made friends with a fellow tenant, Neil Ryland, while playing a computer game in the shared living room. However, the attitude of the inexperienced landlady caused most of the young single lads to move away. They were replaced with immigrant couples and this change in the population of the house also changed its social atmosphere. The couples tended to keep themselves to themselves, cooking at different times, eating in their rooms, and socialising away from the house. The type of contract and the landlady’s behaviour encouraged a rapid turnover of tenants. This led to a certain social fatigue amongst Matt and Alison, longer-term residents, who describe feeling unwilling to make the effort to get to know new tenants who they knew would be moving out within a few months. Finally, Matt’s own temporary status affected the way he behaved in the house. He describes how he would have moved out of the house, to share a three bedroom house with Neil and his other friends, had he been living in London for a longer time.
Discussion As a way of making friends and getting to know people in a new city, the shared house appeared to work as Matthew envisaged. Within two months (probably less) of arriving in London, he had become good friends with one of his housemates Neil Ryland. Initially, the house acted as a single social group. The population of young, professional men were suddenly put together in an environment where they had a significant incentive to get to know each other: they were sharing a house. Matthew mentions that the shared, open-plan living, dining and kitchen area was a major part of this, bringing the housemates together at meal times and afterward to watch television and computer games. The social group was strengthened by common activities like going out to bars together in the evenings. However, Matthew describes the experience of living at no.110 as being a bit like living in a hotel for a year. Initially, as explained above, this does not appear to be the case; so what caused this reaction? It appears to result, both directly and indirectly, from the behaviour of the landlady. Her behaviour caused a rapid turnover of tenants, resulting in what could be termed social fatigue. There was no longer any incentive to socialise with people living in the house because they would be gone within a few months. Worse, the new tenants that arrived were not interested in socialising with other residents anyway: as couples, they
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