the river, but as I pointed out, I lived in Tooting (if you please) when I was at university and I just about made it out alive.

However, their fears were justified when I arrived at the 'flat'. First, it wasn't actually on the Old Kent Road (which, despite being south and therefore pikey, it is on the Monopoly board and therefore must have some cache), it was on a street 'just off' the road. Second problem was that it wasn't a flatshare at all, but was in fact a house with lots of bedsits inside with shared kitchen and bathroom facilities.

Call me a snob, but I just ain't interested in living in a house where the bathroom is cultivating its own strain of bacteria and the kitchen smells like corpse. No self-respecting homo should be happy in that building and I can only assume that the people who already lived there were the kind of chaps that frequent the Halfway to Heaven pub in Charing Cross. Grim? Doesn't even come close.

Needless to say I am back to the drawing board as far as flathunting goes and I will definitely be sticking to the leafier, greener side of the river.

If my budget allows it, of course.