adventures in housing, part five

[Previously in this series: exploding guest houses and a large dose of FOR FUCK'S SAKE]


I ended up spending a month in Southend.

On the one hand, it's a long way away. The walk-bus-train-tube-tube-walk to work every morning was an adjustment I hadn't been quite prepared for, and I am singularly bad at mornings. Most of the time I would wake up about seven minutes before I needed to leave the house and would remain not really woken up for the rest of the day. I have songs on my iPod that take me straight back to sitting on a bus stop in Southend in the November drizzle, hoping that I was awake enough to spot the bus arriving and remember to get off it in the right place (I wasn't always). I did not end that month full of the joys of the suburbs and planning my own future as someone who would happily trade living in London for being able to buy an actual house.

On the other hand, I had a bed for an entire month. I had a room. I had somewhere to leave my things. I could eat actual dinner instead of takeaway or sandwiches in my office. I stopped ping-ponging between hair-trigger irritability, slightly manic hyperactive chirpiness and sullen depression and started acting like a human again. The aches in my back and shoulders faded, and I got some peace inside my own head. I didn't noticeably piss off either of my friends and I left their hospitality with relationships intact.

Living with a married couple was strange. It was like walking back into the same situation I'd just left, only now it wasn't mine. Of course, it wasn't exactly the same situation, since my friends are a functional couple who didn't spend entire evenings sitting on opposite sides of the room attempting to ignore each other, but occasionally I would watch them and remember when this was my life, when I couldn't really separate "my life" from "our life", and I knew his habits and preferences so well that they almost belonged to me. It was a confused nostalgia, a reminder that things weren't always the way they were at the end, and a kind of dreadful, frightened triumph at the thought that I could still be in this place, still living this familiarity that looked so comfortable from the outside but itched like crazy when I was wearing it. I envied the security while wanting to scratch it off my skin at the same time.

My friends are possibly exactly unlike me and my ex, which is why I'm now going to take a moment to say hi, Tom, everything is fine. You are the very best of all the friends and didn't accidentally cause me bad feelings by going about your life in your own house.

I continued to message people advertising rooms. I continued to go to viewings of what turned out to be tiny cesspits hidden away in alleys lined with drug dealers, with front doors that didn't lock and seven people crammed into two bedrooms, that the estate agents and landlords felt perfectly comfortable offering for rent at £160 per week.

"Very reasonable, we think."
"...um."
"The window will be replaced at some point with one that doesn't have a hole in it."
"That's nice."
"And don't worry about Susanne, she's just like that."
"...um."
"You won't find a lot in an area this accessible for this cheap a price."
"That does seem to be true, yes."
"So, are you interested?"
"Let me get back to you."

One morning I got a message from a friend. At the time she was a friend in the way that many people I've met through the dance scene are friends: connected on Facebook, would go and say hi and possibly give them a hug if I saw them, but not close enough to go out for dinner or email stupid videos to each other. She said there was a spare room coming up in her house in a few weeks and would I be interested?

I restrained myself from trying to leap directly through my laptop screen at her and said yes, yes I would be.

After rearranging several times to find some mutual free time in our clashing dance schedules, my friend met me at the closest station and took me to see the flat, which turned out to be a mansion flat with the most ridiculous huge fuck-off living room full of enormous sofas and giant mirrors and Sky TV. And it was cheaper than the drug den box room with Susanne who was just like that, don't worry. I thought perhaps I'd fallen into a mirage. I met the other two flatmates, one of whom was sweet and friendly and the other of whom seemed to dislike me on sight, but I was barely paying attention. Yes, I am going to live here. I am going to live here. I am going to live here.

I sent a "please let me live in your house" message the next day, and both the girls and the landlady accepted me. Shortly thereafter I left Southend, bought myself some bedding and took it and my suitcase to my new home.

[in part six: the mansion and FOR FUCK'S SAKE yet again]