Nineteen Homes in Eighteen Years

Regular readers will know that I have moved house a load of times. But I'm not really sure if you're aware exactly how many times it's been. Well my next house will be move number 19... And that's only since I moved to Brighton!

#1 - this was the first place I moved in to when I arrived in Brighton at the end of October 1994 a week before my 23rd birthday. It was a diddy ground floor bedsit with a shared bathroom. It was an absolute dive with an electricity meter that ate 50p's - but I was happy because I had a place all to myself in this amazing new town by the sea. This is when I got my little cat Fraidy.

#2 - this was a huge four-storey, four-bed shared house where an assortment of people passed through. We had a flat roof terrace and spent a lot of our time doing things we shouldn't.

#3 - a two-bed place with a garden where I lived with three consecutive nightmare flatmates. A girl I knew from my old town who washed her clothes after every time she wore them, a guy who I had to teach how to wash up, and another guy who was such a disgusting slob that you couldn't see the floor of his room. I had to move out when he stopped paying his rent.

#4 - the only other time I lived on my own. I loved this little one-bed flat but couldn't afford to stay once the rent reached £100 per week. Finding a place at that price here would be impossible now.

#5 - a lovely, sunny four-bed house with a garden that I eventually lived in three separate times.  I can't remember why I moved from here the first time.

#6 - a first floor, three-bed flat right under the train viaduct. We had nightmare noisy, thuggish downstairs neighbours who made our lives a misery. I have no idea why we chose this flat cos it was terrible. When I left I took the neighbours electricity key - and I have NO idea where you would get one of them from. AND they were already on emergency haha!

#7 -  this is when I moved up to Yorkshire to be with a guy I'd fallen in love with. We moved to his folks first for a few weeks before our house was ready, but I won't count this one as two moves! I lived with him for a year before I could bear it no longer and came back to Brighton. I loved him but I loved Brighton more. I'd always thought was home was where you made it, but when I had the chance to test this theory, it turned out it wasn't true for me. I am a southern gal.

#8 - I'd gotten a job through Star Trek Girl working at her friends pub (he is the person I still work for at the festivals now) however there was a six week gap before the flat above the pub became free so I moved into the spare room back at house #5. as friends of mine were still living there.

#9 - the pub. I started as Assistant Manager then moved up to Manager. I lived there a couple of years before I moved out as I'd had enough of living and working in the same place. Everyone knows your business and you're always at work!

#10 - I stayed with a boyfriend for the three week interim before I moved back in to house #5. I'm counting this one as I moved all my stuff there... before I moved it all back out again!

#11 - back to sunny garden house #5 for the third time! I lived there for a while until a new flatmate came and changed the dynamics. She had lost a sister to suicide, so when the other flatmate's brother killed himself, they bonded together and turned on me for some reason. It all came to a head when the new flatmate (who was also an alcoholic with self-harm issues) sent a nasty text about me to the other girl - but accidentally sent it to me instead.

#12 - so I moved next door! I'd been friends with our neighbour and his 2 daughters for a long time by now and jumped at the chance to rent one of his spare rooms. It was supposed to be temporary until I found somewhere else. I just needed to leave the bitch house to be honest.

#13 - moving up the road into a two-bed with a friend I used to live with at #5 (are you following this?) we moved into the flat that he found at short notice because his tenancy was running out - but it had no bath, no heating, and horrendous noisy music-student neighbours. They played the drums at all hours and you could hear their banal conversations through the walls. We used to smack the wall with a baseball bat but we really wanted to smack them instead.

#14 - so I moved into a friends two-bed flat with her. She used to be my Assistant Manager when I managed the pub, her flatmate was about to move out, and the timing was perfect. This was the lovely, happy home I was living in when I started writing this blog. This has been my favourite place to live and I only moved out when her boyfriend moved in once his own lease was up. Fair enough - they now have a baby with another on the way! This was the flat I lived in when I decided to go freelance, when Fraidy died and when I got Dexter.

#15 - I had nowhere to go as I had just gone freelance and was working all Summer at festivals with only a week or two between them so had no time to look. I moved in with a girl I had just gotten to know  as she needed a new flatmate. But within just a few weeks Dexter was killed by a car and I couldn't bear to stay there any longer. I also had no phone reception, she was weird and only slept on the sofa, and I lived so far out of town in one week I had taken 25 buses. I wasn't at all happy there.

#16 - I then stayed with a woman I used to work for years ago. It looked great on paper but I only stayed 6 weeks or so as her house was smoky, filthy, and she was quite needy. I was pretty depressed at this point and, looking back, it was the lowest point of my life. 

#17 - I hated living in the dirty house so moved back into house #12 for the second time when his tenant moved out. I hoped this would again be just for a short time as it wasn't the ideal situation. He was very easy going, the house was tidy, and I felt comfortable there though.

#18 - I met my boyfriend and moved in with him after three months of being together. We thought each other was 'the one'. It turned out we were wrong and I made the decision to move out after two years together.

#19 - this is the one-bed flat I will be moving to next week. My client has signed for and paid a one-year lease so I know I'm ok until then at least. It's lovely and I think I will be happy there. I have decided that I will move from here only when they drag me kicking and screaming from the property. I am determined to afford it myself even if my client doesn't renew. Not least because I don't want to keep bloody moving!

I just worked out that I also moved 7 times between leaving my parents house and moving to Brighton. I'm a person that really likes to have a secure and lovely home so it's odd that it's something that's so far evaded me. I never felt at home at my parents either - one day my Mum angrily said to me "this is our house and you just live here", I remember replying "so where's my home?" dreadful really.

So wish me luck on move number 19 next Friday. May it be the last one for a while because my best friend is absolutely sick of buying Welcome to Your New Home cards for me.