Communal Living: Londoners in their thirties share their pain and sometimes joy, but mostly pain.

I never wanted to move to London.

The ex-hubby had to for work and I screamed desperately, ‘I’m not living in a flat!’ for about the first two months of the house hunting; we’d come from a beautiful detached house in the Lancashire countryside and never heard a peep from our neighbours. From my bedroom window, I watched horses and sheep roam and listened to cockerels, hens and birdsong.

The days of communal bins, were a distant (bad!) memory. I thought I’d left student living behind me. Had I worked this hard for this long to move backwards and do ‘London Living’?

NOT. A. CHANCE.

This northerner was not amused.

Thankfully, somehow, and perhaps through divine intervention, we managed to buy a beautiful end- terrace, 2-up, 2-down, Victorian dream in leafy North London.

PHEW!

As long as we remained a team, we would be OK. Back in the safety of our own little castle, albeit with neighbours on one side this time. But no flat for me- hurrah! (cue witch's cackle)

However. Life has this funny way of pulling the rug from under you when you least expect it.

Shit.

You’ve guessed it. The team split up. Game over.

Unable to afford the mortgage repayments myself, I moved out. Not him. Me. Into…well…a flat. A bloody ground floor, communal- binned flat. And for a mere £1,100 a month I have the pleasure of the neighbour-above’s fag ash piling up outside my back door day in, day out! (is his own personal ash tray too much to ask?)

Eight months in and my friends can no longer call me ‘Bat Ears’- a nickname I picked up for my pure hatred of communal living during University. I’ve now managed to somehow block out the bang of the communal front door at 4am, my heart no longer skips a beat when ‘Mr Shouty’ from upstairs starts screaming at the TV and the hum from late-night washing machine cycles put on by the lady next door provide me some kind of strange, urban lullaby.

But there’s one thing I cannot abide about communal living in London: the bin situation. My management company, so fed up of clearing out mindless dumping of any- old-crap into the recycling bins, decided to do away with them altogether just before I moved in.

I’d lost almost everything in my life and now one of the things I took so much pleasure in, recycling, was also gone. Bloody great!

Of course, I enjoy my weekly trip to the tip, who doesn't? But it’s not the same as having the service on your doorstep is it?

So what do my neighbours do with their rubbish? Surely, they separate it and when all the recyclable items are ready for their tip trips, there is a small bag left over for the main bin, right?

Wrong.

Not even close. The majority of the residents in my block, still believe in fairies: tiny little creatures whose job it is to come and take their bin bags, full of rotting food and enough plastic to sink a small ship and move it from where they were dumped (NEXT to the giant bins) and place them inside. Yes-my neighbours can’t even be bothered to lift the lid and dump their contraband properly.

Living next to a railway track and allotment, means one thing: rats. Bloody rats everywhere and boy do they love an abandoned bag of crap. Rats take most of the blame but they have their accomplices- the local cats and brazen foxes also enjoy dinner time outside my bedroom window at the Michelin Starred Bin-Shed Restaurant! (see below)

But it’s not all rubbish neighbours, rats and unruly cats in London Communal Living. There are friends of mine living in lovely new- builds where the management companies are modern, fresh faced and looking to their tenants to make their lives easier by keeping the place tidy.

Susanna, good friend and all round Earth-lover (albeit a self- confessed mooncup- fearer) is one of the lucky ones. “There’s a ventilated bin store with two big bins and two huge mixed recycling bins,” she proudly tells me.

Newly built, the residents are still peeling the plastic off their new, integrated microwaves but soon, I cynically tell her, she too will be stepping over other people's bin bags to get to those huge, overflowing bins.

Bad habits do creep in. All it takes is one bad, recycling- incompetent egg to spoil it for everyone. And sure enough, even Susanna has already spotted the 4- month- old Christmas tree dumped beside the bin store too.

Who else has a Christmas tree dumper in April? What an April Fool!

Communal living doesn't have to be crap. I know lots of our European cousins live side- by- side and this kind of rubbish (literally) doesn't happen. I think it's about respect and education. Along with the usual credit check, inventory and standard affordability test, you should also have to undergo a series of competencies to see if you understand how recycling and the lid of a bin works before the keys are handed over.

Seeing as house prices in London aren't coming down to a sensible level anytime soon, it's about time we learned to educate and not just love thy neighbour.