First night. Well, kind of anyway!

*smacks hand to forehead* Forgot to actually publish this. It’s now a day later!

As I’m typing this I’m alone in my flat for the first time which is quite surprising seeing I’ve been here for over 48 hours so far!

Yet again I’ve moved houses for the umpteenth time in the last six years and I am again attempting to live on my own, although I’m seriously considering getting a housemate. Past experiences considering of crazy Chinese people [I lived with four that were called Ching, Chang, Ying and Tong!], a very dysfunctional family and a group of bitchy hairdressers to just name a few have taught me that it’s not always easy finding the right people to gel with. The only time in the past years I’ve truly enjoyed living somewhere was for two and a half years with a couple that’s become very close friends.

My past houseshares:

• Moved to the UK in 2003 and stayed for three months with a friend and some of his friends in a student houseshare. It was a very intense summer, probably fuelled by the heatwave which forced us to sleep in tents in the garden for weeks as the house became unbearable hot!
• Moved out as the contract was only for three months and the student whose room I’d been renting returned for another year at uni. Ended up in a houseshare via an agency with two Chinese students who went to sleep at four in the afternoon and a Polish woman who was in the country illegally. She also had her boyfriend move in which was great fun as he kept coming onto everyone else in the house. Came home after work one evening just five months later to find the locks changed as the landlord wanted to have his daughter move into my room instead. Nice to give notice..
• Found a room with a, as it turns out later very dysfunctional, family within 24 hours and lived there for a year. The family members were bearable individually, but impossible combined and Christmas that year was definitely memorable! I did meet their daughter though and we became close friends.
• With the traffic in Reading as bad as it is, I decided to move closer to town centre to minimise my commute, although it only chopped about thirty minutes off my total journey which was three hours per day originally. But, thirty minutes was still better than nothing and the garden of the house seemed like an oasis. Shame that the same can’t be said about the housemates which were two bitchy hairdressers, a Canadian who had about ten girlfriends at once and an English girl that didn’t like me for whichever reason. I made the mistake of admitting my Molluscophobia to them and found a nice present outside my room door on the landing one morning..
• Unsurprisingly I was very excited when a colleague mentioned that him and his partner had a free room in their house as their current housemate moved out just days before and I moved within days. Stayed with them at the first house for ten months.
• We moved to the second house together where we were joined by another housemate. I stayed for sixteen months in that house which seemed doomed from the start with everything breaking constantly!
• Decided to move into my own house which seemed like a big step as I’d never lived on my own before. At the time it wasn’t the best idea as I clearly wasn’t ready so I only stayed there for six months. Parts of the problem were also that it was quite out of the way and a trip into town took a good twenty minutes on a quite irregular bus service.
• After staying in various places with friends and Bed and Breakfasts for several months, I moved to Germany to stay with my grandparents for a couple of months.
• Moved back to the UK to the outskirts of London as I found a job near there. This didn’t work out due to some crazy housemates and a ridiculous landlord who showed people round the room before giving me notice while I was in bed asleep. Great fun..
• Stayed in Spain for month.
• Stayed at my dad’s in Germany for a month.
• Stayed several months at my grandparents. Again.
• Came back to the UK beginning of June this year and stayed for a month back at my friends in the doomed house initially to housesit their dogs and house while they were on holidays and then staying on until my flat became available.
• Moved into this flat a couple of days ago..

Many people have been quite surprised that I’ve not only decided to move back to the UK, but more so that I’m back in Reading. I’m not back in Reading for the town itself as there are far too many ‘ghosts of the past’, but it is effectively my hometown as it’s where I’ve chosen to spend the majority of my adult life so far. In total I’ve spent over seven years here since I was sixteen and as much as I dislike the town sometimes [all the times?!], I know my way round.

Truth be told, I didn’t plan on it though. I came to the UK for a few days at the end of May to catch up with friends and decided to look at some flats just to see what’s available. The minute I saw this flat I fell in love with it and even though it’s more expensive than I wanted to pay, it has many advantages, including only five minutes walk to town and the possibly nicest landlords I’ve come across so far. It’s nicely decorated with wooden floors throughout, has a decently sized garden which is just for this flat and did I mention how close it is to town centre yet?

The minimum contract is a year and it’s definitely something that made me consider it for a while as a year can be very long, but perhaps it is finally time to settle down and figure out what I want from life? Only time will tell, as they say..

And how can I not fall in love with this?!