Onward!!

One of my housemates is moving out, and finding a replacement has turned into a multi-evening ordeal. We’ve seen a whole bunch of people but the problem is that all of them seem nice in their own ways. There’s a calm and collected girl, a guy who seems like a laugh but may be just a little bit too much based on first impressions (which are inevitably always a bit off) and a German who in his spare time flies planes.

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.

It strikes me as a kind of repeating surprise how nice it is to have a radio on in the house. Right now a housemate of mine has Radio 2 on in the kitchen with something suitably cheesy, probably Pet Shop Boys, playing at just the right (low) volume. It’s just… homely.

I came home after 11pm to find one of my housemates in the kitchen preparing a quick snack before bed. As we talked about music, bands we’re going to see, and my plans for the weekend following my final week of university here, two more showed up. So we talked some more, laughed at one’s antics making cheese on toast and suddenly it’s half past midnight!

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.

I guess having these up here will make me more likely to actually have something to show people about the place I live in now, rather than the mass of disorganised folders that my photos are currently. Picture posts tend to be popular among the two of you that read this so here goes.

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.

I swear I’ll put pictures of the new place up soon. Most likely that’ll be when I’m procrastinating over the insane mountain of work I’m struggling under during the next 3 weeks. And, yeah, when my room no longer looks like a mess of laundry, bags and random “temporary” piles of stuff.

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.