Goodbye Lovely Housemate

On Friday I always seem to think about what I am thankful for and, not wanting to break the habit, today’s post is going to be similar.

I am thankful that we are finishing work at 4pm today – this gives me lots of time to go home and sort out the flat for New Housemate’s arrival and help Lovely Housemate move to her new pad.

I am also thankful that I met Lovely Housemate in our first flat four years ago. We met in a flatshare on the river with a psycho landlord and some equally bizarre housemates including one who thought an acceptable way of saying hello was ‘Who are you shagging?’. Thankfully he never got the chance to meet my parents and say, um, hello.

Then, we moved to another flat where we had our first pets, mice. There we waged an endless battle with the little blighters that I think in all honesty they won. They were such frequent visitors that they had worn a bit of carpet down by their entrance to the lounge. Lovely eh?

On one occasion I came out of my room to find a mouse in the hall between mine and Lovely Housemate’s door – and I screamed, probably very loudly. Lovely Housemate flew out her room to see what was going on, saw the mouse, and flew back in again, with a scream to rival mine.

Thankfully, there was a man in the house at the time who took care of the situation and took the poor bewildered and, probably deafened from all the screaming, mouse outside.

If New Housemate is reading this – I would like to confirm that there are NO mice in our current flat. It’s been good to us, this little flat – it’s seen its fair share of dramas and the flat below has joyfully shared occasions such as belly dancing evenings and drunken meals at 3am with us. They love us in the flat downstairs, honest!

I shall miss Lovely Housemate – she always says nice things about my cooking and is happy to be a taste tester for my cakes. More importantly she’s happy to be adventurous and try out new recipes such as Marmite and Salad Cream dip with crudités and oatcakes and microwave syrup sponge that looks more like a bath sponge than an edible one – it tasted pretty shocking, too – but then i had forgotten to add the eggs!

She’s also been the most amazing ears to me and I know that if the fire alarm was going off she’d rescue me. Having said that, I don’t really worry as she’s only living down the road, so she’ll probably be able to hear the fire alarm from there and I know that if I ever need ears, she’ll gladly step up to the job.

So it’s TaTa to the Lovely Housemate in this blog and she will forever more be known as Shakira-Shakira – come out with us on Saturday and you’ll see why!