Home Sweet Home?

Last night, my boyfriend gently broke the news to me that yet another one of our couple friends have put a deposit down on a house. And, retrospectively, I didn't take the news too well.

This followed a night with some of my SP's friends, who are, at merely a year older than me, happily married and settled in domestic bliss, so far so that they have even begun to discuss holidays on top of their mortgages and have decking. Proper, banistered decking, with a few stairs down into the garden and two deckchairs spread out in expectancy, waiting for the Bradford sunshine and accompanying barbecues. And to top it off, a chiminea taking centre stage.

They all flooded towards me, the married, mortgaged couples, settling into their futures. There was even talk, and quite extensive talk at that, about...(now this is still way beyond me, if my boyfriend was trying to halt the countdown of the inner tickings of my biological clock and put an end to any urges of a maternal instinct all he had to do was present me with two puppies)...babies.

Several of my SP's friends now have a sprog or two in tow, and are considering seconds. Luckily, my friends have yet to pursue that route, which means that I'm carefully clutching onto another year where it doesn't matter if I don't remember anyone's birthday and noone calls me Auntie Webstress (apart from my SP when she's addressing the dogs, but I can cope with being an aunt of her two furry friends, the may not have got the nack of writing thank-you notes but then I don't have to supply thoughtful and entertaining gifts to warrant them - I have a feeling I'll be a 'Voucher Aunt').

But it won't be long before one or two of my friends are dreaming of the patter of tiny footprints. And I have to start noting dates and thinking that baby vomit on my shoulder and snot dribbling down their fat, overblown faces really is kind of cute (which it most certainly is not).

In London, I was able to justify my lack of stable home environment as no-one I knew had even thought of a mortgage, let alone realised that they were most likely to be laughed at crossing any Estate Agent's door with less than 250,000 in their back pocket (oddly, apart from us, but that was before we realised to the full extent that I was not, lets say, suited to London Life).

We trialled it for 6 months in a beautiful flat which had an antique oversized toilet seat and a bedroom so cold that I can only imagine it was set on a strategically positioned lay line, as the rest of the house was toasty-warm. Our neighbours were quiet, apart from the rather large woman beneath who used to have Sunday parties and my boyfriend and I were continually disgusted that someone wanted to stay up beyond 10pm on a Sunday night which resulted in us turning up David Attenborough to drown out the trance music below (we had, by this point, accepted our premature middleagedom with welcome arms and were beginning to give in to our continual exhaustedness, made worse by the London Commute). We had a beautiful view across the London rooftops from one view (the other window looked out onto a frequently bricked up block of unwelcoming council flats and occasionally the odd prostitute or two, but I just didn't look out of that one). I even had my own kitchen where I could prepare beans on toast to my heart's content (and frequently did) with my own clean utensils.

But this trial period in our 'home' was tainted in our closing months. Our boiler started spewing out gas, leaving us, due to appalling management, without central heating, cooking facilities and hot water for an entire week in January. I had more curt conversations with our letting agency than I have with the people at British Gas (which, over the years, has summounted to a fair few). To add fuel to the (non-existent) fire, a few days before Christmas, we had received a letter basically telling us to get the hell out of the house in two months as our landlady (who was, by all accounts, evil, and that was the description by one of the letting agency staff, we still remain spared of that terror) had decided to rent the property to her friends.

Those last two months in our flat, making up a total of 1/3rd of our time in our own home as a couple, were some of the most miserable times I've had in a while. It is difficult to see past the bleach-infused glasses to the happy times that we had together in that flat, as the closing days were spent swearing profusely about the terrible management, how our bond was to be slashed for various things that we had not done (its happened all too often before), and how it was clear that noone had ever given the flat a thorough clean before (which, obviously, included us but we were easily able to brush over that and concentrate our energies on slagging off previous tenants).

But I have now been without my own home for 2 months and am beginning to long for spaces that are mine, where I decide to put things, what I decide to do with things. I have been living with a few belongings for over 8 weeks and am consistently recycling the same few pieces of jewelry, re-stacking the same clothes (which are currently all winter clothes, but its just as well seeing as Bradford remembered briefly what Spring was about last week, and then promptly forgot, settling for sharp winds and battering rain instead, once I had just become acclimatised to not wearing socks in bed).

I will finally have a home of my own again in September 2007. I have no idea of where that will be in the country, or, possibly, the world, but it will be a home. I wonder how long it will be before I complain about its imperfections and its problems. I did too quickly with mine, perhaps. Although it was easier to leave a home we had ended up despising than one that still has your heart.

I have put down my foot with my boyfriend: I shall never rent again. While, amazingly, we received the entirety of our bond back, I don't hold out hopes for my previous accommodation (Yorkshire Lass's current house), and have previously lost, at least parts of, several previous bonds. I have been placed in accommodation that I tolerated at the time but in retrospect it should have been condemned (a fellow student's house actually was). I have dealt with my fair share of unscrupulous landlords and psychotic housemates and don't wish to relive these experiences ever, ever again.

One memorable occasion in Bradford, I woke at midnight to hear voices in the kitchen next to my bedroom. These voices turned out to be our landlord and several of his friends with a blowtorch (and an abandonment of all safety regulations) attempting to fix our boiler. This was around the time that he also thought it was a good idea to pull down our bathroom ceiling, meaning that we were without washing or cooking facilities for a month and became regulars at the swimming pool (for which, after threatening him with the small claims court, we managed to reduce our rent to half pay for the duration, although I don't think that really helped to cover our Wetherspoons meals).

This, incidentally, was the house that my housemate, attempting to get a piece of toast out of the toaster, produced half a mouse (its frazzled head followed shortly after). And I was eating toast at the time. This house also played host to 5 rats that regularly came out in the yard that my ground floor bedroom window looked out onto. And that I had to move out of a week early because a mouse had committed suicide under my bedroom floorboards. (These tales are, I should add, extremely tame in comparison to some Bradfordian student stories).

Not renting, for the next 18 months at least, is actually quite a realistic plan. Renting from your friends and parents isn't quite the same, they don't expect a bond for a start (well, at least, I hope they don't, I really should discuss that...). My boyfriend has, however, gently pointed out that a penniless writer and someone with a terrifying career development loan might not be a mortgage lender's idea of first time buyer heaven and that we may have to rent again. I am fiercely ignoring this possibility and have already planted imaginary daffodils (the only thing that remain hardy enough to suffer under my green fingers) in invisible window boxes in a place of my own.

I gave myself a severe talking to after I went to bed last night (not out loud, obviously. That would just be weird, it would disturb the dogs and my SP's partner might have discussions about evicting my monologging self). It is all too easy to compare the physicalities of what I have with my friends.

I have been given the opportunity to follow my dream that in another life my mortgaged arse would never have been able to contemplate. I can spend my wage in TK Maxx (and that's a lot of clothes) without having to assign money for leaking pipes. I have never in my life spent a day tile shopping. I do not go to B & Q at the weekend to discuss the merits of various shower attachments (maybe I should rephrase that...).

I have never seen a bank holiday advert for half price sofas at DFS and thought 'that's worth a look...'. I have absolutely no commitments and, should I desire, I could take off tomorrow (although I wouldn't, lets not get carried away here, I'm not that adventurous, that sort of thing needs planning). I have two physically valuable items in my life. And my laptop is worth more than my car (that isn't saying a gread deal on my laptop's front but my dear car is soldiering valiantly on, even if she has cost me over a grand since my boyfriend fled the country).

It takes a while to remind myself that all these things will come, in time. I am not a particularly patient person and, while I do not want everything today, sometime tomorrow or by the end of the week would be quite nice.

At least, for the time being, while my boyfriend and I do what we need to do, my friends and my sister will humour me by letting me stay and cook beans on toast and make a cup of tea or twelve in their house.