Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
The carpet is the worst part.
It’s pink.
Or something.
I’m no good with hues. I’ve had it variously described as carmine, coral, dusty rose, cranberry, raw salmon and aaaarghjesusfuck. I’ve settled with calling it startled vulva, because I’m a romantic kinda guy.
Who designs these modern horrors? I yearn for gleaming old wood, buttressed entrances, intricate ceiling roses and lead-light skylights. I get startled vulva carpets (I know, I’m four, it still cracks me up) and electric purple feature walls.
What am I talking about, you may well ask, and I’ll tell you seeing as I went to the bother of posing the question myself. I got a new house. Well, I did this a year ago when I started writing this entry and having just realised I posted one, count them, ah, it, one entry for 2008 thought I’d better give it some welly. So here we are.
Awkward.
…And when I say new, I mean new. To me and to others. Well, probably not that new, but modern, and that’s plenty bad by itself. Worse, even. Just as soulless as a brand-spanker without the saving grace of cutting edge designs, which are still horrible but unfamiliar enough that you don’t recognize that straight away. They bamboozle you with their strangely placed feature lights and incomprehensible faucets and just like that WHAM, you’re shopping at Ikea.
Damn Swedes and their penchant for flat-packed furniture and chairs that defy common sense and a good deal of orthopaedic science.
Point is, at an embarrassingly advanced age (only because I’ve earned too much for the past three years to justify living at home) I am free from parental tyranny. Ding-dong the witch is dead. I say this with the utter confidence of someone whose mother can no longer get to them while they sleep.
Which neatly segues back to my own personal Alcatraz - the house is secure. Strangely secure. Panic-room secure. Grills and alarms abound. The front door is boxed off with a wrought-iron gated brick enclosure the likes of which I’ve seen before only on Parisian townhouses - in Perth it just seems out of place and paranoid. Which is kind of a neat description for me, come to think of it.
Finally, I’m bonding with my new house.
I suppose it isn’t that bad, but it isn’t that good either. It certainly isn’t worth the extortionate rate we’re paying. Especially as it has practically no land, much to the chagrin of my dog whose main pastime has become follow-me-around-and-stare-at-me-mournfully. Although that’s what he used to do all the time anyway, but now you can tell he means it. It’s like having your very own furry emo to follow you around.
Except I actually like my dog.
I was likened a few weeks ago to Pen Jillete, both in looks and manner, by someone I’ve known for awhile. I did, and have done, nothing to deserve this. It still made me happy for the rest of the day. Hurrah to you Penn.
The experience was somewhat less charming about a week later when it happened in the toilets of the Moon and Sixpence with a lot more alcohol involved. As I was innocently washing my hands (I’m not exactly sure what a guilty hand-washing would entail, though I’d imagine it would involve a lot of “Out, damn’d spot! Out I say” and general Scottish deviousness) my ablutions were interrupted by a bellowed “Penn!” from a swaying British expat very nearly pointing right at me with a surprisingly piercing look of gnostic inebriation and just the slightest glimmer of a challenge. Being hitherto unprepared by enculturation for drunken declarations of this nature, I had no ready response and had to settle for an unsatisfactory “Too right, mate” and a hasty retreat. Sadly, this did not stop a blow-by-blow replay twenty minutes later at the bar (with less hand washing), but sometimes that’s the price you pay for… well, going to bars. Yep.
I have more to say and hopefully with more eloquence, but for now I’m happy to have made my annual post. Next time: Canadian backpackers, unprincipled landlords and malignant street curbs. Stay tuned.
