housemate

Ok, just a couple of disclaimers for this post, in small print:

(If you think you might be offended by brutal descriptions and despairing comments, please do not read this post)

1) This post is LONG. Sorry. Not even 1000 words long. If you’re going to read this, you may need to clear your schedule.

2) Much of this post is hearsay and all of it is personal opinion. While many believe these things to be fact, none of this would hold true in a court of law. I am not publishing this to be malicious, nor do I have any intention of publicising this information beyond my blog. Names have been removed. Any single part of it could in fact just be a figment of my imagination. Most definitely the part that appals you is. Any chance that the offending statements sound real, or like they happened is, in your case, entirely coincidental.

3) If you’re reading this, part 2) stands to cover me. All of this post is real. None of this post is real. Any comments or complaints you may have can be sent to the email address listed in the About section. I cannot be guaranteed to respond though.

Aw bless, he has friends.

SHOCKER: I’m not writing to complain.

Reading back through my recent posts it seems like I’ve developed a penchant for a moan. I’m not actually inspired by hatred for the world. Nor do I despise it. Actually, at the moment I’m feeling pretty happy with the state of affairs that I’m in.

True, I’m very, very poor in a sense (I can eat, but I can’t buy media etc).

True, I’m unemployed, in a sense (I’m being interviewed and soon to become a student).

Nevertheless, I’m happy. Both of these truths have a deadline. Eventually they’ll end.

I’m happy in the meantime because though I live nowhere near any of my friends, I know that they are there. I don’t know why I’m so keen to relate this of late, but I truly do value my friends.

In their honour, here’s a bio of two of the rascals. I’ve omitted the names because for you guys its not too relevant and (if they read it) they’ll know.

Buddy 1 I think people truly don’t understand the value of friends made at University. I met him and ended up sharing a room with him during the first year, and a house in the second and the fourth years too. He’s earned himself a bio because through all the dirges I’ve dragged him through, he’s still standing by me. Admittedly, we’ve sometimes not seen eye to eye, and sometimes there’s been tough calls made, but at the end of it all, he still keeps coming back for more. I always remember a moment we spent in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, Germany. We’d been drinking all morning, and had run out of cigarettes. Duly, we combined change and fetched some from the machine, only to realise that we’d pulled out filter-less cigarettes.

I don’t know whether you’ve experienced the horror that we felt in that moment, as we opened the pack to the sight of tobacco. Groans were made and sobs of woe, as I held up the cigarette and peered into the twin ends of tobacco. We rallied. I exclaimed “we shall waste not want not!” or something similar. Probably not similar. I was drunk. Probably “Nargh mynah haha manarh?!”. He laughed. He ensured me that this was not going to be pleasant. He was right. Smoking that cigarette was like using a tube full of really thin straws or hairs. Within seconds I was scratching my tongue trying to remove the nastiness. He laughed, and went to buy some more, filtered cigarettes.

Buddy 2 stands for evidence that boys and girls can be friends. We met a while back as a result of housing desperation. I was just starting on a Primary PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education) course, which I had attained through the clearing process. As a result of clearing, I then had a week within which I had to find a house, find some housemates, rent and move into said house ready to start Uni the following Monday. Hectic doesn’t even begin to describe it. Internet housing forums became my best friend, the refresh button my “man’s best friend”, obediently keeping me in the loop.

I get an email from a girl. She says she is looking too, would it be possible to look together? I obliged, and within a day we had two others and then within some more days, we were signing papers for accommodation. Turns out, unsurprisingly, that renting with complete strangers can be a bit of a lottery. The other two managed to provide some really awkward situations. For example, inappropriate advances and theft tastefully combined with sodden floors and weird odours. Buddy 2 and I ended up sharing a similar sense of normal, and as a result became friends. Most of the funniest moments we shared we largely due to her temperance for alcohol (haha ), but one particular night shone brightest – her, one of the other housemates, chris and I hit the town to celebrate my birthday. We went to an Italian, where, for no apparent reason, housemate decided to leave. Plain walked out of the restaurant just as we were seated. Buddy 2 tries to console housemate, to no avail. Chris tries to make sure housemate took a taxi at least, and was told “I’m not getting a taxi, he’ll only rape me” as housemate took his proffered fiver and walked off. (Thinking about it, housemate deserves a blog post. Expect one soon.)

Buddy 2 was also one of the first people to ever see me perform karaoke too. I performed Take That’s “Want you back” with some others as a birthday wish / demand. That then started a year long obsession with Singstar. Good times.

I’ll stop here before this becomes an essay. I read somewhere that though we do truly value friends and family, it’s rare that we share this fact with them. Tell them – they’ll appreciate it and you’ll feel great for telling them!