I'll start by carrying on from my last entry.
I have more to write about too. The next week gets worse...
I got driven back to Uni on Sunday by Gary. My Mum came too. Me and Gary carried my stuff back to my room from the car.
As I opened the door to the house, the first thing that I noticed was an awful stench. It smelt like someone hadn't bothered to empty the rubbish in the bin. That kind of raw, disgusting smell. As I went up the stairs to the second floor, there was water flowing out of the shower room and as I went up to the third floor to my room, it only got worse. As I opened the door to my room, the smell was absolutely disgusting. It was truly awful. I didn't have a clue what the fuck I had just walked into but my god, it stunk.
And then I realised what had caused such a smell.
Three weeks prior, I had reported a leaking ceiling in the shower room on the second floor. That was on a Monday. No one came all week to look at it and on that Friday, I went home for two weeks. I realised that in the time I'd been at home, no one had even bothered to come and fix the problem. They'd just left it, even though I'd reported it.
Me and Gary put all of the stuff in my room and both of us commented on the awful smell. It was at that point that I decided to go to the porter's lodge and tell them while I had the means to get to the Uni in the car.
Of course, all porters are are security guards. They're not in any position to actually help me. Plus, since it was a Sunday, there was no one else around to complain to. Regardless, me and Gary complained to them about what the hell had happened in my room. They offered me a key to room one, which is on the bottom floor and I accepted it, since no one was in there. They said they couldn't do anymore until tomorrow.
Gary drove me back to my room and he and my Mum drove back home. As I went back into the house, I saw someone completely new exiting room 1.
"Hi", I said to them, "I'm Neil" and shook their hand.
"Hello", they replied, in a foreign accent.
"When did you move in?", I asked.
"Err...can you repeat?"
"When did you move in?"
"Today"
"Oh right. What are you studying?"
"I...my English not very good"
"What are you studying?", I said, slower.
"Geography?"
"Oh ok"
And then he got nervous and just said "Bye" and went back in his room.
So, the key that I had been given from the porters was now no good because there was someone in there.
I reluctantly went back up to my room, walking through the water that had covered the whole of the hall on the second floor. You just wouldn't believe the smell unless you were there, but believe me, it was enough to make you feel sick. Ill. And it was making me ill.
I sat down on my chair and thought for a moment. "I can survive this for the night can't I?", I asked myself, "I'll just open the window and it'll be fine".
I then realised that not did my room smell so very very bad, but half of the floor was covered in water. I hadn't noticed this at first, but there was a very clear and defining dark patch that was intersecting with a lighter patch. I bent down and touched the dark patch. Wet. Soaking wet. This is where the smell was coming from. Soggy, old carpet. I also noticed that my printer had been on the floor for the past two weeks and was in all of this water so I immediately moved them and the bottom of it was dropping wet. I prayed it still worked. This was just appalling.
My Mum offered to pay for a B&B for me for the night but I declined, saying it was a waste of money to do that. Instead, Gary called the porter's lodge and then called me, saying that they'd be coming to me with a key for an empty room in next door for the night instead and sure enough, 15 minutes later, they came and let me into a room next door, similar to mine. However, by this point, I was absolutely pissed off and fed up with Bridge Street accommodation and I wanted out of there altogether. I didn't want to stay there at all that night. Instead, I decided to take up the offer of the B&B that my Mum had offered. I just needed to get out of there.
I packed up some essentials and walked to find a B&B at 6pm. This is not what you expect to have to come back to after two weeks being at home. Before I left, I took some photos of all of my room and all of the water damage on the second floor to show whoever I needed to complain to.
The B&B room cost �40 and though it was nothing special, I was so very glad to be in it instead of my room. At least here I had a comfy bed and hey, even a portable TV. More than can be said about my accommodation.
By 7pm, I was already in bed, watching TV and feeling incredibly tired. By 7:30pm, I decided to just go to sleep and I slept all night until 7am the next morning.
With my room, I also got breakfast so that was good. I love a full English breakfast and that's what I got, after which I headed to University to sort everything out.
My first stop was the Estates office and I was ready to act seriously pissed off and, to quote from a film, "Mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore". I spoke to a woman, instead of Steven, the guy I normally speak to so I did feel a bit bad about being pissed off at her, but I didn't care at the time. She came over to me with a smile.
"You see this?", I said to her, holding my camera's LCD up to her to show her the photos I'd taken, "This is water damage from a problem you failed to fix three weeks ago. And now, my room stinks. It's appalling."
Of course the smile went from her face at that point and she looked a bit worried. She then went to talk to someone about the problem and came back ten minutes later.
"Ok", she said, "I've just sent an email to my supervisor and they'll pass it on to accommodation so if you go there now and tell them what's happened, they'll help you and all I can say is I'm sorry."
"Ok"
So, my next trip was to the accommodation office to speak to Mark Shone, senior administrator of accommodation. I did my little act of "You see this?" again and I must have been doing it good because he too got this really worried/scared look on his face. But I really was pissed off with all of the fucking problems that I've put up with while living here AND paying for the priveledge.
"So you'll need to move as soon as possible then", he said, looking at his computer.
"Yes"
"Do you want to stay at Bridge Street or move?"
"Move. Definitely."
"I've only got one room available right now and that's in Powys Court"
"Where's that?"
He told me where it was, but I didn't really care.
"Yeah, I'll take it."
"Ok, if you go over to the porters and they'll give you a key for it and they'll help you move your stuff in later. I'll come with you actually."
So, he and I walked to the porters lodge again and on the way, I told him how pissed off I was and how it's completely unacceptable for this to have happened and that it's not the first time problems have gone unfixed. I also told him that I had to stay in a B&B the night before.
"If you write all of this up in a letter for me, I'll pass it on to the right people. If you include your receipt for the B&B and maybe we can give you that back."
We/Mark spoke to a porter about them helping me move stuff and sorted it out for later.
"All I can do is apologise", Mark said as he headed back to his office. I then walked to Powys Court, which was on the way back into town. After having a hard time finding it, when I tried the key in the door, it wouldn't work. I tried and tried, but nothing. I couldn't even get into my new house. Frustrated, I called Mark and told him the problem and he told me to go to the cleaning office and get a different one. I also told him that I'd get my Mum to help me move instead of the porters. I also called my Mum to let her know that I was gonna need Gary to come and help me move everything because the porters had told me they weren't allowed to move anything valuable. Which sucks. However, Gary was off doing business for the day, which meant that he couldn't come and help me.
Before I headed back to Uni, I needed to walk back to the hotel and get a new reciept, as I hadn't thought to keep my original one. I also needed to first go back to my flooded room and start packing, but I'd left all of the bags at home. This meant I then had to go into town and buy some instead. However, instead of buying two small ones, I decided to buy one very large suitcase-like thing. It's about a metre long and half a metre wide. I was panicing at this point because I still had to attend a lesson at 1pm and time was creeping up on me. It was 11:30am by this point.
I got back to my room and packed as quickly as I could, sweating out of both panic and heat. I opened the window to cool down a little and to also make the stench seem a little more bearable but it didn't really help.
After packing, I collapsed on my bed for a moment, just wanting to stay there, but knowing I couldn't. I carried most of my stuff down to the kitchen in preparation for later on and by this time, the sweat was just pouring off me and like I say, I still had Uni to go to. Not the most attractive of things, looking like you've just run a marathon.
A quick change of t-shirt and then I had to go to Uni for three hours. All I could think about was moving.
Once my lesson was over, I headed to the cleaning department to get the new key and then headed to my new place again. This time the key worked, but with a lot of jiggling it about in the lock.
I went up to my new room and found it was bigger than my old one by a fair bit, but the first thing that I noticed was the floor. It was like someone had rubbed the carpet in mud and then put it back in the room. Seriously. The whole thing had mud and dirt all over it. It was disgusting. I'm not asking for the Hilton hotel here, but come on, A clean carpet is not much to ask for.
After sitting down on the bed for a moment, I pondered as best I could the advantages of moving and the disadvantages of staying where I was. There wasn't much wrong with this new place at all. I mean since September, I've wanted to move and now had the oppurtunity to do so. "It'll be good", I told myself, "People my age, my cultures".
After leaving my room, I heard some music coming from the next room to me so I decided to take the plunge and knock and introduce myself. He was a bit taken back as he of course was now looking at a stranger in his house.
"Hi, I'm Neil, I'll be moving in later"
"Hey I'm (Can't remember his name)"
I explained to him why I was moving in and whatever. It was only a short conversation and then I carried on downstairs and introduced myself to someone else who also was freaked out when they opened the door to me.
By now I was totally drained of energy from all of the walking around I had been doing and carrying all of my stuff down to the kitchen. I was out of it. I just didn't have the energy to move everything to my new room that night and I decided that I just needed someone to sleep instead. So, I packed up a few things and decided that I'd go home for the night. Back to Liverpool and then in the morning, I'd go back to Chester.
I was happy to be home. Again.
The next morning, I headed back to Chester and to my second class of the week. I also called the porters to let them know that I'd need their help moving my stuff. When I got back to Bridge Street, I was lucky enough to be there when two handmen came to look at the problem I had reported. They told me they'd already been out a few weeks ago to look at the report of a leaking ceiling, but that they hadn't found any leak. They said that they'd seen the shower curtain was out of the shower and they thought it was that. What the hell? I report a leaking ceiling and they push a shower curtain back in?
I also showed them the damage to my room and they pulled the carpet up to see where it was coming from. They then looked in the bathroom and found the problem. The U-bend on the sink had come away from the sink itself so whenever the tap was turned on, the water was just falling onto the floor and since my room is right next to the bathroom, that's where the water went. They fixed the problem, but of course the smell was still there in my room, although surprisingly not as bad as it had been.
When they had left, Ahmit made himself known and I asked him why the hell hadn't he reported the problem of all of the water. He said he had, but I don't believe him.
And just to top things off, I realised I had forgotten to close my window the night before and in the night/morning, pigeons had flown in and shit on my bed and my chair. Fitting, for such a shit week.
All of my stuff was still in the kitchen when I returned from my class that day and so were two new housemates. I introduced myself to them, one of which was the guy who I had already introduced myself to the day before.
They introduced themselves as Hilario and Sergio from Valencia, Spain.
They had really bad English skills and having a conversation with them was really hard. I was as patient with them as I could be though and found it enjoyable to listen to them speaking another language and then trying to translate it into English.
I explained to them that I'd be moving out shortly and that's why all of my stuff was in the kitchen.
An hour later, the porters arrived and with their help and Hilario's and Sergio's help, I carried everything to the porter's car, who then drove me to my new accommodation. They helped me get it all out of the car and into the kitchen, but that's it. They didn't help me get it up the stairs and fucking hell, I had a hard time doing so.
One heavy suitcase 25kg, one seriously heavy metre-long bag with plates, glasses, a printer, and tons of other stuff in it weighing at least 40-50kg, one large box, a monitor, a harddrive. Everything. Everything, I had to then carry back up three flights of stairs. Again, it was like there was a faucet on my forehead. The sweat was unbearable.
After hooking my PC up, my net connection was instant because I was now on the University's main network. However, this also meant my net access would be extremely censored as I quickly found out. Any page with mentions of things like "sex", or "fuck" or general things like that were inaccessible. And I don't just mean porn either! Just any page with those terms.
I was happy enough just to talk on MSN for a bit though but by about 7pm, I was so very very tired and what made things worse is that the guy next to me then revealed he knew how to play guitar by highering up the volume on his speakers and proceeding to blast away.
And then I realised that this would probably be a daily occurance. And then I realised I wouldn't be able to handle it if it were.
Regardless though, at around 8pm or so, I decided to go to bed.
I was awoken at 7am the next day by someone playing music. I don't know where it was coming from, but it was a thudding sound of a heavy beat.
"I can't do this", I said to myself. It was Wednesday at this point and I told myself I'd give it a few days before making up my mind about where I wanted to live but at about 9am, my Mum text me and told me she and Gary were coming to Chester to have a meal with me. An exit strategy had just fell into my lap. I told her I couldn't stay in my new place and that as much as I hated it, I wanted to move back into Bridge Street. She grumbled a little but said she'd see me later.
So, even though I'd only just moved in, I then had to pack everything back up and carry it back down the stairs. I had not actually unpacked everything though as a precaution for this.
Around 4pm the next day, they picked me up and we first went to have something to eat before me and Gary carried everything back to my room at Bridge Street which now hardly had any smell to it. It was still there, but it was bearable and since it was dying each day, I was sure it would be gone soon.
Again, that night, I went to bed very early, absolutely wasted of energy. Back and forth, back and forth.
So, as you can see, my first three days of University after I got back were some of the worst days of University ever. Awful.
In the following days, I wrote a letter to Mark and complained as he had asked and I enclosed both my reciept for the B&B and lots of photos of both my room, damage in the hall and also any other problems wrong with this shithole. By the time I had finished writing it, it was two pages long. I recieved a reply to the letter about two weeks later, acknowledging the letter and that I'd be sent a full reply soon. I'm still waiting for that reply.
And that is how my worst week went.
