Text 1: Six of us and one bathroom, by Amira Shah

An original contemporary blog.

When I moved to Bristol for my first job, I assumed I would rent a flat. Then I saw the prices. Instead I rent the smallest bedroom in a six-bedroom terraced house in Easton, for £720 a month plus bills, which in this city counts as a bargain.

My room is exactly long enough for a single bed, and the wardrobe door hits the bed when it opens. There is one bathroom for six people, so we have a shower rota stuck to the fridge: I have 6.40 to 6.55 on weekdays, and if Dan oversleeps, everyone after him is late for work.

The landlord lives in Spain, and getting anything mended is a slow process. Black mould grows on my window frame every winter, and it took three emails and a phone call before he sent someone to look at the boiler, which broke in January. We lost our hot water for nine days.

And yet I am glad I came. Five strangers have become something close to friends. On Sundays whoever is home cooks one enormous pot of something, and we eat it round the kitchen table, arguing about the washing up. When I had flu last month, Priya left soup outside my door twice a day.

Text 2: A letter from my lodgings, by Henry Waldron

An original letter written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Text 2 is a letter written in the 1870s by a young clerk who had moved to Liverpool, to his mother in the country.

My dear Mother,

You asked me to describe my lodgings exactly, and so I shall. I have the back room upon the third floor of Mrs Purkiss’s house in Cumberland Street, for which I pay seven shillings a week, breakfast and the cleaning of my boots included. Candles and coals are extra, and I find they add up alarmingly.

The room is small, with a sloping ceiling against which I strike my head each morning, but it is clean, and from the window I can see a great many chimney pots and, on a clear day, the river. On cold mornings the water in my jug is frozen, and I must break it with the handle of my hairbrush.

Mrs Purkiss is a widow and very strict. No visitors are permitted after nine, no smoking upon the stairs, and the street door is bolted at half past ten, so that a lodger who is late must knock and be scolded. Her cooking is plain, and we have had mutton four days in this week.

There are three other lodgers, two clerks like myself and a young man who plays the flute in the evenings, very badly. We have begun to take a walk together on Sundays, and I am less lonely than I was.

Your affectionate son,

Henry

Using information from both texts, explain briefly what living in rented rooms was like.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.