Of housemates and desks

Like being in the wrong relationship, living in the wrong place is often signposted by several small things.

And because like a relationship, renting with others requires compromise, these small things often get quickly normalised and lumped into a box marked "things you have to put up with because the location is good, the flat is nice, and you have your own bathroom."

For example, there's the dip of disappointment when you hear a key turning in the door, something that is in firm contrast with the relief you feel whenever you hear you'll have the place to yourself for a night or longer.

Then there's the lingering hope that their slightly annoying friends won't come round, or that they'll go home soon, and the "sorry, but could you turn it down a little bit?" that you never wanted to hear yourself say (and come on mate, it's a Tuesday).

There's the irritation of your belongings being moved, tidied away, just squeezed in around your housemate's stuff, or, as once happened - coming home from a trip and finding their unwanted pictures hanging on your bedroom wall.

(Your friends say "that's a bit weird", and you reply "Yes, but the flat is nice and I have my own bathroom.")

And then you move to a new place, and much like dumping the bloke you always had doubts about, the change is immediate.

It happens on the first night when - clothes strewn everywhere - my unpacking is interrupted because I've been summoned to the pub to meet their friends.

This, I think, putting down the hangers and heading out of the door, is a brave new world - and one that I will gladly toast with copious amounts of cider. On a Tuesday. 

Then it's a few days later when I'm home after work, and the key turns in the door and I realise I'm looking forward to greeting whoever comes in.

And it's not just the house, where my things can go wherever they want - and the housemates, who welcomed me in like an old friend, but the room itself: this new space I didn't have before.

Crucially, it's this one little thing: in the extra gap between the wardrobe and my bed, I have a desk - for writing, for sitting at, for putting things on.

I can't remember the last time I had one, but this small, cheap, flatpacked piece of furniture has somehow become the thing I mention. For now, it goes:

"Yes, the new place is great. My housemates are lovely. And I have my own desk."

All change, please.

Urgh, change. What a hassle.

There you are, trotting along nicely when all of a sudden in comes change; expensive, shocking, annoying change, ballsing up your finely tuned plans with the latest startling revelation.

Change is the friend who lets you tell your happy news, before dropping in their own and stealing your thunder. It's that idiot who walks in the room and makes everyone say "Oh, God, not you again. Haven't you done enough?"

In short, change is a bastard.

But you know, as much as change gets in the way of an otherwise happy life, I'm struggling to think of a time where something good hasn't come out of it.

Break-ups lead to a better social life and new, improbably brilliant friends.

Change makes you realise that your parents will never say "I told you so" when you crash, burn, and return home (again). The neverending search for employment - weirdly - always seems to lead to a better job than all the ones you coveted along the way.

Previously reliable friends might suddenly call time on your living arrangement, but then you find yourself living in an area of London you've liked for ages, with a new, equally single housemate and a commute that takes you on a daily bus tour through your favourite parts of the city.

Change can cost more money per month, but it can also give you an original wood floor and massive windows. It can leave you without internet or TV for a while, but give you conversation over a glass of wine instead.

When you think about it, change isn't out to piss you off, it's just showing you another way to do things.

Change isn't that bad, really.

But if things could just stay like this for a little while, then I'd really rather like it.

Good decisions made on bad hangovers

It was 11am last Saturday morning when myself and the Future Housemate viewed our fourth flat of the morning.

Whether it was our hangovers, the time of day, or both - the previous three places we'd seen were almost instantly discounted on the grounds of smell alone.

While the communal corridors and private spaces of the first two flats contained a pungent whiff of this morning's bacon and last night's dinner, the third hit us with a thick wall of cigarette smoke; a suffocating smell that permeated every inch of space and followed us out the door within minutes.

The fourth, we liked.

It was modern. It had good transport links nearby. It was over budget, but we wanted it anyway. I put down a deposit there and then.

With the first of my housing problems taken care of, there remained one more thing to sort out: myself.

When you're unhappy with a situation, you always have two options: you can either stay unhappy and complain to anyone who'll listen, or you can do something about it. Realising that I was fast falling into the former category, I chose to take action.

Firstly, I called up my friends and got drunk.

Then, the next morning, with another hangover dictating my actions, I started packing up my things at the old house, despite having another two weeks remaining on the rent. By the afternoon, the contents of my bedroom - the only space in the shared house that felt mine, really - were packed into plastic bags, boxes and rucksacks and ready to go home.

By the evening, I was sitting on a sofa in a warm, clean house with a large, grateful dog on my lap, in the company of my new 60 year old house mates - my parents.

And after a week of getting in from work to find dinner on the table, there remains only one problem left to face: the challenge of moving back out and cooking for myself again in six week's time.

The redefinition of "good news"

"...the good news is that we have until the 24th March" continued Tuesday's text message, thus confirming Monday's surprise announcement.

Needless to say, my response was short, polite, but to the point, and began with the suggestion that the sender reassess his definition of the term "good news".

As well as putting the wheels in motion to relocate myself, this week has also been an exercise in trying to work out whether the annoyance I feel about having to find a new house so soon after moving in to this one is justified.

While the responses of friends, family and you lot seemed to suggest that this was indeed Crap News Delivered Badly, unfortunately there remained two people who didn't (and, I expect, still don't) quite see the problem.

Suffice to say, it came as a bit of a surprise to have to explain, in detail, to the blank, uncomprehending faces of those responsible that my "not all that great, to be honest" mood on Wednesday morning wasn't down to the onset of the common cold.

So instead of wasting any more time being annoyed, I think maybe there is some good news in all of this. Because what this whole saga really confirms is that my own views, priorities and expectations - both in life, and of others - do not match up to those of an engaged couple.

And for a 27 year old who spent Tuesday evening in a friend's kitchen with eight other single girls, drinking cheap fizzy wine, doing shots of Glenfiddich and regaling the neighbouring Kings Cross residents with a loud, not altogether tuneful rendition of Beyoncé's Love On Top, I have concluded that this can be no bad thing.

Curveballs are fine, if you know they're coming.

Thinking about it, eight months would have been nice amount of time. 

I mean, I'll settle for five - it's better than nothing, but ideally eight months would have been the optimum time for nothing to change.

Unfortunately, it's not like you can really write to Captain Life and apply for eight months of static living please, pretty please with a cherry on top, can everything stay the same for a while. But what you can request is that if things are likely to change, that you're given a fair amount of warning. 

"So, me and Girl Housemate have been thinking that we want to live on our own before getting married" started Boy Housemate this evening, arriving rather laboriously at the point after an extensive preamble. I continued to season a rather lovely bit of fillet steak.

"Yeah? That makes sense." 

"And for the last month or so we've been keeping an eye out."

"Ok..."

"Today something came up on Gumtree, just around the corner. So I went to see it."

"Oh, right. To buy?"

"No. Rent."

"Right..."

"So I put an offer in, and if it gets accepted - which it might not, we offered lower than they want - but we'd have about four weeks to..err...sort stuff out"

Which is how it transpired, tonight, entirely out of the blue, that I potentially have four weeks to find somewhere else to live. 

It's difficult to explain without telling you all the boring details - you'll just have to take my word for it - but I can't live here if they don't. 

It's difficult to explain why I didn't get angry immediately, or demand to know why, if they've been considering other living arrangements even if just for a month - they didn't think to give me a heads up until now. 

And it's difficult to explain why I feel really, really shaken up by the prospect of what comes next. 

Do I move in with people I don't know? 

Do I, almost a year to the day after I moved back in with my parents last year, let history repeat itself? 

Do I really have to call my parents up and admit that once again, things that weren't meant to fall through actually have?

And like every time something changes - I just wish for once that it wouldn't. 

Or failing that, I just wish it would give me a bit more notice.

It's Sunday morning. The house is empty apart from me.

My housemates are away for the weekend, and this means I am experiencing the small yet perfectly formed joys of being alone in a shared abode. 

The kitchen has been Detolled into spotless submission, there are no pubic hairs in the bath (or sink, for that matter. Don't ask.) and the toilet is well and truly flushed. Later, I might even go all out and clean the shower. Maybe even mop the floor, and buy a bin to replace the Tesco carrier bag on the back of the bathroom door. 

I think you'll agree; a truly exciting day awaits. 

Prior to starting this new permanent job - which is going well apart from the daily abject terror that I will not be able to deliver what is required of me, that I will fail monstrously and not live up to expectations and shrivel slowly into a puddle by my desk wailing "I'm melting, I'm melting" - there were a lot of things I wouldn't have been able to consider.

One of those things was getting my own place, something that job security will one day afford me even if, for now, the salary doesn't.

It would be my own one bedroom flat where everything is as I left it - food in its rightful place (i.e. not blocking the drain), toilet roll in the bathroom (i.e. not in bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms and anywhere else frequented by a runny nose) and water confined to places capable of both holding and disposing of it (i.e. not on floors, walls or any surface within a two metre radius of the tap).

It's not even that I dislike living with people. Not at all. I have bloody good housemates, I'm a sociable beast and research tells me these are problems I'd have no matter who I shared with. And anyway, it's nice to hear the low-level buzz of other people downstairs, to have a mini-social life in your own house when illness, money or general laziness keeps you indoors. 

But one day I'd like to live alone in lovely London, create my own mess, and not hurl £600 a month into my landlord's Spanish villa retirement fund in doing so. 

And when that happy day comes, I will gaze wistfully into the kitchen sink and sigh:

"Yes, there is egg  from three days ago nestled in and around the plug hole. But it's my egg, god damn it, and that makes it ok."

What do you do in a power cut?

The TV went black. The dishwasher ceased washing. The kettle stopped making my cup of tea. The internet dropped out and the house plunged into darkness and silence. Well, except for me.

"Oh, what? HOUSEMAAAAAAAAAAAATE."

Not ever having experienced a power cut before, I wasn't exactly sure what to do. Do you call someone? Does someone come to fix it? I checked out of the window and saw the neighbouring houses were still lit up. Just us affected, then. Puzzled, I flicked our light switch again for good measure. Nothing.

"Shouldn't we... look at the... fuse box in the... where is it?" I asked, not really understanding what exactly it was we had to check for in these situations, but knowing that this was something I should say.

After establishing that this wasn't a) my fault or b) a result of my housemate's new game: Extreme Bill Paying: Dodge The Final Notice, I wondered what to do.

And what with us living in times where even if you can't do something, you tell someone about it, I hopped onto Twitter for advice.


"Candles, ghost stories and shadow puppets!"


"Dance around and sing at the top of your lungs in the dark. Fun, AND your neighbours will appreciate the radio replacement."


"You scrabble around in the dark for bits of old candle."


Candles, then. Which after some scrabbling about, we had - but no holders.

"We need a bottle to put it in" I said to Boy Housemate, eyeing up the red wine in the kitchen and adding carefully "But, oh. That bottle is full."

"We should probably finish the wine and use that." he replied.

Bingo.

Two glasses of wine and a lit candle later, we're sat in the living room waiting for some sort of man from the electricity thing to appear with the answer (or so the technical terminology goes), and engaging in what used to be known back in the 1990s as h'actual real live face-to-face conversation - you might have seen it on telly - and discovering that electricity is a great leveller.

Because once it goes you're back to basics; relying on knowledge instead of Google, sleeping bags instead of central heating and flames complete with dripping hot wax instead of switches.

Having never in my life been without it, I actually had no idea how much we depended on the stuff. From the dying battery on my phone (no alarm clock), to no power for the freezer and potentially more frozen peas than Iceland to consume, being without it for any length of time would leave us in a mighty big pickle.

But what it also meant was an evening of two housemates chatting, when they'd normally be in separate rooms absorbed with TVs or laptops, or both.

After three hours of darkness we decided to call it a night. And just at that moment, the house sprang back into life, swiftly followed by Girl Housemate who'd also been out for the evening.

Admittedly, the set up must have looked odd; discarded takeaway on the kitchen counter, candles, two empty wine glasses and a now far-fetched sounding story about a single-house power cut.

"You drank the CHIANTI" she said, clearly not quite understanding the emergency pitch-black situation we'd been in minutes earlier.

"Baby, we had no candle holder" Boy Housemate replied, "We needed the bottle."

With the explanation now seeming slightly implausible in the whirring house, everyone retreated into separate rooms to fire up their electronic devices.

And back to the real world we went.

The Matter Of The Night-Flush

I was going to use my blog to share my thoughts on a matter of distinct worldwide importance, but at 4am this morning I realised there was a more pressing issue at hand.

Toilets.

As you may recall, my bedroom in my shared house is adjacent to the bathroom. Although this stands me in excellent stead when it comes to the lesser known Hangover Vomit Sprint, it also means I have become familiar with the toilet habits of those I live with.

I should clarify - it's not that I'm sitting there listening cup-to-wall or anything, but when Niagara Falls thunders down into the pot at 4am, it's a little bit hard to ignore. Which brings me to my next point.

Flushing.

Now, I don't believe that I can be the only one who has had this debate. But in certain households, there seems to be an unspoken rule about flushing the toilet in the middle of the night. Or not, as the case seems to be.

The motivation behind not flushing is largely consideration for others: not wanting to wake sleeping people. But for me, this act of selflessness has bigger implications; simply put, when I stumble bleary eyed into the bathroom at 8am, I'd rather not come eye-to-urine with a bowl full of someone else's piss.

It's admirable that they don't wish to wake me from my slumber, but quite frankly, if my room is close enough to be woken by a flush, it's close enough for me to hear everything that comes before. This includes the light being tugged into life, toilet seat going up, the inevitable tinkle (or, tsunami, I'm looking at you, boys), and the "tip-toe" back down the stairs.

And this isn't a one-off encounter I've had with Morning Piss. When I lived at home, no one did night flushes either. It drove me round the bend, not least because my room was across the hall and not in audible loo distance. So after sleeping through the night undisturbed, I'd get rewarded with a yellowy toilet treat, right at that point in the morning where things - good day? bad day? - can go either way.

"Can we PLEASE flush the toilet" I'd plead, rubbing the wasteful vision out of my eyes, "I don't want to see your WEE"
"But we don't want to wake you!" would come the thoughtful reply from family members alike.

Then one day my sister moved out. And ha! Low and behold, a few months after her new house-share commenced, the complaints started. For her new house mate (male, platonic) did not partake in the Night Flush, and she soon tired of being faced with day-glo wee surprise at such a pivotal point of her waking day.

"But I used to complain about that all the time at home, and no one saw the problem!" came my response to her protests.
"Yeaah, but it's different when it's not your family's wee, isn't it?"

Well that's just the thing. I'm not sure it is.

So convinced am I that this is not just a matter surrounding my immediate family and my (admittedly easily irritated) brain, I'm opening it up to the wider blogging community.

Readers: To night-flush or not to night-flush? That is the question*.


*(Oh come on, Shakespeare went to the loo too)

Adjusting to life, piles of dishes, and odd toilet habits

When you think about it, life is just a series of adjustments.

You've got the big, major life changing ones that are worthy of celebration, fanfare, emergency rescues or expensive legal fees. I'm thinking break-ups, divorces, illness, having babies, getting married, buying a dog, or changing your god-awful career.

Then there's the changes you don't know you've made; the slow, barely perceptible adjustments done without realising: abandoning friends for a boy, the clawing back of self-confidence, a day passed with no thoughts of an ex, or lasting a whole day in high heels.

And finally, there's the "little and often" adjustments you make everyday, usually as a result of the bigger ones.

Case in point:

The biggest thing to happen this year, bar getting royally trampled on in the heart department (you'll notice omitting this from all blog posts is an adjustment I haven't yet made) is finally getting my sheet(s) together, moving out of home and into central London. 

This was the big adjustment, the one I've hankered after throughout my twenties. It heralded a life where coming home (or not) is done on my own terms, where the last tube home can leave without me on it, and meetings with either sex aren't answerable to the flagship of all parental questions: "Who's that then?".

And so, as with any big change, minor adjustments are inevitable. For example: allowing dishes to pile in the sink for longer than the time it takes to eat a meal, although granted, not to the height they did at university. Putting loo seats down without a dramatic slam and yell of "Fa' god's SAKE", and accepting that your sleep may be disrupted by someone stumbling in later than you, running the shower and promptly vomiting all over it. 

All these little things are now a part of life without parents, and readily accepted - vomit and all - as being par for the twenty-something course. 

But in between realising that no one else is going to mop the floor by the bin and entering into the quirks of shared living, there has been one, distinctly coupley thing which might not be so easy to accept. 

Because as long as the wall between my bedroom and the bathroom remains thin, I'm not sure I'll ever get used to the sound of one housemate weeing, while the other brushes their teeth.

Call me prudish, or worse - single, but it's just not cricket.

For I will de-hair a sink and put aside all OCD thoughts when sharing my toothpaste, but couple or not -  toilet time will always be a single endeavour. 

Living with a couple is like doing a skydive...

...in that, on paper, it’s a really, really, really bad idea.

Much like flinging yourself from a plane, entering into a houseshare with two love birds could and should end in disaster, especially if you’re a bit scared of heights (or in this case, relationships), and have read the stories about related catastrophic failures in the past.

Because even though someone else has just done it before you and survived – nay, enjoyed the experience immensely – how do you know it will be the same for you?

The fact is, you don’t. Until you put on that sexy neon jumpsuit, attach yourself to a bleach blond adrenaline junky, get into a rickety old plane and leap out of the proverbial door at 13,000 feet… well, let's be honest. It could go either way.

Fortunately, the statistics are heaped in your favour.

To dump the metaphor for a moment, these two people were your friends way before they got hitched at the hip. And in the years since, nothing’s really changed. Your friends are their friends, your collective memories of university and beyond are mostly shared: and you usually end up crashing on their sofa after a night out anyway. All that’s really changing is your sofa (now a bed upstairs), and the selection of spare clothes for the next day.

There are, admittedly, the requisite cuddles and kisses to contend with; the single girl’s nemesis.

But after four years of togetherness, your housemates' urge to jump each other in the hallway has given way to an everyday acceptance of the other’s presence. Walking in on a couple casually curled up on the sofa is nothing compared to witnessing your single housemate's independent fun streak turn to puppy-like dependence on another; her party filled weekends now spent holed up in a bedroom, romping away the giddy months of sparkling, brand new, exciting love. Get a room. And no, not this one. 

That’s not to say that everyone’s experience will be the same. I, personally, wouldn’t have inflicted my past relationships on anyone. Likewise, there’s no way I’d live with two lovers plucked randomly from the Gumtree.

As with most life experiences: to have a good time you’ve got to choose your company wisely, go with the one who has a fail safe reputation for being better than just ok.

But no jump into the unknown is without that slightly scary moment when the adrenaline stops, the parachute is deployed, and you’re floating to the ground feeling a bit sick. Or, in my case, when your new housemates are away on holiday and several jointly addressed envelopes start appearing on the doormat in their absence.

“Oh no.” you think, having assessed both the postage marks, date stamps, size, weight and dimensions and concluded that these are indeed greetings cards, and the sort which fill any single girl with a growing, slightly sicky dread.

“What about me?" thinks selfish you, "If they’re engaged, where will I go? They’ll get married, move to the country and I’ll be thrown into the HouseHunt dot com bog once again. What’s more, I’ll be forced to listen to discussions about venues, table arrangements and – gulp – holy shitting matrimony. This will not do.”

Days later, they walk through the door and you eye the finger of doom. Minutes later, your suspicions are confirmed. He done the deed. She said yes.

“But, y’know in a couple of years. Oof, not yet. I mean, there’s still so much I want to do before all that”, are the words from Girl Housemate that make the sickness recede, replaced with relief, and you throw your arms around her and start being genuinely happy for what lies ahead. You know, way ahead. You've got enough time to find a respectable plus one, at least.

And so, you find yourself adding to the list of Things You Never Thought You’d Do:

1. Jump out of a plane at 13,000 feet
2. Travel round the world
3.  Move in with a boy, then out again after three weeks
4. Find myself living, seven months later, with a newly engaged couple.

And most crucial of them all:

   5. Survive: brain, capacity to be happy for others, body (see also: heart) - all intact.

Onwards into the unknown, otherwise known as housesharing.

In the past, the idea of living with friends has never struck me as being a particularly good idea.

Yeah, it worked at university where you're all as downright dirty and disgusting as each other, but when you grow up a bit and start pretending to be a proper adult 'n' that, living successfully in a shared house can mean putting friendships to the test.

Even the PIB and I, in frequent discussions about the perils of living with parents, often flirted with the idea of renting a place together. But it was something I always stood firmly against: being one of my very best friends, the last thing I want to do is start stressing out because she left a cup on the floor and forgot to stock up the loo roll.

Also, given my tendency to be rather easily irritated (which, by the way, is not just a throwaway blog title, but in all likelihood an actual mental condition, ref this NY Times article  - thanks @Voneron), there has always been reticence on my behalf about living with people to whom I couldn't say "Mate, although you are on the other side of the room and the TV volume is high, the barely audible sound of you picking the skin around your finger nails is giving me enraged thoughts. Please cease immediately." or, more likely, "OHMYGODCAN'TTAKEITANYMORESHUTTHEHELLUP".

Then there's good old instinct. Any niggling doubts in my mind, unless temporarily blinded by the glare of glorious love, are usually taken fairly seriously. Like, if you think someone is showing signs of being a tad unreliable now, then chances are when you've got a £100 utilities bill about to go out and they're stalling on transferring the cash, that teeny little trait might implode and really start to get on one's tits.

All this could be negated - I supposed - by living with people you don't really know that well, whose feelings are a bit more disposable when you decide to call it a day. Or by living with a boyfriend, who will probably save you the effort when things go a bit nuts, and declare his feelings for a 30 year old woman from work after three weeks anyway. Ho-hum.

Yet the minute the text message arrived from these two friends "We have a room. Would you be interested?", the response of "Yes! Definitely!" was something I didn't even have to think about. No warning bells chimed, no worries nipped at my heels, despite the fact that the living situation would be something I'd previously, vehemently, actively discounted - living with two good friends, from my immediate social circle, who are also a (whisper it) couple. I know. Don't say it, I know. I always thought the same. But somehow, this time, it didn't really bother me.

At five days in, things are obviously still great. But having turned on the shower this morning and found the water running cold, my pen was soon poised over a note that read "Hi guys, have a lovely holiday, see you when you're back. Oh and there was no hot water this morning - hope you have better luck!", before I pausing and re-writing it, leaving off the last sentence.

At the moment I feel more settled than I have done in a long time.

And given what happened the last time I moved out, I'm not about to start guessing what little shared-living nuances lie ahead.

But one thing's for sure: as blog as my witness, passive aggressive notes will not be one of them.