If you have not read the last update, I suggest you do so now. If you are too lazy to read it, or perhaps if you did read it but have forgotten everything, or maybe if you are just the kind of pedant who reads everything, regardless of whether or not they know it (I know I am), then here is a synopsis. If you have read it, can remember, or just plain don’t care, then by all means skip ahead.

Previously on Columnist

I’m doing a longer degree course than my current housemates and therefore need to find somewhere to live next year. A couple of weeks ago I went and visited one likely looking house. This was hard because they seemed to have a system whereby they left their phone off the hook to let callers know they were in. It turned out that this wasn’t the case, but it certainly gave that impression.

The Following Takes Place Between 20th March And 31st March

Over the weekend, I arranged to see some more houses, having been informed I couldn’t get the room in the house I had already seen. Apparently they found someone better than me. That’s fine. I don’t need them anyway. Unfortunately the second house I saw seemed to be rather busy, so in the end both visits were arranged for the Monday. The first house was near where I used to live anyway, and so I got there with no major problems, except that the people at Streetmap.co.uk lied to me and the road didn’t actually connect to the one I was walking down looking for it. Fortunately, Taylor’s Third Law Of Leeds — which states that any journey, no matter the distance, will take precisely half an hour (unless Bodington Hall is involved, in which case all bets are off*) — prevailed and I arrived there about on time. I had a perfunctory tour of the house, and hung around for about half an hour chatting to the current housemates, at first about the house and other relevant matters, but the conversation was quickly derailed and we ended up discussing what a complete waste of time high school music lessons had been. Personally I think that told me a lot more about what living there would be like than I could have learned asking about rent.

The visit to the other house was recheduled to the Tuesday, which was convenient. What was not convenient was that the second house is in Headingley. Now, anyone who knows me will tell you with very little prompting that my sense of direction is not great, but there is something about Headingley that causes it to freeze up and erase all its data. I had got myself a map online, but I haven’t got a printer, so I simply memorised the route as best I could and set off. Unfortunately, I am not great at judging distances, and got a little impatient waiting for a particular road to present itself. Instead, I went up a different road with a similar name which went in about the right direction.

I arrived at a large, modern looking complex that resembled a hall of residence with woefully inadequate parking facilities and very possibly was. I tried my best to ignore this and carried on past it. I then arrived at a grand looking old mansion and began to question my own sanity. This does not happen in real life. In real life, grand-looking old mansions are situated near rivers in the country where they should be, not in run-down student areas of major cities. This happens in poorly thought-out RPGs, where certain locations are required but explanations of why they are arranged in this way are not.

I went past the mansion as well, all the time looking out for nasty dogs, which would have been a problem because I had left my meat and my yellow petal in my other coat, continued past the high fenced gardens in which people were burning things, jumped over the makeshift wooden barricade that had been erected at the bottom of the road by parties and for reasons unknown, and ran like hell. This was not so much out of fear but beacuse it was becoming increasingly apparent that I was late. Taylor’s Third Law Of Leeds was holding, of course, but I had set off ten minutes later than I had planned to. This of course, combined with the fact that I opened this paragraph with a seventy-three word sentence, meant I was rather out of breath when I reached the house. But that bridge did not need to be crossed yet, because I was still hopelessly lost. I was hoping that I would see a street sign I recognised as soon as I hopped over the roadblock, but I didn’t. I emerged into a street that looked like the set of a post-apocalyptic drama series — that is, nobody around except for one rather shifty looking dog, everything smashed in including the pavement, and an amount of paper lying around that is almost inexplicable considering no generally accepted account of the apocalypse prophecies reams of A4 will blow to Earth and snuff out mankind, but is very easily explicable considering that this is not a post-apocalyptic drama series but is in fact a run-down part of Leeds. This street led me into a road which, while mercifully pre-apocalypitc (it did contain a smashed TV set or two, but it also contained two unconcerned looking women which always ruins that post-armageddon feel), was not, apparently, deemed important enough to be named. I picked a direction and walked.

By what I can only assume is the most superlative good fortune — I certainly can’t hope to ever take credit for it — the next street I came to was one I ken was on my way. From there I found the house with relative ease, though I suppose ‘relative difficulty’ would be asking a lot of Fate. I was given the standard tour, and a much needed glass of water, and we chatted for a while. Then I set off home. This journey was surprisingly easy; I was never once accosted by Sirens or Old Men Of The Sea, and Homer entirely failed to write an epic about it, although I did take what I presume to be a rather circuitous route and in doing so passed every building I have ever visited in Leeds, with the obvious exception of Bodington Hall, since it is in the middle of nowhere. One day, mankind will have built on the whole of the Earth’s surface, including the sea and Wales, and Bodington Hall will still be an hour away from everywhere.

On the Thursday I phoned the first house to let them know I was interested and they said they’d let me know after Monday.Today is Wednesday and nothing’s happened. Oh, well, such is life.

*Bodington Hall is miles away from every single place in the known universe. One day, mankind will have built on every single square metre of land on the Earth, and it will still take two hours to get anywhere from Bodington Hall.