A room of one's own

London is an expensive city. Or so they say.
The first time I went I breezed blissfully through the streets, thinking it the most perfect place in the world. Sure, the food was expensive, but surely that was just the exchange rate? But no matter how hard you try, an impression like that cannot be maintained. The second time round the cracks start to show.

Lorraine most charitably shared her shoe-box with me. In a street full of beautiful tenements, hers was the ugly brown council flat left over from the seventies, redeemed slightly by backing onto the Thames path. But alas, in a fit of greed, the landlady had at some time in the past converted the living room into another two bedrooms. Thereby blocking general access to the backyard and ensuring that there was nowhere in the entire house to sit. And in a house with seven bedrooms and a potential fourteen tenants this is a very bad thing. So it was that I had for the first time the peculiar experience of eating my dinner standing up in the kitchen. And all this dubious honour for a price of just 80 pounds ($200) a week.

Lorraine's room itself was nice, as she had command of the back door. Or at least it would have been, accept that London prices demand shared rooms and so there were two tennants. When me and my air mattress were added to the mix things could not help but become rather chaotic. So we tripped over one another for a few days until we worked out a routine. Lorraine would get up in the morning and poke me until I was awake. At this point I would get off the airbed and crawl into her bed, so she could get to her wardrobe and dresser. She was allowed to use the end of the bed for sitting on while she got ready as long as she avoided my feet. Then at 9:00 I would wake up, and (on request) poke Sandra until she had also woken up. This normally took about an hour of poking, but did mean that I could switch the light on while I was getting ready.

It was lovely to see Lorraine, but five days or musical beds was about all I could manage. Lorraine has somehow managed five months.