This place is OUTTA CONTROL!

I have uttered that phrase many times in many locations.    The NYU Financial Aid Office.  The NYU Bursar’s Office.  Cheapskates’ coat check line.  Starbucks at 9 am.  My house on the 4th of July.

Never in all my years, however, have I found a place more fitting of the tagline than dear old Willow House.  The goings-on in this building entice the mantra from my powerful lungs at least three times a week. 

There is the weekly Tuesday morning fire alarm, which never ceases to annoy the hell out of me as I try to sleep in before my 4 pm class.  My flatmates are routinely subjected to my round of improvised expletives as I attempt to reclaim my previous comatose state. 

Last semester, the alarm rang every Tuesday at 9:30 am like clockwork, just around the time I needed to wake up anyway.  But, in keeping with the theme of this term, it has become more objectionable than I remember.  They’ve been setting it earlier and earlier each week, and testing it five or six times in a row so that my ear drums are assaulted not for 30 seconds, but for a full five minutes. 

I would categorize this little arrangement as a recognized method of torture in most countries.

This week, with my friend Abe in town, the alarm went off at 7:15 am.  It was his 21st birthday, and all he wanted was to sleep in.  Trust the Willow House maintenance team to kill even the simplest of wishes.  After three days of running around Paris, Abe arrived at Roehampton Monday night exhausted.  Little more than 12 hours later, he looked at me with bleary eyes and wimpered, “Is this every morning?”

“No,” I replied.  “Just on Tuesdays.  My deepest apologies that I didn’t warn you about this.”

Sleep then hit us both over the head again, and we’d forgotten about it by the time we went to Mascalzone in Putney to celebrate this monumental birthday.  Little did Abe know- he wasn’t done feeling the wrath of Willow’s inexplicable interruptions.

After dinner, I sipped some tea in the common room as he caught up on some TV finales on my computer.  As I was taking my last gulp around 11:30 pm, that dreaded, saturating, vomit-enducing buzz filled the room.  AGAIN.  “WHYYY??!!” I shouted in fury.  To Abe, the sound signified nothing.  As I raced in my room to find shoes, my passport, phone, ipod, camera, and bag, he looked at me and asked “Can I finish the last five minutes of this episode?”

Now, we’ve previously endured a similar incident when the fire alarm sounded at 3 am.  We all evacuated in a sinuous motion down the winding steps, only to find out someone pulled it and, of course, nothing was on fire.  I could have let him sit there, but I felt a responsibility to make sure he made it out of London alive.

“I’d rather you not burn,” I implored.  “Follow me.”

As we congregated in the courtyard, it spread quickly through the grapevine that someone left a sweater on the radiator in flat 1.  Oh joy.  And then the firetrucks pulled up!  Kat and I craned our necks to see if any of the brave men in uniform were hot.  They rushed right past us without even looking.

artsy, blurry shot of the approaching fire truck

And it’s never officially a pointless fire drill until Mark shows up in his distinctive slippers.  He’s a cigar and glass of cognac away from becoming Mr. Boddy from Clue.

Mark's awesome slippers

The ridiculousness continued, of course.  Every morning, our sweet, well-meaning cleaning woman arrives around 9 am and hoovers whether we like it or not.  Don’t get me wrong, we appreciate her, but on days when I really need to sleep until about noon I HATE that vacuum.  Since the walls are made of plastic, I can hear her when she’s in the kitchen at the other end of the hall, even if I put the “skip me” on my door.

Then there are the random men that frequently pop into our flat as though they live here and have the perfect right to barge right into our kitchen unannounced and start fiddling with a particular appliance.

They are usually here to perform mundane chores like testing the water, replacing lightbulbs, installing a new stove, or reattaching the lever to our window.  The real issue is that six women live here, and none of us is very comfortable when some dude walks into the kitchen and we’re sitting in our pj’s.  Usually, we just awkardly exit the common room and ignore them in the most polite way.

One morning around 10 am I was writing articles for my internship, a time-consuming process.  So as I sat in my black pajamas (very decent and sleek) and researched current affairs with my morning coffee at my side, an older gentleman walked in and snidely remarked “Hope you’re enjoying your lie-in” as he made his way to the sink.

Now, I’d woken up early to start this work, and I’d never seen this person before in my life.  Don’t ignite Italian fire that early.  “Excuse me,” I forcefully interjected.  “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

He seemed affronted and didn’t feel the need to answer immediately.  “I pay to live here and I don’t enjoy when strangers randomly walk in my kitchen,” I explained.  Then he showed me his credentials and checked the fridge.

All these minor annoyances add up to form an intense dislike for my living conditions.  Finally, we come to my favourite new obstacle in enjoying basic human rights: the shower situation.  Last term, my scalp was scorched more often than not. 

This term, the water’s constantly freezing. Whether you wake up at 7 am and need to hop in for work or come back from a gym visit at 9:30 at night, the water has about at 50/50 shot of being ice freaking cold.  We all SO enjoy this.  One week I had three cold showers.  Penny walked into the common room complaining of one as this post was being written. 

Call me high maintenance, but I believe it is a basic need to have a hot shower every day.  The one day I couldn’t get one before work I was miserable.  It’s not sanitary, and with the amount of money we pay to live here, we shouldn’t have to keep complaining. Someone should JUST FIX IT.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to summer.

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