That’s estate agent-speak for student digs, flats, bedsits, studios and peasant hovels. Where and how you live as a student is a whole world of amusing—or horrifying—stories. Or you could turn the phrase around and say ‘My Occupation of Multiple Dwellings’. I once counted up every place I had moved in and out of for a minimum of a week, not counting holidays. By my 32nd year, it worked out as at least 35 dwelling places. I doubt I can even remember most of them now, but I have no reason to doubt the calculation. It included student digs so awful that we moved out within days and at least four sojourns in static caravans. Most probably best forgotten. I survived.

After being in med school for a year, I wanted to live in London with my friend and fellow-student, Dilys. I knew my father would prefer me to stay at home, but as a retired professor himself, he knew that it was good for young people to be a bit independent. My parents were financing me totally. My first impulse was to have a major teenage-type tantrum and insist on my own way, which would have got me nowhere. I was rising 19 and had to some extent learned a little tact. I wrote him a long letter—remember I was actually living at home—setting out all my arguments, including some against in order to appear impartial. This was definitely the way to his heart and I was allowed to go into digs.

I seem to remember that Dilys found our flat. It was a semi-basement in a lovely prestigious square in Chelsea and was of the ‘studio’ type—a big room, with a lovely plaster frieze of cherubs, a little toilet off the hall and a bathroom/kitchen whose table could be let down over the bath when you wanted to cook; very ingenious, though I dare say no longer legal.

We loved our time at 19 Carlyle Square. The landlady was an amazing woman who wrote cookery books and thrillers. One day I was reading a paperback and I thought, ‘that’s good, I wonder what else the author has written?’ I turned it over and saw a photo of my landlady, whose nom de plume was Barbara Worsley-Gough.

Barbara’s kitchen was in the other half of the basement, separated only by a curtain. She was always experimenting with cookery and sending us plates of delicious things to try. Often these were brought through by her helper, Mr Kettley. Unlike Barbara herself, he never knocked or called out but would just come through, on occasions finding us in a state of semi-undress, probably by design. We never felt in the least threatened or offended by this. He was a tiny elderly Irishman, gnarled like an old tree root, with a smile as wide as the Irish sea. We believed him to be a leprechaun.

Our landlady had a nephew, Alastair, who would quite often ring up. He had a swooningly strong Scottish accent and we were on tenterhooks hoping to be there when he paid a long-promised visit. One of the pleasures of living in a semi-basement is that you can see the legs of every visitor. One great day, a taxi stopped and there were a pair of strong well-turned calves under a Royal Stuart tartan. Undoubtedly, Alastair had arrived. Alas, we never really made contact, though at 2 am one morning the fire alarm went off and Alastair and I had a brief encounter by candlelight in the shared hall, with him in a red tartan dressing gown. I forget what I wore, but I suspect Marks and Spencer pyjamas.

If this was a novel, it would have led to a romantic encounter, a murder mystery, or at least a philosophical and life-changing discussion. He held up his candle to look for the fuse box, we shared a few words, succeeded in stopping the raucous noise and went our separate ways, unintroduced. Ah, the great might-have-beens of youth! I rather think Dilys felt I had fluffed a great opportunity that she could have made more of. Probably true.

Later on, Dilys had to move back home for a while because her father was ill. I couldn’t find anyone to share the Chelsea flat with, and anyway, it would not have been the same. I moved a couple of times within the area.

For a while I was ‘fourth girl’ in a little house around the corner in Oakley Gardens. It was a lovely place and the three young women got on very well, but it was a revelation both ways as to differing lifestyles. They all came from what I suppose one would call the Landed Gentry. We are supposed to be very class conscious and snobby in Britain, though for most of my lifetime, reverse snobbery seems to have been more of a problem. I am always interested in the nuances of social and personal behaviour—it is after all part of my job to observe these things. The people I met there were not particularly academic or intellectual, but so what? They were kind, accepting and cheerful. My time with them I remember as amusing and they were as bemusedly tolerant of my lifestyle, as I was of theirs.

The girls—I should call them ‘young women’ now, but we were always ‘girls’ in those days—worked as personal assistants, well-paid compared with a student allowance. They were out every evening on dates to fashion shows, cocktail parties, films; returning at weekends to the Home Counties for Hunt Balls and other social events reported in Tatler. They never deliberately excluded me but they were as astonished at my life as I was at theirs. I couldn’t afford the time to go out with them locally—anyway my meagre allowance and my relatively unsophisticated clothes would have made it unsatisfying. On the odd occasions that I was included, they were always very nice, but I felt a bit of a fish out of water with their friends and did wonder a little if the people they knew were judging me. I was working extremely hard, day and night by this time, in order to pass my exams, and this life as a student was totally incomprehensible to them.

Gill, one of the girls, had a faithful beau called Bill who had courted her for many years. He had a square, ugly face with a snub nose and was quiet, very kind and solid. I think he was an officer in the army. He talked to me quite a lot when Gill was out with other people and he seemed to me a lovely man whose devotion to her was touching and deserved recognition.  A year later, long after I had moved on, I was very happy to learn that his patient wooing eventually won her. I was invited to the wedding, which was a splendid County occasion. The whole brigade turned out with their swords and formed a guard of honour for the couple and there was champagne on an immaculate lawn. Way out of my league but very enjoyable.

One of the small pleasures I remember—I am very easily amused—was getting the bus back from college every day and saying, “A ticket to the World’s End please.”. I was sorry to leave Chelsea, but fortunately, the situation of my next flat allowed me to say the regular line, “I want to go to the North Pole, please”. Both pubs of course.