Grace & Favour1

Approaching my second year at university, I was really stuck as to accommodation. A planned house share had fallen through, many of the other options were too far away from the campus (I was a music student and needed to practice regularly) and there was no space left in the halls of residence. Finally, I came across a small ad in a newsagent advertising a room. The positives: it was cheap and about two minutes walk from the rehearsal rooms. The negatives: it was in a family home, and that didn’t quite fit in with my bohemian aspirations of student independence! I finally decided to call the number on the card anyway – as I say, things were getting desperate and I had nowhere else to go once the term ended. The woman on the other end of the line seemed as surprised to get the call as I was to make it; in retrospect, I think she’d been hoping for (and expecting) a female lodger.