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London Rental Opportunity of the Week

London Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Fucking Shed in Cheam! CHEAM!

What's the difference between a log cabin and a shed? Well: Log cabins are made of logs. Let's start there.

(All photos via Spareroom)

Last week the Autumn Statement happened, and with it came news that there would imminently be a ban on tenants being charged letting fees. This news itself does not exactly fill me with a warm feeling of glee: you feel that the obvious move from landlords suddenly being hit with costs is to absorb these costs into rent instead, meaning rents will rise and we will all save even less money each month, and the lofty idea of owning property one day will be edged even further away from our grubby little hands, like a casserole dish poked along a table.

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No: what filled me with joy was imagining people who drive new Minis and take £80-a-gram gak in the toilets of Be At One – I am of course talking about estate agents – having The Worst Possible Day of Their Professional Lives as they tried desperately to deal with this news.

Have you had The Worst Possible Day of Your Professional Lives yet? I have. I confused the name of newly formed X Factor boyband member "George Shelley" with short story writer and essayist "George Saunders" in a massive online gallery of the previous, and all the fans of George #1 called our brand account "wrong" and "stupid", and I went very red and started sweating out of my face and had to go and have a big hyperventilate in the toilets. A bad feeling at the time, sure, and the cause of one of my more glowering and terrible memories, but at least I am allayed a little by knowing that every single estate agent in the country felt like that for an entire day last Thursday. At least I have that.

Oh yeah, we've got to do this bit:

What is it? It's a log cabin, it says here, but let's be honest, lads: it's a shed;
Where is it? Cheam, which I learned today is not the name of a small, ugly, unpalatable fish, and is instead a place, somewhere near Sutton;
What is there to do locally? There is a place nearby called "Nonsuch Park", apparently, although honestly that sounds like a joke. An online guide to Cheam also says there is a place called "The Feedwell Café". Some very literal place-names in Cheam, aren't there. What a place. What an odd, odd place. I bet there are some real unexplained deaths around there.
Alright, how much are they asking? £650! Six hundred! And fifty! Pounds!

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"Why are estate agents bad, Joel?" people ask me. "Why are the lizard people you spit when you speak of so awful, so void of soul?" And I lean down close and hiss to them: because those pig-scum think it is acceptable to rent a shed – in fucking Cheam, by the way – for six-hundred-and-fifty bastard pounds a month; they think that is acceptable, somehow, the scum-humans; they think that price is OK.

And so to Cheam, where someone who was distracted by an especially interesting cloud during every single reading or writing lesson they ever had in their life is tasked with selling you this shed:

Rare opportunity to rent this log cabin , lovely size on TVs radio and fridge ,also microwave beautiful part of leafy south cream , free parking in side road , 2 min walk to bust stop 470 to cheam Sutton , or epson , would suit someone private , shared kitchen and toilet , must fit in with other housemates

Some notes: there is a reason this opportunity is "rare", and that is: not many people have the temerity to rent a shed in their garden. Yes, you would have to get on with the housemates, seeing as you have to trudge inside of their house to piss, shit and make sandwiches. "Would suit someone private" is, I assume, because if someone's friend comes over and goes, "Mate, you're living in a shed," realisation might hit and the person living in a shed might suddenly discover they are living in a shed, and move out.

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It's not a log cabin, is it? Is it now? No. It is a shed. A log cabin suggests a crackling fire, a groaning AGA, a bear outside that you can shoot, cosy nights in deep leather armchairs reading large hardback books by the heat of the hearth. A shed, meanwhile, is made of planks, has a microwave inside it and is in fucking Cheam. That's the key difference here, between a log cabin and a shed. Cheam. Cheam is the fucking difference.

As the fun series "London Rental Opportunity of the Week" wears ever on and chips away ever more at the remaining dregs of my soul, we must always consider the context of the opportunity: how absurd it is compared to the rest of the city, the country, the market as a snapshot today. I have to report that £650 for a shed in Cheam is fucking batty whatever way you look at it. Cheam is a tiny dead village on the very, very outskirts of London – half an hour from Victoria Station, the nearest available outpost of civilisation. It is not central London, and it is not even good.

I don't care how much you want to be alone: £650 for a shed in Cheam with no toilet in it isn't going to help you find euphoria. If you have to pay £650 to live in London – which I think most people do, by now; some are maybe faltering a hundred quid or so below that waterline, but most are there or thereabouts – then just get a room in a house-share that isn't in Cheam, where you don't have to tiptoe outside and then in again to do pisses. I don't often dish out straight advice – because who am I, really? I am just a boy, standing in front of the world, asking if it knows the difference between George Shelley and George Saunders – but I am breaking form to tell you this: do not rent this shed. Do not rent this shed out, in Cheam.

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(h/t @AlfieWaldron)

@joelgolby

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