Young Vulgarian

Young Vulgarian

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Young Vulgarian
Young Vulgarian
The Squatting Chronicles (pt. 1)

The Squatting Chronicles (pt. 1)

Behold! I have had a thought.

Marie Le Conte
Feb 07, 2025
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Young Vulgarian
Young Vulgarian
The Squatting Chronicles (pt. 1)
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Hi!

Hello! I am writing this to you from the past, as by the time you read this I will be in Morocco, working on various projects and staying in a flat with what I suspect will be a dodgy internet connection. That's why I wrote this week and next week's newsletters in advance.

I also decided to try something a bit different - instead of a regular column, I've written about an odd and intense period of my life, which I thought people may find entertaining. You can probably guess what it involved, from the title above. This is part one and next week will be part two, and then we'll return to normal.

I'm also putting it behind the paywall because I'm a coward, so if you want to read about my scandalous past: you know what to do.

Bye!

A column (well, sort of)

It all began when I got scabies. It was 2011 and an increasing number of my friends had been living in squats, and I could certainly see the appeal of not paying rent, but I'd been having a good enough time in my flatshare. I didn't really want to let it go.

One day, though, my housemates and I woke up itching and, long story short, we eventually realised that a friend we'd hosted for a few nights had somehow given us all scabies. His brother was in quite a famous band, and he'd just come back from touring with him, and heaven knew what he'd done on the road, and who he'd done it with.

When you get scabies, you have to apply a cream on every inch of your body then stand there, fully naked, waiting for it to dry off. You then have to do it again. It's lightly comical, but mostly undignified. That summer, I decided to give squatting a go. It couldn't possibly be worse than living in a flat where the shower electrocuted you every other day, and the washing machine wouldn't stop flooding.

In any case, I just didn't have enough money to live on, given how quickly rents were rising. Some acquaintances had a spare bedroom in a pub in Elephant & Castle, and I moved in with them in the summer of 2011. It was an old fashioned pub, with a proper bar and some thick couches downstairs, and a handful of bedrooms upstairs.

There were perforated metal sheets over the windows on both floors, but you weirdly got used to those. What was more annoying was the lack of cooking facilities. You could either heat something up in the microwave, eat raw ingredients, or rely on the sushi we'd skip from the bins of Wasabi.

We ate a lot of sushi during those weeks. It's funny to think about it now. We'd take turns going skipping and some of the most reliable places were the Wasabi on Oxford Street and the Hummingbird Bakery down the road in Soho, as they put their bins out at similar times, and all items were individually wrapped. You've not truly lived until you've heard a room full of squatters loudly groan at the thought of having salmon nigiri and cake for dinner again.

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