Original post by Jez RRI'm in the Village. What's it like? Well it's fine.
The room is like a small sort of motel room in Scandinavia - functional, compact, newish furnishings. It's about 5m long, 2m at its widest, and about a metre from the bed to the desk, which is long and has shelving overhead. There is a small plastic cupboard which is the bathroom - it's like the bathroom on a North Sea ferry. That gets cleaned once a week, but the room you have to clean yourself (or not - nobody's going to chase you up about it).Big window which opens fully, or from the top. Pretty warm in here - don't ever need the radiator on. One big cupboard and more storage space under the bed. Small plastic chair. Thick green curtain.
There's no shop here, but it's a 10 minute walk up Earlham Road to the Tesco Express, and there's a bigger Co-op just behind that. There is a laundrette here though. 6 washers, 4 driers. £2 a wash, 50p for 12 minutes drying.
8 flats in each half of the block, 3 floors to each block. Communal kitchen, which is fine - 2 small fridges and one bigger freezer. 4 hobs, grill, microwave which doubles as a conventional oven. Small cupboards for food storage. Shelves for pans.
It's a normal block of flats really. My block's pretty quiet (fortunately), but downstairs they often sit round in the kitchen of an evening, or head out in a group to the LCR or Mercy. We are a real mix of people: our ages are 40, 37, 36, 28, 20, 20, 19 and 18 respectively. 4 guys, 4 girls. 5 UK, 3 international. We get up at all hours, go to uni (10 minute walk down Chancellor Drive) come back throughout the day, meet in the kitchen. Sometimes we cook for each other - there's usually people in the kitchen from 7pm onwards. Sometimes we'll go up to the Asda in someone's car for a big shop. We often borrow things off each other - milk etc, and there's no hassle about it if you replace it. Last year they had a food thief which created a bad vibe, but this year it's all good. It's a really nice little community, actually.