Looking For “Digs” In A Strange Town

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28604, 5 June 1958, Page 2

Looking For “Digs” In A Strange Town

How does a working girl set about finding a place to live when she starts a new job in a new city? If she is a girl who has friends or relatives in her new jtown, with whom she can bunk in for a few days she is in luck. If her firm has transferred her, it may offer assistance; but if she |is strictly on her own, and there is no accommodation bureau in town, the only channel open to her is advertisements in the newspapers. ' Hotels are out even to begin with if she is on a limited budget, so while checking through the advertisements she decides to seek board or bed and breakfast. Bed and breakfast can be dreary if she is alone in a strange town where she has no idea where to eat, but even drearier can be a boarding house where the food is bad, and the line-up waiting for the bathroom looks like a queue for a popular movie. A week in advance of her arrival she checks the bed and breakfast listings in the Automobile

Association handbook. She choses the one which seems about the right price. Then she compares the addresses she has picked out with the city map, and bases her first choice on a suitable distance for travel to her office. She writes for a room and breathes a sight of relief. The first hurdle is over; she has a place to go to. Time Off to Look

“On my first morning at work,” said a girl recently arrived in Christchurch, “I was impatient to get on the telephone and inquire about some of the places in the advertisements and the answers to my own advertisement. The boss agreed that it was hard to settle to a job until accommodation worries were straightened out, so he gave me time off to look for a place.” “I was fortunate,” said a student. “It was a case of a friend of a friend of a friend who, before I left Auckland for Christchurch, put me onto a flat that had been recently vacated. I wrote to the landlady who was preparing her flat for letting again, and there it was waiting for me to look at on my arrival. Because of my letter she gave me first choice. It was just what I wanted and she was happy to have someone personally recommended.” “Nine times out of 10 that is fine,” said hard-bitten Christchurch landlord, “but sometimes I have found a personal recommendation is no safeguard for getting a tenant of the same standard as the previous occupant”

Loneliness “I was feeling very lonely as a stranger in town hunting for digs,” said a girl from the country. “I was homesick and rather sorry for myself but some of the replies to my advertisement for board turned my thoughts from my own loneliness to that of others. One letter was from a woman who had recently lost her husband. Another widow wistfully told of her grown-up family, all away from home; her life had lost its meaning she said, and she was longing for company in the house.” “I found that too,” said a nurse who described her landlady's disappointment with her as a companion. “When I was at home I needed to shut my door and study. That hurt my landlady who wanted to chat and enjoy my company,” she said. An Australian secretary who arrived in New Zealand recently, solved the problem of accommodation neatly. “While it is winter I have taken a job in a hotel,” she said. “Central heating and a cosy room ‘on the house’ are big considerations. Come the summer, and I’ll come out of hibernation, become a secretary again and look for rooms.”