Landed.

A place name, plucked from the air during an argument about our future – “what about Brighton?”

“Brighton could be an option! I can get the train back to work – for now at least – and there’s bound to be more going on, musically, for you.”

And so here we are. DB took charge and had a couple of frantic weeks of booking viewings of studio flats and being let down by lettings agents, and then decided to go through Spare Room in a bid to ensure we didn’t end up in one dingy basement room. Every day, Mother Dearest would ask “have you found a place to live yet?” and make her disapproval at the lack of progress known – which, you’ll be surprised to know, wasn’t especially helpful. You can choose your friends…

It was my gamble that paid off in the end (she says, not at all smugly). I answered an ad on Spare Room that had no photos but promised a sea view and a central location, and one sunny Sunday, we headed down there.

Driving past the royal-icing houses that are just so Brighton, hopes were high. And then we came to a brick block at the end of the road. “Looks like that’s it. Oh. Well, it might be nice inside.”

Up to the third floor (DB: “I don’t have a good feeling about this”) and to be honest, I was getting some faintly 'crack den' vibes.

But inside it was …fine. Not perfect, but certainly not the fleapit DB and I were expecting, in our middle-class anxiety.

Tiny kitchen that can only really have two people in it at a time. Tiny bathroom that DB attacked with bleach on Wednesday night and now looks shiny and white – but may not stay that way, given that it’s going to be used by one woman and 3 men. Lucky me. And our room – well, they weren’t kidding about the sea view. Two large windows look out over a little park and straight on the sea.

And that’s my second-favourite bit (the first being the simple fact that it’s our space, away from parents, in a city full of real people and not middle-aged Tories) – I can see the sea every day. I wake up and it’s there, smooth and endlessly blue, sometimes with rain-filled mists rolling off it towards us, sometimes clear and dotted with boats. I come home and I can see it as I leave the station. After work, I charge down there to have the office cobwebs blown from my head by the breeze, and to listen to the roar of seafoam on shingle. For someone who’s terrified of being in it and eating things from it, I can’t get enough of being right by it.

I don't know how long we'll be here for - he needs London, really, and I crave Bristol - but for now, it will certainly do. More than that - I think I could fall in love with Brighton. We're already off to a flying start.

On the Bambi bookshelf

 

We know how I feel about things that are over-hyped - I'm childishly reluctant to partake in them - but Drummer Boy's mother gave me this beautiful hardback copy of The Miniaturist for Christmas, so it would have been churlish not to give it a go. I don't think I can emphasise enough just how far from my reading comfort zone this is - I mean, Amsterdam in the late 1600s, what? Thanks but no thanks - but it didn't take long for me to fall in love with it. Yes, it's set in a time and a place that I couldn't be less familiar with if I tried, but it's so readable, and has stacks of drama and a touch of the supernatural, and really, if you haven't read it yet, you should.

Current inspiration

Apologies once again for the slightly wanky subheading, but really, nothing else fits. A couple of posts ago, I wrote about having a God-awful week, and that streak of shit luck is only just beginning to move on and bother some other poor sod. When everything goes a bit wrong at once, you sort of want to rebuild yourself. Rip up your life as it is and start again. The trouble is, after the age of 20, 21, this is considerably harder to do - you're tied into things more, like jobs and relationships and habits. You can't change it all, but you can make the best of the bad bits while you gradually unpick and re-stitch the bits that have potential. 

Caitlin Moran's novel How To Build a Girl deals with this exact problem; that feeling of "this is not how I want my life to be, so how do I change it? How do I get from here to there?" What Johanna, the protagonist, does is steal bits from other people - so with that in mind, my current source of inspiration is Sali Hughes, journalist, Guardian beauty writer, author of Pretty Honest and all-round good egg. Not only is she a brilliant writer, she also worked her way up from literally nothing. If you read nothing else about housing benefits, you should read her take on the issue.  This is also a fantastic piece, and this interview's a good'un.

Over and out.

Beer and cheese: on moving in together

I finally have my own kitchen, cluttered and temporary though it may be.

So Drummer Boy and I have sort of moved in together. Not properly - we're looking after his grandparents' house (as they are sadly both in a care home now) while decisions are made about what becomes of the property. The house is conveniently three doors away from my own parents' place, so it's easy for me to dash home when I get too cold, or I run short of socks.

Here's a few things I've learned in the ten days or so we've been unofficially cohabiting.

1) Gender stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. In the last week, I've heard myself say the following things:

"You didn't make the bed this morning!"

"Why do you just leave things in the sink? Or by the sink? They don't have legs, they're not going to walk themselves through hot soapy water on to the draining board."


"Erm, do red knickers not belong in a dark wash? I was kind of hoping to have some underwear this week..."

2) The idea of something is often far worse than the actual thing itself. For reasons that were 70% hormonal and 30% genuine angst, we managed to have a serious argument every day for the three days before we actually moved in together. Once actually in the house, it was all sunshine and rainbows and "do you want a cup of tea?"

3) I have spent the last three days complaining about, but trying to hide any 'evidence' of, having fallen to the Communists/having Aunt Irma to visit/hosting the Red Wedding (pick your euphemism). He's an educated and liberal man, but by God, he must be protected from the realities of menstruation.

4) Tea and cheese is the best post-work, pre-dinner snack. On Fridays, swap tea for beer.

5) It is possible to be quite comfortable in a house that errs on the side of chilly, has a lot of floral wallpaper and brown carpets, and is home to a set of curtains that can best be described as "quintessentially Seventies". You can just make them out below:

I was describing them to a work colleague, who has a degree in something art-and-design-related, and she got really excited and said "Ebay them! Seriously! Some vintage fabric freak will go nuts for those!"

6) While I've spent the last two years or so wishing we were living together, it does take some getting used to. In the week it's fine, because I'm out of the house between 8.15 and 6.15. The weekends have been a bit "are you still here? Can't you go out? No? All right, I'm going out. No, don't come with me."

7) But when all is said and done, I picked a good'un. He is easy to live with, and - importantly - supremely tolerant, and doesn't mind that I get into my fluffy white dressing gown at the earliest opportunity once I get home from work, and proceed to waft around the house like a cuddly ghost. Most touchingly of all, when he could tell I hadn't slept well on Sunday night (that 'back to work' dread after a week away from the office had me waking up every hour or so), at 6am, he whispered "have an extra hour in bed and I'll drive you to work". I could have cried with gratitude. Sitting next to him on the sofa now, while he reads out funny comments in AskReddit threads and I try and stop him reading over my shoulder, I feel incredibly lucky - and incredibly smug.


In other less nauseating news... if you want to make the most of Orange Wednesdays before they're gone forever, go and see Whiplash. It's amazing, and you don't have to be a drummer, a drummer's girlfriend, or a jazz fan to enjoy it. I didn't think I'd live to see the day where I enjoyed a pyschological thriller about jazz drumming, but I have.

This has nothing to do with jazz drumming.