Dislocated
Just when I was daring to think that I might live through a whole year without having to move house, Dave has gone stark raving mad and bought a maisonette one block down from where we are. As to whether I will go with him, this is still undecided, but I will obviously have to go somewhere, unless I convert his room into a cannabis farm. This is just one of what my telephone handset at work calls my 'current options'.
I was warned before I saw the place that it 'needs work', that the decor is hideous; I also knew that it was a 'mirror image' of our current abode. The phrase carried eerie associations, as though I would be moving, not just into a new home, but into some nightmarish parallel universe.
On seeing the place, I realised that I would, in fact, be travelling back in time. On one wall of the room that would be mine, the cast of Hill Street Blues grins from a poster ripped out of the TV Times, overseeing other relics of an 80's boyhood. Since then the room has been colonised by the boy's Dad's extensive video collection - all detective shows taped off the telly with neatly printed labels - and a flock of ancient post-it notes bearing mysterious messages.
The carpets are worn and faded (which is probably just as well, since you would shudder to see some of those patterns blazing forth in all their glory). The bathroom suite is pink, the net curtains brown. Nevertheless, it's a perfectly decent house. It has walls, floors, windows, even ceilings. All more or less where you would expect them to be.
Perhaps, once deciphered, the post-it notes (which would be yellowing if they weren't already yellow) hold a key for unlocking extra space. Because in this place, as 'the lodger', I would be (quite rightly) occupying a smaller room - the spare room, essentially. This would incur a lower rent so, yes, it's all swings and roundabouts, swings and roundabouts until I'm quite dizzy with possibilities. All of them just slightly depressing.
I have had mad fantasies of getting the landlord to reduce the rent of this place, though even in the maddest of these he has not gone below £600 per calendar month. Which I have accepted. In real life, when I made an attempt to broach the topic, he had a good chuckle.
Must be the way I tell 'em.
I was warned before I saw the place that it 'needs work', that the decor is hideous; I also knew that it was a 'mirror image' of our current abode. The phrase carried eerie associations, as though I would be moving, not just into a new home, but into some nightmarish parallel universe.
On seeing the place, I realised that I would, in fact, be travelling back in time. On one wall of the room that would be mine, the cast of Hill Street Blues grins from a poster ripped out of the TV Times, overseeing other relics of an 80's boyhood. Since then the room has been colonised by the boy's Dad's extensive video collection - all detective shows taped off the telly with neatly printed labels - and a flock of ancient post-it notes bearing mysterious messages.
The carpets are worn and faded (which is probably just as well, since you would shudder to see some of those patterns blazing forth in all their glory). The bathroom suite is pink, the net curtains brown. Nevertheless, it's a perfectly decent house. It has walls, floors, windows, even ceilings. All more or less where you would expect them to be.
Perhaps, once deciphered, the post-it notes (which would be yellowing if they weren't already yellow) hold a key for unlocking extra space. Because in this place, as 'the lodger', I would be (quite rightly) occupying a smaller room - the spare room, essentially. This would incur a lower rent so, yes, it's all swings and roundabouts, swings and roundabouts until I'm quite dizzy with possibilities. All of them just slightly depressing.
I have had mad fantasies of getting the landlord to reduce the rent of this place, though even in the maddest of these he has not gone below £600 per calendar month. Which I have accepted. In real life, when I made an attempt to broach the topic, he had a good chuckle.
Must be the way I tell 'em.
posted by martin at 11:50 AM
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