Apathy Jack writes:

After five years, I’m moving out of my flat. Been trying to come up with a “finally it’s over” post for a while, but the fact that one would take effort has effectively stopped any eulogising in it’s tracks. However, my friend Raj has written something on his webjournal which I think I’ll let do most of my talking:

Jack had his farewell party for moving out of the famous Flat Of Death (as it is situated above, what used to be, a funeral home). I was also treated to finally being inside the infamous student hovel which I'd heard so much about for almost my entire adult life. The stories, I'm glad to say, are quite true. The maze-like corridors, the de-militarized art deco, the fact that Jack's bedroom was - in fact - the bathroom with his bed hoisted unto a loft directly above the door, the rats that had evolved to using popsicle sticks as tools, the rooftop patio (or perhaps patio that is, in fact, a rooftop?) and more. The place looked like a film set from the movie "SE7EN" and it was beautiful. In fact they could easily rent the place out AS a film set and the art director wouldn't have to change a thing. What a magnificent squalor, I'll carry its memory with me forever.

I’ll add one more thing, just so you know from Whence I Have Come...

Next door to my flat, for as many years as anyone cares to remember, was a liquor store called Henty’s. The proximity of this bottle barn meant that the alcoholic wastrels living here were never more than a thirty second dash away from a drunken stupor. Over the years, it even provided a few of the flatmates with employment. (And what employment: Have you ever seen the smile on the face of a university student who has just got a job in an off-license? It’s like Christmas only really wrong.)

So anyway, another common feature of this pace is that, at least since the eighties (after Push Push were evicted) the vast majority of people here have been students. Over the last year or two this has changed, as the (surprisingly stable of late) roster of flatmates have been getting jobs. Come the end of the academic year last year, one of the students moved out, and the other handed in her thesis, officially becoming A Grown Up.

For the first time in over fifteen years there were no students living in this flat.

Henty’s went out of business less than a fortnight later.

There are no coincidences, every story is true, and the pressure change of living in a real house may give me the bends and kill me.