It smelled exactly the same just now, when I grabbed the last pile of things and carried them out. It looked the same, too, when I put up the long red curtains that were there when I moved in. I’m only moving upstairs to the room vacated by a couple who are leaving, but it feels quite momentous. The dynamic in the house may very well change, considering the leaving flatmates were giant, affable personalities. They’ve taken quite a bit of things with them, which of course they are entitled to, but it too has contributed to a feeling of change in the house.

The mattress topper I have is slightly too big for the bed, and most of my things are spread across the floor. That reflects a bit of how I feel, too – a little uncomfortable and scattered. It remains to make this room, gutted to the bare minimum, feel like home. I guess I’ll have to spend money for that to happen, though I wouldn’t want to spend too much considering I never know where and when I’ll be moving next and moving with lots of stuff is a pain. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to spend money on throwawayism in the form of a load of flat-packed fibreboard furniture which you can’t really transport once assembled.

I’ll have to do the same thing I did a year ago and try it out. It’ll settle, as will I. It’s just made me think of how I have no clue where I’ll be in a year’s time from now.

The news did hit me hard, I won’t lie. I spent a good hour and a bit ambling around North London to clear my head on Sunday a week ago, wandering vaguely on a circular route that ended up being around five miles.  I will definitely have to do that again, as the lack of a camera prevented me from capturing some really nice shots, from young rowers on the canal to boarded-up post-industrial gloom of trackside business premises long abandoned.

So, to get the house full again, I’ve had to make my room look as presentable as possible for a prospective female housemate, because gender balance tends to help with things. If anything, it’s made me think about how I can effectively store my meagre belongings once I move up a floor into one of the departing housemates’ rooms. It’s been pretty stressful on the whole, having viewings/housemate auditions pretty much every night, coordinating schedules and other admin at the same time as working full days. Oh, and racking my brain about another development I’m not sure what to do with.

I’ve been offered a job that would start much earlier than my current contract finishes. Apparently it’d be mine if I applied for it, and the colleagues would be enthusiastic to have me. All good and great but though it’s more money, I can’t help but think I would have wanted something more career-oriented as my next job. I don’t want to say too much about what this offer would be but somehow I feel this’d be an easy way out, perhaps too easy. I like the field (it’s vaguely academic) but as much as I’ve never thought about career advancement, the lack of immediately visible prospects from it bothers me.

And I know I should always be looking out for number one, but telling everyone I work with, fixed-term and temporary as my current contract is, that I’d be leaving for greener pastures fills me with dread. There would be no coming back, I don’t think.

To drive away the cold and the gloom, we holed up in a cosy pub with some housemates in the evening. It, too, was pretty empty, probably owing to a lot of people leaving work early.  Didn’t matter a bit to us as we had a fantastic time, from the initial chat with just three of us, to eventual rowdiness once more people joined. Somehow we ended up spilling out of the pub at closing time singing Hava Nagila, until it was remarked by someone in the group that the song had, in fact, become “too commercialised”. I don’t know either.

Having fun like that kind of made up for it being even harder than usual to get out of bed this morning.

The experience has made me think about living in a shared house and the way that illness affects that dynamic. I most likely caught this off one of my housemates, and quite likely will pass it on to at least one of them, if not more people. I’ve tried to hole myself up in my room, under my delightfully warm blanket, watching endless videos and things and spending far too much time listening to various internet radio stations, because I’ve wanted to avoid doing precisely that. Plus, I have to be in full health for the coming weekend, where troupe of London folk will descend on Vienna to wreak havoc that city. Us not knowing the first thing about what to do in Vienna just makes for a more interesting trip, I think.

So, on the one hand I’ve been withdrawing, but on the other I was immensely glad that a housemate of mine told me she could get me anything I might need. I was all right (dosed-up enough on cold medication) to go to the shop yesterday and have food for tonight too, so I should be fine. It’s nice to know that we’re not just people inhabiting the same building, but actually care about each other. Or I guess I knew, but something like this just reinforces that thought.

There is also a cat on my street that likes to hang out on the pavement begging for attention from passersby. It has a crystal-studded collar and is of substantial size so I know it’s cared for. It nearly broke my heart to kick it out when it made a beeline for my door when I opened it. I know it’s cold outside but still… my housemates (as lovely as they are) are not cat-people. And, like I said, it has a collar, meaning it also has a home. I did think I would use it as a warming, purring cushion for a few hours, though… Would anybody notice?

The Irish girl who’s visiting is showing her captain’s hat she got in the charity shop underneath where she lives. It suits her quirky features.

I should probably sleep but it’s just too chilled to go to bed just yet.

Choosing someone is exceedingly difficult. They’d all love to move in, to the extent that one guy last night exclaimed to his girlfriend on the phone that “yeah I’m still here, it’s amazing, the people are lovely… I want to move here so much”.

But, as much as it pains me to think that we’d be turning a lot of good choices down, maybe the reason we as a house have not been able to come to a decision is because the Right Person hasn’t walked through the door yet? I really hope we had more time for this auditioning thing, though it is really tiring to have new people come in on multiple nights. But we don’t – the decision pretty much has to be made tonight because the first of September is just around the corner and the current housemate will be gone by then.

I’m still not tired, somehow. Really screws you up, this last stretch of term. And I was meant to be up and at ‘em really early tomorrow…

I really like my housemates.

This is the view from our upstairs bathroom. I don’t think it could get more English than this. The rooftops of terraced houses, the thin back gardens bordered by extensions of various sizes, the clay chimneys that most likely haven’t been used for years… Actually the last one is a lie – I’ve seen a raging fire in the fireplace of a house next door to mine. It’s a little grey, and a little grim, but also kind of beautiful. I think I’ve grown used to this place, when I can honestly say that I think that. Objectively it’s not stunning or anything, but there is a kind of industrial appeal to it. As it happens, a friend of mine walked up as I was resizing the photos in this post and said “that’s straight out of Coronation Street, that.”

And this is the view from the window of my room. It’s toward the back garden, which is really just a box of lawn. But it’s still enough to be an asset in inner London, which tends to be all bricked-up and paved over and dead. So there’s the vines down the wall and the trees arching over it, and the little pots of herbs down the side across from the kitchen door. It could be worse, it really could. I can’t wait to have the window open when I’m in the room and just let the smell of fresh foliage waft through.

More to come, maybe. Certainly of the room, once (if) I get it into a presentable state.

Every now and then, if the house is otherwise quiet, I hear and feel this quiet rumbling from somewhere. It’s definitely a train due to the clatter toward the end of the run, but since it doesn’t seem to come from the direction of the (several) overland tracks around my house, I’ve come to the to the tentative conclusion that it’s probably a tube train going through a tunnel somewhere near my back garden. If I had time, I’d investigate. I wonder if TfL (or anyone else) has geographically-accurate maps of the tube tunnels?

My mom was due to fly back home via Amsterdam today. I don’t know whether her flight got delayed or diverted because of the Turkish Airlines crash. Hope not – she deserves to get back home safe and easy.

Argh. They’ve sent someone round to re-seal the entire bath/shower tiling, meaning that we can’t take a shower for another 24 hours. This was told to me by my housemate, sitting in her bathrobe with freshly-washed hair, drinking a cup of tea. No such luck for me. I’m going out for a drink or two with friends tonight and don’t want to look like absolute crap which means I’ll have to swing by Uni (again!) in order to take a shower there. Then I get to carry around a wet towel all evening. Luckily you can no longer smoke in bars so I’ll be reasonably fresh for work tomorrow.

They could have told me. They really could have. The agency, or the housemates, whoever.

I may be moving up to North London. Really far North, nosebleed North. I just haven’t quite made up my mind but I suppose I should.

Update: I just took the most appallingly terrible shower maybe ever. Seriously, I’ve had better in the bush in Africa. Not only were the men’s changing room showers completely out of action forcing me to the Old Building basement ones deep within the bowels of the University, once I got there the water pressure was nonexistent. So there under a little trickle of warm water I tried to wash my hair. Not fun. I really don’t see how those four showers can be the only ones meant for men on campus. I’d hate to think what girls with long hair do.

Pros: It’s clean and quiet (the others are all PhD students), there’s plenty of space with a large kitchen and a living room, there’s a garden and two bathrooms. It’s all furnished and seemed warm, though my room would be on the ground floor.

Cons: Maybe the guy doing most of the talking when I went round emphasized cleanliness a little overtly. “It is very important for us to have the place very clean”. I’m all for a weekly cleaning rota and cleaning up after myself in the kitchen but I’d hate to end up with passive-aggressive “please clear the plughole of any hairs after you shower” notes passed under my door. Also, it’s not ideal in terms of transport – a mile and a half (so most likely on a bus in the mornings) to the tube, after which a mercifully short 15 minute ride to Holborn. I’ve never lived on a tube line – is that standard? I guess I could walk it for exercise. The room is also pretty small with no real room for a desk but on the other hand I’ve never learned to study at a desk at home, hell – to study in general! The desk in my current room has seen me do other things than pile paper on it maybe once or twice during the past half year.

Oh, and a big minus – agency fees. They’d fall on me as I am the reason they have to draw up a new contract (don’t ask me, English estate agents confound all logic) and that’s something like £150-200 on top of the returnable deposit that I simply wouldn’t get back. So in a way, it’d be £33.33 per month extra rent (still keeping it manageable I guess). And of course if I do end up staying in London and not going to one of the other universities I’m thinking about (just how did this MSc business become my goal in life anyway?) I’d have to cough up again as the contract is extended in late August. Or I could move again I guess. Sigh.

Comments appreciated. No, really. This place would be a massive load off my back but the list of cons above is daunting. But will they be similar in any other place? Maybe. Aargh.

The internet connection we got is, in theory, pretty good. In practice, I think the architecture of the house is giving me grief with connections, as I seem to lose connectivity every few minutes. It may be just me typing in my bed that makes it flaky, but I’m directly above the modem on the next floor up – there shouldn’t be that bad an obstruction to disrupt the signal.

Oh, and another thing. Work. I had somehow envisioned me working nearly full time over summer, as ever since I started at my part-time job people had been telling me good things about the money. Now my boss has posted a schedule that people can tack their desired shifts on. But get this: He actually says “for the time being, please do not take consecutive days.” What?! So not only would I be splitting a five-day work week 4 ways (as there are four of us), it would mean I wouldn’t be able to split it in the most sensible possible way (have one full week at work, one week off, say) that would allow me to actually have some holiday time as well.

I somehow didn’t see this coming. I knew there would be less shifts to go around during the summer, but also thought there would be less people staying on. I’m still a bit dazed from all this, as I’ve just woken up. In any case, it looks like I’ll have to find a second job to cover my expenses of staying in London. And how will I respond to the email from my boss? I’d need to indicate my availability for shifts on specific (non-consecutive) days that would fix my schedule and therefore prevent me from planning for any contingency. How is one to deal with this kind of situation? Damn.

And here I am. Working like a charm. I’m not sure of the achieved speed, but it isn’t too bad. Now I can do all the silly things again like chat on MSN from bed or listen to eclectic internet radio while hanging my laundry. I’ve missed the convenience. Maybe I can get the re-found excitement out of my system by the time it’s time to get back to serious research, so that I’m not constantly being distracted by the wonders of the internet.