Preparedness for when

thriftwizard

10 miles away is a city with two universities - student goods get abandoned in the back lanes about now (then in another three weeks, the landlords turf all the furnishings and refit with new). Friends living in the area tend to keep an eye on things and I've had several phone calls over the years to go and assist moving something.
The highlights of such reckless abandonment, several iMac computers (one being about 5 months old) a box containing 6 gold pens (in a box of hippy style dresses) a set of copper pans, two kitchen aid stand mixers (one still boxed and unused).

Well, the one glimmer of light in the whole "university landlord" racket (for racket is indubitably what it is) is that down here, they certainly aren't going to spend good money on new stuff for the incoming students! DS3 spent year 2 sleeping on a bed that looked halfway decent but was actually fairly majorly broken. We were advised not to replace it, as we'd then have to leave the new bed in place of the old one; there certainly wasn't room to store the old one anywhere, as there were 8 students sharing an originally 3-bed house, with the rooms (including the original living room) subdivided by rickety partitions. We wouldn't have wanted it back anyway, as the walls were running with damp, complete with circular patches of weird-coloured fungus. So he had a good mattress topper, which at least could (and did) come home with him, and he dismantled the actual bed & slept on the mattress & topper on the floor, with slats of wood stuffed behind the equally-rickety wardrobe. £2,400 a month, that landlord was getting from them... He spent most of that year coughing.

In a way, I'm not surprised if students who have been living in these truly grim conditions don't want to keep anything from those days. But I don't know whether it's like that in other parts of the country; where he was studying (a Russell group uni only 30 miles from us) most of the landlords live abroad & don't even speak English. The houses & their temporary inhabitants are just like Monopoly pieces to them, just a way of investing any surplus money, & a question asked through the letting agents can take months to be answered by the time it's travelled up to the Himalayan foothills & back. I am not joking when I tell you that we were told by the letting agents that the landlord's village doesn't have a phone line or electricity; messages are apparently relayed on foot by a cousin in the valley below, when he has the time & inclination to wander up there... I'd have thought they were pulling the wool over our eyes but other parents were told the same, independently. My niece lives in the same city & verifies the tale for non-student accommodation too.

My heart sank when I saw that house for the first time. But he'd already signed for it... and several letting agents told me that actually, it's all much of a muchness at the "affordable" end of the market. Thankfully he had his year in digs in Santiago de Chile, then for the last year they were in a clean, bright, dry modern house which didn't cost any more, but they'd had to sign for it (and stump up a massive deposit) in about January of the preceding year!

A quiet day today, during which I shall go through the contents of the darker reaches of the garage & no doubt discover I already have all sorts of preptastic things I've been thinking I should invest in...

[Deleted User]

Does my memory deceive me, or is there another member, who frequents this thread, who lives in or near Ramsbottom?

If there is, and you are reading this, do you know anything about a large fire, early this morning?

About 3 am, I awoke to what I thought was a downpour of rain, but when I looked out of my bedroom window, toward the Pennines, I could see a huge cloud of black smoke.

GreyQueen

So Ramsbottom isn't in Kent?! I really need to brush up on my geography. I take it there's nothing on the web, yet?

charlies-aunt

DD2 has just returned from three years at uni and confirms that there were a high percentage of well heeled students on her course and they continually patronised the other students as if they had got to uni by clawing their way out of the ghetto! It was the same students who with an inane sense of entitlement and superiority regularly enraged their landlords, uni admin staff, taxi drivers, their neighbours with their antics.
Maybe a lifetime of being petted, picked up after and fussed over by Mummy & Nanny is to blame?

Frugalsod

I think that this will appeal to everyone here on this thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYyugz5wcrI

GreyQueen

charlies-aunt wrote: »

DD2 has just returned from three years at uni and confirms that there were a high percentage of well heeled students on her course and they continually patronised the other students as if they had got to uni by clawing their way out of the ghetto! It was the same students who with an inane sense of entitlement and superiority regularly enraged their landlords, uni admin staff, taxi drivers, their neighbours with their antics.
Maybe a lifetime of being petted, picked up after and fussed over by Mummy & Nanny is to blame?

There are some treasures out there. And Provincial City Uni isn't one of the major unis, although it is well-reputed for what it teaches.

Thirty years ago, I was a uni student in Scotland, although a good proportion of the students (about 50%) were English. To understand this, you need to know that I'm thoroughly working class but sound quite posh; I have a non-regional BBC type accent and am usually taken for middle-class. But I was extremely unamused when some Hooray Henry type from Epsom in a bliddy cravat on my course started going on about working-class this and working class that, in a derogatory manner. As if he'd ever met working class people, beyond mummy's cleaning lady.

I just turned around and said I'm working class. He back-pedalled fast, saying I don't mean people like YOU. What do you mean, I retorted. You don't know any of us and you're ill-mannered and pig-ignorant.

I could have said plenty more to cravat man, but my mother raised me better than that. !!!!!!.

[Deleted User]

DD2 was at a Russell Group University and was in self catering halls for the first year in a flat of 12 separate rooms with shared kitchen and bathroom facilities. We're just ordinary and thank heavens she had one girl from a background financially not unlike ours, i.e managing but without much slack, particularly after paying uni fees. The other 10 ostracised them both as the wouldn't join the 'WINE CLUB' and pay £40 a month into a kitty to buy in 'Nice' wines from the merchant that Mummy and Daddy use!!!!! The ostentation that was going around was unbelieveable, they all had little sports cars that mummy and daddy had given them for thier 18th DD had a battered old Fiat Panda of ancient numberplateage and took great pride in parking it next to the little sportie numbers. One of her friends (and I do mean friends as they are still very close now all these years later) came from a very privileged background indeed and mummy and daddy even stabled the horse at livery down there for her in case she wanted the odd hack out dahling!!! It really is the other half isn't it??? How on earth are these youngsters ever going to touch base with the real realities of life in 2014 and beyond when that is how they're encouraged to live, it's all fairy dust and mirrors but how do you get them to see beyond that???

GreyQueen

One shared flat I lived in at uni (we flat-sharers were put together by the uni admin) was an education in itself.

The other girls were the pony-club-and-ball-gown county set and quickly decided me and X weren't their sort and ostracised us. X was actually a stock-broker's daughter from an affluent home with a horse and all that jazz, but she kept quiet about her background, and made her own way through uni, as poor as a church mouse.

I'm the offspring of factory workers and had bootstrapped my way up to uni via a grammar school, and thus infra dig. Being treated like a second-class citizen in your own home is vile. I expect most of the 'gels' went back to the shires to breed more of the same type.

The acquaintance with the student houses is a retired uni lecturer, and gets very angry about how some of her tenants reckon coming from a monied background entitles them to treat other people.

When these young people segue into the privileged employments of their class, they will only harden in their views. We really are ossifying as a society into the U and non-U again.

I guess I better get over myself and start practising fore-lock tugging.

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

So Ramsbottom isn't in Kent?!

No, it's in Lancashire.

I take it there's nothing on the web, yet?

I can't find anything.

gerturdeanna

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

Does my memory deceive me, or is there another member, who frequents this thread, who lives in or near Ramsbottom?

If there is, and you are reading this, do you know anything about a large fire, early this morning?

About 3 am, I awoke to what I thought was a downpour of rain, but when I looked out of my bedroom window, toward the Pennines, I could see a huge cloud of black smoke.

My local council has this news update:
Residents in Ramsbottom are being advised to keep their windows closed due to smoke caused by a fire in Kenyon Street,

GM Fire and Rescue Service have been dealing with the incident - no one has been hurt or evacuated.
Bridge Street, which has been closed, is due to re-open shortly.