IWHistory (1)

From September 1972 until November 1976, or thereabouts, I shared a flat very close to Highbury and Islington underground station, London. It was the top floor of a Victorian House. We shared a bog, on the floor below, with an old lady, who had put a notice "No wads" on the door. Presumably she had previously suffered from folk who did not know how to use bathroom stationery. We did not have a bathroom either - we washed in the kitchen sink and had a bath in the kitchen covered with a piece of plywood. Despite these hardships we were happy to live there at a rent which started at £42.96 a month and had rocketed to £43.31 four years later. Originally there were just two of us in the flat. I don't quite know how we managed this massive rent but it was not long before others joined us. One chap spent 2-3 years there sleeping on the cushions from the sofas. Several other guys were happy to contribute a tenner a month to sleep on the carpet. For quite long periods during the four years I was there I was paying no more than £10 a month.
We had mice. They paid nothing. I moved in a few days before my primary flatmate and the previous occupants warned me about the vermin and suggested I store all food in the mouse-proof cupboards provided. I passed on this intelligence to PF when he moved in, but for some reason he was not inclined to believe me, and left his breakfast cereal (porridge, which I cannot eat) on the work surface. Some months later, when we were eating breakfast one Saturday, he enquired "What do you reckon these black bits are?" "Those are mouse turds," I responded. Gosh, he said, I've been eating them for months. After that he stored his porridge in the cupboards.
Every now and again we saw mice around the place - they occasionally got trapped in the bath.
The 'wads' lady had a piano. We never heard her playing it. After we had been there for two or three years she told us the anti-vermin police had discovered a mouse nest in her piano and had taken the instrument away, to be destroyed. Although his sounded a somewhat extreme measure to us, she did not seem particularly distressed. But we never saw any mice again. Amazing really.
Also on the floor below were three more old ladies sharing a flat. I believe they had their own toilet. One of them told us off for feeding the birds, because a pigeon had shat on her head just after she had been to the hairdresser.