At just £32 a month plus maintenance costs, her living arrangement sounds like the perfect alternative to the rental market, but there are serious downsides. “I don’t have electricity, plumbing, running water, solar panels, a kitchen, or a fridge,” Patey-Ferguson says, adding that she relies on access to washing facilities at her gym, and eats out a lot to compensate for the lack of utilities. “But it’s cosy! It’s manageable. It’s a compromise in terms of not having creature comforts. I have a wood-burner to heat the boat in winter. It’s the warmest and driest, least damp, least mouldy place I’ve ever lived in in London.

“I was renting in London and Bristol for five years. [My boat] is the only place I’ve lived in that doesn’t have a wall of mould. I lived in a council flat in Watford and we had a waterfall coming in one winter.”

Renting in London is barely affordable on the amount she receives from her PHD funding, she says. “I would be living on stale bread and beans on toast and not going out. It wouldn’t work.