When I originally ended this series in April last year, I was living fairly comfortably in a three-bedroom house share in North London with a couple of flatmates I'd already moved with twice. I'm resurrecting it today because I've just left, and we all know the sorts of things that can happen when I leave somewhere.
We signed on for a second year with the landlord who turned out not to be dead, though it was quite difficult to tell. The house wasn't ideal and there was literally nothing nearby, but we'd done enough moving and there really wasn't any reason for us to uproot ourselves. We complained a bit about it - the constant building work next door, the lack of anywhere to go for a drink, the fact that all the garden furniture was literally rotted through and the comedy pratfalls were going to get a bit less comedic eventually - but we were fine. We watched Bake Off together, hung a mask of Dwayne The Rock Johnson on the wall, and printed my flatmate's face onto fabric and made a bunch of cushions out of it. I was living with friends.
But things change. My boyfriend and I had, by this point, come to the conclusion that we were properly stuck with each other, and decided to move in together once my second year's lease was up. I told the others about ten months in advance, they were pleased for me, everything was still fine. And it continued being fine right up until one of my flatmates got kicked out of the country and sent back to Canada, thus disrupting my two and a half years of Good Flatmate karma.
We had to replace her, money being a thing the other two of us didn't really have, and we replaced her with an acquaintance of mine who had always seemed like a decent sort but took an apparent dislike to me almost as soon as they'd moved in. A strange sort of hostility set in after my first show - two days after the move-in date - and we spent the next four months in perpetual slight discomfort. Much as I knew I'd miss my other flatmate, I started spending less and less time at home.
July came upon us and my boyfriend and I started looking for a flat, having decided that his current place was a) way too small for two people and b) so infused with Essence of Him after five years that I was always going to feel like a guest in someone else's home. His previous flat-hunting karma meant that we found a place we loved on our second day of viewings, with loads of space and a light living room and a goddamn tropical garden, which somehow also managed to be 30 seconds away from a tube station and within budget. My previous flat-hunting karma meant that it wasn't available until several weeks after my lease was up, so I'd have to transport all my stuff to my boyfriend's place, live out of boxes for three weeks, and then move house again in the same month.
We took it. I've had way worse than this.
So as of today, I and all my stuff are packed up small and squished into a living room that wasn't designed to accommodate two people, everything one of those people owns and quite a chunk of the stuff the other person owns as well, waiting for our beautiful new flat. I'm still terrified it won't go through, because I am hyper aware of every tiny alarm bell ringing in my head, but they've taken all the deposit and rent money, which is either a good sign or a horrendously bad one. If all goes well, there will be a short coda coming in a month or so. If it doesn't... hoo, boy.
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