Housemates: a Retrospective
I am becoming increasingly reserved about telling my work colleagues that I live in a share house. Most of them have bought houses in Eltham, and the rest live in rented apartments with their partners whilst they save for houses in Eltham. I have received some pretty strong reactions to the revelation that I share a house with at least four others: "But where do you wash your CLOTHES?!?"**
Meanwhile- and I say this because I know it won't last- I live in a mansion! With a conservatory and a cellar!! With talented and interesting housemates!! So to the sharehouse sceptics, I say this: wouldn't your life be more interesting with housemates?? Wouldn't you be more interesting (and AT LEAST AS CLEAN) with housemates?
My first sharehouse was a small place in Flemington, a former bootmakers workshop on a roundabout in a beautiful tree-lined street. It felt terribly Ivy League compared to my friends' Brunswick digs, even though I could see through the gaps in the bricks to the street outside.
My first housemate was Kate, the cellist. When she dug the spike of her cello into the polished floorboards, the entire house shook with Bach. She drank gin and planted rosemary. She also introduced me to healthy oat-based breakfasts, a habit I maintain to this day! Kate was one year older than me but seemed about a lifetime ahead of me in terms of knowing how to live.
Felicity joined us two weeks after we'd moved in. She had just finished her honours in physics and was waiting to start a PhD in Austria. She would sit next to the heater knitting knee warmers, elbow warmers and arm warmers- all manner of woollen tubes. She was very crafty, and our house was very cold. Flic had the smallest room in the house and her bed was surrounded by towers of boxes. She once had a nightmare that the boxes toppled over and crushed her, and that Katie and I had to pull her mangled body from the mess.
One of Felicity's colleagues was the first person to successfully teleport a photon!! When she told Kate and I, we laughed at her for hours, making terrible jokes about teleporting ourselves into uni. But it turned out to be true.
Felicity moved to Innsbruck and was replaced by Huw, a pianist and student of art history. He hung a colander on his bedroom wall as installation art and listened to Zorn. In summer he got together with one of his uni tutors. I was very suspicious of the whole affair until I got up one Sunday morning and saw a lanky man sitting in garden in the pouring rain, wrapped in Huw’s tiny dressing gown, holding an umbrella in one hand and a cigarette in the other, a book resting in his lap. They were meant to be together!
In 2003 Kate moved to Zagreb to play the cello and was replaced by Bobby, who was studying creative arts. We were very very different: she got up at 5am to go to work, listened to Coldplay and was terribly good at both drawing and being skinny.
Dave also joined us in 2003- he was doing his final year of a mechatronics degree. His major project involved programming a ball to roll autonomously. I never really fully understood what this meant. Periodically he would rush from his room to demonstrate the latest breakthrough with the ball. Once he rushed out of his room in the morning in only his underpants pursued by a sparrow which had crept in through the window. Amongst other things, Dave taught me to cook an omelette properly (ie with runny bits in the middle).
Dan (2004) is another engineer. He took an engineer's approach to the smallest bedroom in the house, constructing a high bunkbed under which he could store a desk and clothes. After some initial testing of the bed, he installed a rail.
tbc...
**In the washing machine. I wash my clothes in the washing machine.
Meanwhile- and I say this because I know it won't last- I live in a mansion! With a conservatory and a cellar!! With talented and interesting housemates!! So to the sharehouse sceptics, I say this: wouldn't your life be more interesting with housemates?? Wouldn't you be more interesting (and AT LEAST AS CLEAN) with housemates?
My first sharehouse was a small place in Flemington, a former bootmakers workshop on a roundabout in a beautiful tree-lined street. It felt terribly Ivy League compared to my friends' Brunswick digs, even though I could see through the gaps in the bricks to the street outside.
My first housemate was Kate, the cellist. When she dug the spike of her cello into the polished floorboards, the entire house shook with Bach. She drank gin and planted rosemary. She also introduced me to healthy oat-based breakfasts, a habit I maintain to this day! Kate was one year older than me but seemed about a lifetime ahead of me in terms of knowing how to live.
Felicity joined us two weeks after we'd moved in. She had just finished her honours in physics and was waiting to start a PhD in Austria. She would sit next to the heater knitting knee warmers, elbow warmers and arm warmers- all manner of woollen tubes. She was very crafty, and our house was very cold. Flic had the smallest room in the house and her bed was surrounded by towers of boxes. She once had a nightmare that the boxes toppled over and crushed her, and that Katie and I had to pull her mangled body from the mess.
One of Felicity's colleagues was the first person to successfully teleport a photon!! When she told Kate and I, we laughed at her for hours, making terrible jokes about teleporting ourselves into uni. But it turned out to be true.
Felicity moved to Innsbruck and was replaced by Huw, a pianist and student of art history. He hung a colander on his bedroom wall as installation art and listened to Zorn. In summer he got together with one of his uni tutors. I was very suspicious of the whole affair until I got up one Sunday morning and saw a lanky man sitting in garden in the pouring rain, wrapped in Huw’s tiny dressing gown, holding an umbrella in one hand and a cigarette in the other, a book resting in his lap. They were meant to be together!
In 2003 Kate moved to Zagreb to play the cello and was replaced by Bobby, who was studying creative arts. We were very very different: she got up at 5am to go to work, listened to Coldplay and was terribly good at both drawing and being skinny.
Dave also joined us in 2003- he was doing his final year of a mechatronics degree. His major project involved programming a ball to roll autonomously. I never really fully understood what this meant. Periodically he would rush from his room to demonstrate the latest breakthrough with the ball. Once he rushed out of his room in the morning in only his underpants pursued by a sparrow which had crept in through the window. Amongst other things, Dave taught me to cook an omelette properly (ie with runny bits in the middle).
Dan (2004) is another engineer. He took an engineer's approach to the smallest bedroom in the house, constructing a high bunkbed under which he could store a desk and clothes. After some initial testing of the bed, he installed a rail.
tbc...
**In the washing machine. I wash my clothes in the washing machine.
Comments
Post a Comment