Students Guide to Slumlords

8th Sep 2014

The academic year is almost upon us. In Cork it’s quite easy to notice. Late on Sunday nights you’ll spot vans and jeeps lining up outside houses around Bishopstown, Wilton, Glasheen, Barrack Street and College Road with burly red faced men hauling low grade second-hand furniture and bags of unpleasant student-gank from suspiciously septic and furry fridges back and forth to trailers – the mouldy waft of long-forgotten fast food, stashed in the wee hours of a late-May celebration finally released from its plastic prison.

You can easily tell the student houses from regular houses even if the landlord hasn’t poured concrete on the garden to reduce the amount of maintenance and the summer weeds are peering in the letter box.
 

Typical student gaf

A single dreary thirty-something-watt bulb backlighting a curtain so thin it might be a recycled bed sheet – the circle of “shade” in the centre hinting its purpose wasn’t always this. Windows open full on a cold night to release the essence of cigarette ash, decaying pizza base, toe-jam, beer and other fluids of a turbulent three terms.

The faded lemon walls with brighter rectangles of former glory and defiant blu-tak stains where posters to an unknown God once tried to add some temporary personality to the blandness of this eight-month waiting room and its bed: a pop-God striking a pose; a squad of satisfied looking sportsmen on benches with a shiny silver cup; some safely rebellious tribute to marajuana with a cute alien saying ‘Bring Me To Your Dealer’.
 

Students spend a lot of time sitting on their holes

Most of the furniture here will have been paid for in punts and every August-effort has been made to resist investments with the newer currency. A pattern of quickly drilled screws and gaffer tape applied with a face that says erra-I’ll-get-another-year-outta-that holds the bare bones of a fusty couch together like an aging one-eyed three-legged dog. An aesthetically unrelated eighties armchair watches from right angles – their awkward association a hopeful metaphor for all those who will watch desperate daytime television here this term.

In the kitchen mod-cons stand close together like junior B players for a pre-season photo. Younger fitter lads with energetic eyes and hopes of moving up the ranks stand shoulder to shoulder with balding bearded fellas with tired aspirations to just get an hour or two away from a platoon of toddlers.
 

You can work, eat, sleep and piss in your bedroom. Into empty beer cans, obviously.

In real homes kitchens are carefully planned on a rainy Saturday afternoon with an enthusiastic retail assistant on a computer in a warehouse with month long procrastinations over walnut or oak. Oh and can the plumber come before the builders’ holidays and will he be able to get the mains all the way over to the dishwasher if we put it next to the fridge?

In student houses kitchens are a patchwork of temporarily solved problems with concerns in order of descending importance: functionality, convenience, safety and aesthetic (from the eye of a slumlord of course). Extension leads run behind taps to toasters that mysteriously trip out when plugged into the socket with the black stain that it used to work in. A confusing blur of plastic pipes and spaghetti discards wind their way in between appliances and unset mouse traps.

A helpful note in yellow highlighter pen from a previous inmate on the inside of a cupboard:
“If you want hot water here, turn the water heater dial to “caliente 3”, plug out the fridge and jiggle the down pipe behind the washing machine for a bit. Should work”.

It won’t be long now before students are unloaded from loud white Sunday night buses on Melbourn, Western and College Roads to trudge their way with heavy gear bags to gaffs like these and their weary hungover flatmates.

- The shower’s STILL not working?!
- Yeah, the landlord said he might be able to drop in next week before he goes to Malaga for two weeks. Won’t pay for a plumber until he sees it. Some langer!      

As the novelty of living away from home wears off the cosy weekend comforts of mammy’s double-glazed nest suddenly seems worth the nag - it’s no wonder students spend so much time drinking. You need something to take the edge off your learning experience in one of these kips.
 

College road

As bad as some of Cork’s notorious and shameless slumlords might be, there is at least a life lesson in it for their young tenants. This will set the benchmark for all your accommodation woes for the rest of your life. When your solar panels leak and drip into the hot tub of your plush gaff below in Fennell’s Bay and your better half loses a little perspective as to the scale of the problem, you’ll be able to recall memories of grimmer times: wardrobe mushrooms, kitchen mice with names, hot-water bottle dinners and spitty showers.  And of course, the dark lord who presided over it all.