A Place to Sleep (Searching for a Flat, Gossip, and the British Library)

Searching for a flat in London is an experience I don’t wish upon my worst enemy. It exposes you to the weirdest humanity you can imagine meeting. It seems that all the borderlines of the world have gathered here with all their financial resources, and bought flats to rent out in an act of affirmation of their identity. Renting a flat or letting a flat is a matter of status, in fact. And newbies on both sides know and accept this. All except the last, who could care less about this rubbish: me.

I’m not a Muslim woman willing to sharing a flat while waiting for the right one to whom to devote myself. I’m not the lesbian frightened by men to the point of not allowing – just in case – even my father to come, visit and sleep near me. Not to mention all the 20-something idiot girls I met who told me: “Sorry, but you seem to be too old to get on well with us” (in this last case I’m only upset I will not see you in the next 15 years, darling, when your life will be fucked up by an inconsiderate man and a couple of useless kids and you will wonder why you were so stupid to party every night instead of studying and building your means of survival).

But most of all I’m not the eco-vegan-animalist willing to recycle every tiny little thing I use to show how much I care about this planet: nice one, but on the contrary I think the best demonstration of my care for it would be to spread (and join) the proposal for a mass suicide of mankind as the friendliest act to let the earth regenerate by itself, and – hopefully – in less than one hundred years to forget the existence of human beings on its surface. But eco-vegan-animalists would never care enough for the cause to be the first ones to do it (at this point, dear reader, I want to enlighten you to the fact that – in case you are of such bad faith as to accuse me of instigation to suicide – I am not supporting this perspective in any way: mine is only a reasonable observation).

So I’m looking for a simple, clean, unpretentious place. Given all this background, my search is quite hard.

I keep on looking on the internet at Gossip, a lovely café in Broadway Market. Yes, it’s fancy and elitist – in this renewed area which ten years ago was considered such a slum that people willing to open a business couldn’t get bank loans, and those working in the area had to come by taxi because they were afraid to use public buses. But now it’s a “stylish” area, where young people come on Saturday mornings to buy expensive organic food in the market and wander around all day showing themselves off. All dressed in the same, classical English style: tweeds, tartans, lots of wool pullovers, jackets, coats and scarves. All pale, with sad, depressed eyes giving the impression they are always about to faint. And all with the same haircut, the one that made me hate the Beatles from the very first moment I saw them.

The Gossip has wi-fi, a great selections of teas and two young people as staff who are supportive and let me stay there the whole day to search in exchange for the few teas I drink while almost “squatting” a table and a chair. I will never be able to thank the people here enough for their kindness and hospitality (in spite of the desperate room search).

Today I found another place whose destiny is to become “my place”: the British Library. A huge, modern building and a paradise for book lovers. Here, you don’t even understand how they check you, but they do, deeply. You can plug in your laptop anywhere and leave it (apparently) unguarded. You have a free wi-fi connection (but no chance to do any political activity through it) and gluten-free chocolate cakes (the only way I can survive, as all the other food costs too much for someone with celiac disease).

I took off my shoes, since my left foot hurt, and realised after a while that I was walking around the library barefoot. “Whatever”. I sat on the floor and checked my email. My status on Facebook today says: “Cristina is still homeless but searching for a room at the free wi-fi hotspot in the British Library”. My punk attitude always comes out, aligned to my new conception of myself as somehow a snobbish newbie Londoner.

And, as I’m a part of it, my dear new co-citizens, can’t you let me sleep inside here for free? I feel safe here, among lively books you consider unanimated. “Adopt a book” – an advertisement inside says. Yeah, I’d rather pay for a book than for a room at this point. Would any of the books among the social sciences sector adopt me as well? I would feel “home” surrounded by them – and sleep quite cool and safe on the floor, imagining all the wonderful, surprising, unique and adventurous lives and stories they contain, and which my life will not be long enough to read.