Incipient domesticity

The job is over. I have left University Town. Not forever- there are too many people still there who would be too offended if I never visited them for that… but after all my stuff had been packed up and taken away, and as the train pulled away from the platform, it felt an awful lot like forever to me.

I spent a couple of days with my work colleagues, doing a lot of drinking, a lot of eating, and some really heavy-duty cathartic bitching. We lazed about, slept, contemplated going for walks or doing something a little more energetic… but then in the end found that consuming food, buying food, preparing food, bitching, then opening more wine and eating more food took up pretty much all day. We shared jokes that only we would understand. We hooted with laughter over things that only we would ever find funny. We punched the air and shouted, “Yes!” in perfect unison when Davina’s nasal tones announced that Kate had won Big Brother. (Moi – shallow? I don’t know what you mean. Kate’s Big Brother victory is a symbol of progress for the women’s movement. Honestly.)

I split the journey home by stopping off to see Anne in her flat in London. And that was what triggered it. Anne has a mortgage, and a beautiful flat. She is painting the whole thing, and punctuating the days before her job starts with trips to Ikea and purchasing things like oven gloves. Walking through her front door was when it started.

And now I’m back in Bridgeton with my parents and little sister, and I need to arrange to hook up with Alice, who has just moved in with her boyfriend Matt. I expect that this will intensify rather than satiate it.

I am a little ashamed, I have to say. I am young. I should have no long-term ties. I should be planning a round-the-world trip. I should be living in a commune. I should be setting up a sanctuary for abandoned animals. I should be doing a million and one wild and crazy things that would make my grandparents shake their heads and my parents tap their fingers distractedly. And instead what do I want?

I want a flat! I want a flat with Jack, I want to keep a cat, I want to redecorate, I want to spend long evenings watching TV or going for walks across London commons. I want the shiny free-standing metal rack that Alice has in her bathroom to store her toiletries on, I want to spend a day in waiting for the washing machine to arrive. I want to debate the attractiveness of ‘moroccan terracotta’ over ‘tuscan sunrise’ for the living room, and ‘dairy cream’ as opposed to ‘sunflower’ for the bedroom.

I want to keep a big file, with different sections for different utility bills, and I want to know I’m living somewhere for long enough so that I can consider changing gas and electricity providers. I want a washing machine (the house I was in this year just gone didn’t have one, and living without one isn’t pretty) and I want to wash bed linen all the time so that we have perpetually creaky-clean sheets. I want air-fresheners, and I want a small bowl of pot-pourri in the hallway. I want to grow fresh herbs on the window sill, and I want to make large quantities of vegetarian food so I can freeze it in individual bags. I want to have dinner parties, and people to bring flowers and wine. (not student dinner parties where people bring vodka, and everyone is passed out in front of a film by the time the pasta is burnt)

I know that renting a furnished flat makes much more sense in so many ways, but I want to rent an unfurnished one and spend ages in Argos with lists of measurements. I want to arrange my ornaments, and be suddenly struck by inspiration at how one of my throws is going to ‘make’ a room. I mainly find that I want a bed like Anne’s: a king-size bed so large that when I shared it with her, I told her in the morning not to worry about her fears of snoring, since we were so far apart from each other, any communication would have had to be by semaphore. Having spent a lot of this year sharing a single bed with Jack, I want a bed like that. One so large we have to make an appointment to meet in the middle.

The thing is, I’m just not very groovy. I’m not very hip. I’m not very alternative. I’m not sure that internally I’m even very young. I caught myself the other day, having a conversation with a friend about how we preferred a good dinner with friends to frenzied sweaty dancing in a club where you can’t hear anyone talk, and I swear there was only the slightest hint of irony in our voices. Having left University Town, I find myself rather uncomfortably contemplating the rest of my life stretching out before me, (‘like a great stretchy thing’ as I so coherently said to a friend. Give the girl a book deal!) and I’m not entirely sure whether the things I’ve always thought I wanted from it are actually the things I now want to get out and achieve.

What do I really want? I suppose I just want to be happy.

And what does that happiness involve? A glittering career? Forging a path to the top of some male bastion just to show I can? Earning large amounts of money?

I think that for me, happiness is being with Jack, and having family and friends nearby. Having a job that doesn’t drive me mad, doing some creative writing as often as I can, and knowing all the while that Jack is not far away.

Oh- and also having a washing machine. But that’s all.

With love
RTT
xxxx