Its like bd says, most of us in the UK are limited on space, houses are so expensive here that they tend to be smaller to reduce the cost of them, even then, it is looking almost impossible for young people to be able to afford to buy their own and will be like me, renting for all their life.
To put it into context for you, my room where I spend most of my time is only 1.6M wide by 3.3M long with a door at one end and a window at the other and I sit next to the window, my back to one wall (in the 1.6M part) and in front I have my bench / desk with loads of wall shelves, which again like bd, used to be my work desk during the day and lab bench in the evening. Now that I've retired, its my lab bench 24/7 and also my dinner table apart from Christmastime when we all use the dining table, the rest of the year that is where SWMBO does her cake decorating (sugarcraft) making flowers from icing for cakes etc.
WHAT ?! 1.6x3.3m... 5m2 ?! That's a closet not a room ! Granted a closet with a Window but still
It's a prison cell no more no less
I don't know what to say, I sure gathered that London city center, like Paris or any big fancy City, is only for rich people, but BD is not in the fancy parts of the London City, he is near an Airport runway ! So even outside the city centers it's also so expensive ?!
I guess if you were used to this life in the UK ever since you saw the light of day, you find it "normal", everyone there endures the same shit so I guess people kinda accept it as the norm there. Still
Kinda ruins the fun of TEA... knowing what condition you people live in in the UK, it's hard to be in a fun mood now
I guess the proverbial British phlegm helps a lot with that, but still......
To make it worse, I live in a 4-bedroom house, and my lab used to my youngest son's bedroom, and he had to have a cabin type bed, with storage in the bottom section and small 14" TV suspended from the ceiling and small desk at the foot of his bed and that was it. My eldest and middle son shared the room at one end, me and SWMBO in the master on the other side of my lab and my stepson in the other at the other end of the house. Stepson got a live in chefs job in London, and got married and now lives in SE London, my eldest then took his room. He then moved in with his girlfriend and has been with her for many years now and my youngest moved into his old room so leaving his old room for my work desk at home instead of the dining table. Then I retired and got back into electronics again, something I gave up many moons ago when I had no place to do it and sold nearly all my stuff and only kept back a few bits. While I was still working, I did dabble a bit, but nothing like I do now.
SWMBO works in the local Crown Court and seems to get more than her fair share of the murder trials, so her day work is stressful, and her sugar craft helps her to unwind, and she has about 4 times the space I do and its chock-a-block full of her tools etc, so we either eat at our desks or on the sofa, the boys and I eat upstairs, and our desks become dining tables as well.
If I ever win the lottery big, I'd love a bigger house, so we can all have our own dedicated areas for hobbies etc, and loads of living space, but for now, that is just a pipe dream. I know that there's not much chance of winning big, but somebody has to win the big money and as my late father-in-law used to say, as long as you have a ticket, you have a dream.