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A career change was going to mean two things: no longer secretly hoping to fall under a tube train so as to avoid having to go into the office of a morning, and taking a massive pay cut if I was to do something remotely of interest to me. My foray into finance, albeit via headhunting, had shown me that I need to fill my day with dealing with firms that at least feel remotely relevant to my life. Had I had the luxury of not owing my college a shedload of cash, I would have gone straight into poverty-wage media. Now those debts were paid off and my tail was firmly between my legs from trying to do something I didn’t like, there was nothing to stop me being one of those trendy young things who get to wear jeans to work.

To my surprise, my career search saw a lot more takers than my previous attempts immediately following my degree. Getting through stage after stage by filling out application forms with an ironic tone or being rude in interviews seemed to lead only to success. But with this process ongoing, my attentions turned to ways to accommodate my new trendy media wage: a pittance in comparison to the heady days of, er, headhunting but I was determined to bite the bullet and tighten the purse strings if it killed me.

Luckily, the flatmates were surprisingly amenable to my suggestion that we could all save some money by renting out our fifth, spare room. As in, a fifth room which happened to be spare. Not the fifth of our numerous spare rooms. And so began Flatmate-Search 2008.

I decided to take the lead, having the least to do in my current job and also perhaps the most exacting standards as to what sort of people I would subject to my charming personality on weekday mornings (don’t speak to me and I won’t be horrible to you).

Carefully worded ads were placed, a photoshoot of the tiny, tiny room undertaken, preceded by clearing all the junk away that had piled up in there. We disposed of the former occupants’ post, found a new home for the vacuum cleaner and threw the rest over the edge of the balcony to the baying crowds below. We decided to specify that we were after a girl in order to prevent the flat from becoming too much more of a dirty pigsty than it already was.

Before long, I was sorting through emails, discriminating on misused apostrophes, embarrassing email addresses and assumptions of success in the process. We had a surprisingly high level of interest from French, Spanish and Italian girls, but did have to disappoint those who really couldn’t spell any English without errors. In retrospect, this sounds like abhorrent snobbery. Of course, everyone was given a fair chance and we met a number of these European ladies. I have been the linguistically incompetent foreigner in climes abroad myself and know how difficult it is not to come across as a stuttering simpleton even in a short email. But there has to be a line somewhere.

Within a week, we were gathered excitedly in the sitting room for the first round of prospective visitors. One French girl told us about her current living arrangements where her flatmate-cum-landlord would wait for her outside the shower to catch a glimpse of her in her towel. Another Italian girl asked if she could smoke in the room.

“No,” I said.

“Can I smoke out the window?”

“No.”

“Can I smoke outside?”

“No,” I said for a final time before showing her out rather swiftly. Obviously smokers deserve the same treatment as normal people, but I’m not sure which part of “We’re looking for a non-smoker” she didn’t understand. Probably the whole thing. When I wasn’t busy being the smoking-police, I was fielding idiotic questions. All too often we heard the same stream of useless blabber: “The room’s a bit smaller than I thought.”

“It’s exactly the same size as the dimensions we specified in the ad.”

“It’s a bit more expensive than I thought.”

“The price is, funnily enough, the same as it was on the ad.”

And other outpourings of speaking before thinking too numerous to bother typing out here. The power relationship in these informal chats is also difficult to define. The prospective flatmate needs to find out if he or she can bear to live with people such as us, and I’m sure a lot of people couldn’t. But maybe they should keep some things to themselves, such as not telling us that they are having to move because they argue too much with their current flatmates about washing up or because their landlord is kicking them out.

Nevertheless, a ray of light was found and everyone was happy. That was, until it was time to get the letting agents involved. Through this experience, I have perfected the skill of finally getting hold of people who systematically ignore their voicemail. I now only need to improve my performance in weaselling out of them what possible reason they could have to ignore me so shamelessly. Perhaps, just as the poor European girls we rejected would like to know on what basis we did so...