When I taught in London

I was 34 years old when I started teaching in further education in London.

I taught there until I was 37, I lived in student accommodation for a year, then in my first teaching job, three levels up the lecturer scale as a business communications lecturer I lived in a flat with four other people with no living room and I even had London weighting allowance added to my salary but that was all I could really afford. I didn’t like sharing so I looked at several one room apartments just within my budget, some had a shower in the corner and shared toilets, but luckily, I found one that had its own kitchen and bathroom, I lived there for the next 18 months. I applied for Key Worker housing assistance and I was offered a £50,000 amount to help towards the cost of buying a property of my own, so with a mortgage amount on my salary and the £50,000 assistance I looked high and low and in all of West London way out into Middlesex there was only a single two bedroom flat within my budget, it was an hour from work on public transport and up a concrete gangplank above a shop, the bank said they wouldn’t lend me the mortgage amount because they said they’d never be able to resell it, that was back in 2005 when I was 37 years old and four levels up the lecturer scale at normally one year per level at Hammersmith and West London College.

• Just one story on the cost of housing on medium as far as I can tell?

214B Kings Hill Avenue, Middlesex, I would guess that no one lived there who did anything of any consequence, yet I would have had half an hour on the bus followed by half an hour on the tube to get to a job that was four levels up the lecturer scale (nearly five levels) teaching further education and higher education which is actually quite a good job.