"There is only so much you can learn in one place, the more that I wait, the more time that I waste." Madonna's lyrics have special significance for me, for I am now living in the fifth different flat this year. Four moves since May, three of which in the last six weeks.
My one-bedroom flat in Holborn may have been spacious, but it was an ice box. In early June, when the temperature was in the mid-twenties, my sitting room remained icy enough to warrant the use of a fan heater. I dreaded the thought of a winter there, but rationalised my decision by likening it to the actions of a bygone era: I've taken a little flat in Holborn for the summer. By the end of September, I reached the point of being ready to flatshare, with the goal of saving enough money to afford an overseas trip each month in 2007. So at the end of September, just before my trip to Sitges, I started my search for a suitable flatshare.
I looked at flats in Elephant & Castle, Lambeth North, Fitzrovia, and NoHo, before settling on a flat in Old Street, sharing with a gentle, gracious, and genuinely likeable guy. Bill is a recently-outed 51yo father of four, who left his wife (and two of those kids) in April this year, to be gay, full-time. Most people would run a mile at that prospect of a flatmate, and I should have done the same, but after repeatedly being knocked back on flats, I was becoming quite desperate. I also quite genuinely liked the guy (even if I was wary of where he was at, with the gay thing). But if I had any doubts, I needn't have worried for too long. Five days before moving in, our landlord decided to break the lease, with the justification that he intended to move into the flat himself. By this time, my deposit cheque had cleared, and I really didn't have sufficient time to flathshare hunt elsewhere. So I moved into Old Street with the knowledge that I'd have to move out by 15 December.
As frustrating as it seemed at the time, this scenario was quite fortuitious. You see, as much as I really like Bill, I don't think a flatshare is the ideal domestic environment for him right now. Presently unburdened by employement, his day consists of trawling Gaydar for the day's conquest, and as was often the case, one of many each day. I consider myself to be very liberally-minded on such matters, but this situation did test my limits, the longer that we shared. All I can do is now laugh at the events that made my eyes roll, and freaked out my friends when I later told them... Like the first weekend, when Bill invited a "special friend" over at 10am for a Sunday morning shag... And managed to leave the door ajar as they got busy in the bedroom. Ewww!!! Who wants to hear their flatmate getting busy in the next room? If only I knew what was in store for me, because that is what happened, with increasing frequency, day after day, week after week. I never thought that chemically-unaided quintagenarians could have that much stamina. And when I wasn't directly hearing it, I still heard about it. After a day at work, it's customary - and only polite - to ask one's flatmate, "how was your day?". Bill always answered in excruciating, detail, leaving very little to the imagination (as if anyone was imagining), each time reminding me of one of life's ironic truisms: that polite people are always at a disadvantage.
After a few weeks in Old Street, I learned the true nature of the circumstances that forced us out of that flat. Bill moved into the flat to live with the boyfriend he had taken up with, around the time of the split with his wife. It turns out that the owner of the flat is an ex-boyfriend of Bill's boyfriend. That relationship had been over for some time, but our landlord was always miffed that he had lost his boyfriend to Bill... even though the landlord himself was married, and living a duplicitous life with a woman somewhere. Confused? I was. And if it weren't for the salacious complexity of the drama, I'd have lost interest weeks ago.
The final straw of Old Street came on the day that I moved out. Bill was entertaining a regular visitor in his bedroom, on this Saturday afternoon. The special friend (an "Oriental", to use Bill's peculiarly archaic and frustratingly non-PC lingo) decided to fix a drink for himself and his host. So while I was preparing a meal for myself, the friend bounces into the kitchen as naked as the day he was born. An awkward moment ensued. I averted my gaze with haste, while the friend awkwardly stopped in his tracks. And what do you think happened next? He just kept on doing what he intended to do when he walked out of the bedroom... And prepared to make two gin and tonics in his birthday suit. Fueled with rage, I summoned every ounce of patience and enquired, with painstaking politeness, "Would you like a towel?" "No, I have one", came the Empress' reply, seemingly unaware of his new clothes. "Well", I seethed through gritted teeth, "I'd prefer that you wear it", as I exited stage right.
From Old Street, I moved into a flat in the king of council housing, the Barbican Estate. I have been desperate to live in the Barbican since arriving in London seventeen months ago. An opportunity presented itself, and so I jumped at the prospect of living in a three-bedroom flat, fitted out in all its original 70s glamour (the Barbican has listed heritage status), with spacious rooms, ceiling-to-floor double-glazed windows, and balconies off every room. Not only is the Barbican right in the heart of the Square Mile, in the City of London, but the sitting room had a view of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral... all for £150/wk including utilities. It was a bargain. But like many bargains, it came at a tremendous price. The night that I moved in, a Saturday, I went to bed around 11:30pm. There was still a bit of road noise on Aldersgate Street outside my window, but I figured this was a Saturday-night-thing, and popped in some ear plugs. At 2:30am, when I was woken by the sound of a police siren, despite the ear plugs, I started to have second thoughts. Even after downing a sleeping tablet, I still lay awake for 40 minutes, listening to the hum of street traffic through the ear plugs, cursing my obsession with the Barbican. The next morning I consulted my flatmates about the road noise, both of whom related how they felt just the same when they moved in... and how they both cried every night for two weeks because they couldn't sleep, and wondered if they would ever be able to sleep there (which is exactly how I felt). I wasn't keen on two weeks of no sleep, so I rang the flatmate who lived at my second-preference flatshare, which by divine fortune, was still available. So within 24 hours of moving into the Barbican, I planned to move out, executing the deed a few nights later. It was only after I made this decision that I learnt that my room in that flat remained unlet for several months - presumably because of the road noise - and that my flatmates weren't that tolerant of the noise either. One of the flatmates wore ear plugs every single night, and the other is partially hard of hearing!!
My new flat is in Clerkenwell, in the old of parish of St James. My bedroom was the sitting room of a ground floor two-bedroom flat. I have dual aspect windows, southerly and westerly, the latter overlooking a little private garden. Most of the other properties in Wharton Street are expensive brownstones, especially around Lloyd Square. Wharton Street runs down a hill, providing an unobstructed postcard view of the BT Tower in the distance. And because of the aggressive traffic calming put in place by Islington Council, there is almost no traffic, even though I'm only an eight minute walk from Kings Cross station, and even less to Angel.
