Sunday, June 29, 2008
New Beginnings Part 1: A Place Called Home
Friday the 13th is always a day of extremes. If my dear ma's birthday, August 13th, falls on a Friday, then it ends up being an extremely good day. But more often than not, it doesn't, and it almost always ends up being an extremely stressful day. And I'm not even superstitious.
June 13th was no exception to this trend. I woke up expecting just another day - one of my last days in the rabbit hutch, but just another day nonetheless. I was planning to stay in halls an extra two nights, so I could move into the new flat on Sunday.
What I hadn't banked on, however, was one last stroke of dickotry from the powers that be. Never mind that they'd charged me a full year's rent, even though I moved in a month later than everyone else. Never mind the shit I'd dealt with from security. Never mind the noisy flatmates, the excuses for cleaning, blablabla... Nope, they wanted to charge me rent for the extra two nights.
Once I found this out, I called Ma, and we both decided: "Fuck that."
I spent the next two hours frantically packing while Ma and Marv drove up from Oswestry. I hadn't had time to think about throwing things out, or how best to pack my boxes to maximise space. By the time they'd got there and we'd finished packing all my belongings and ourselves into the car, I was squashed up against the window like Bugs Bunny hitting a sheet of glass at full speed. In hindsight, a picture of that moment would have been great.
Going the long way round actually didn't turn out so bad. It gave me a chance to sort through my things properly, to pack the essentials and then move bits and pieces back and forth between the folks' house and the new pad. Sure, it may have taken two days to move just around the corner, but it was worth it.
Sunday the 15th seems like forever ago, so warped is my sense of time lately. But three and a half weeks in and I'm still as excited about the flat as I was on the day I moved in. I love this flat.
Firstly, it's so big. You could fit the rabbit hutch in here six times, at least. The open-plan living room and kitchen is painted in lemon, with pine floors and glass-panelled doors that open out onto our small but beloved patio. It's airy and calming, but also brilliant for entertaining (which I do a lot of now that I've escaped the hutch). It's just the sort of place I've always wanted to live in.
The best things about our flat, like everything in life, are the little things. We have a little dishwasher to make cleaning easier. We have a little beer fridge (specifically for Guiness, but stocked with Carlsberg and Fosters at the moment). We also have a little TV set in the wall just above the bath. My favourite new pastime is to sit in the tub with a cold one on a Tuesday night, watching '10 Years Younger' and silently congratulating myself on living in such a fantastic little place.
But you know what my favourite little thing about this flat is?
One of the things I missed most, from the moment I moved to uni, was not having a cat to talk to. Back in Wycombe our neighbours' cats were welcome all the time, and I promised myself that once uni was done and I was settled enough, I'd adopt a feline friend of my own.
No need for that, as it turns out. Our landlord has two cats, but he could only take one of them with him, so the more outdoorsy of the two moved in with a friend of his just round the corner. The little guy comes to check up on Pook and I almost every day. And by "check up on us", I mean "sniff around our fridge and fall asleep whilst stretched out on our floor cushion".
Once again, I'm not superstitious, but crossing paths with a little black cat every day sure makes for a lot of luck.
Labels: Good Times, Joey's Cribs
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