About a week ago I walked down the familiar road in Tallinn to show my children where I used to live. This was my very first proper home/flat share after leaving the family home. Before that I’d lived in the college dormitory for a year sharing a room with three other girls, but in that lovely flat I had the whole room just to myself and no more strict rules that came with the dormitory life (these rules would take up a separate entry, so I’m not even going to start with how we had to take off a day from school to work (clean!) the building…). So that flat was great!
Yes, in winter time my room was no doubt the coldest and my friend got accustomed to wake me up at least twice every morning as I didn’t dare to move the duvet even an inch. I only tended to poke my nose out a bit to breathe. A hot shower wasn’t welcoming me either because we only had a cold tap in the kitchen. I used to shower at school or use the local public sauna (if you were enquiring about my cleanliness).
Also why I needed several wake-up calls was that I couldn’t be trusted because of my mishap in the previous year at the dormitory when I’d got fed up with my room-mates not turning the alarm clock off quickly enough. This awful ringing noise in early hours was (still is!) so annoying! That’s why I just very bluntly told them that from then on I had to be in control of our alarm clock. They were all very kind girls and didn’t start arguing with me. In the next morning when the alarm clock made a sound, my reaction and coordination was so quick and apt I could have applauded myself. Actually it was so fast that the others hadn’t really heard the alarm. And as they were all still asleep, I naturally dozed off too, pleased with my quick reaction skills and accomplishment. Obviously we all missed the first class. From then on I wasn’t allowed to touch the alarm clock.
Anyway one day in that lovely brown wooden house (far away from the evil dormitory) when I was home alone (but not as clever as Macaulay Culkin) I had to keep the fire going in the kitchen, but as I had run out of the briquettes I needed to go to the cellar where we stored our coal with the rest of the firewood. So I left the flat, shut the door, heard it lock and clearly the keys were inside. Despite of the misfortune my very first idea was still to visit the cellar and fill the brought-along-bucket with briquette. Why to stand there and stare at the locked door (I could have knocked on it, you never know… once I saw an impatient man knocking on a lift door for it to arrive sooner. Didn’t help though)?
I kept myself busy until the bucket was full, then I sat for a bit but couldn’t come up with any smart DIY inventions as MacGyver would have (I think it’s the Mac I’m missing in my name!). The air was cool and the ground moist and cold. Luckily it wasn’t the coldest time of the year but with some light snow covering the streets outside and sleeting. But as I mentioned earlier it was a flat and we did have a few neighbours whom I didn’t really know that well, we might have said ‘hello’ on better days but normally kept to ourselves. That day though I had to be brave and get some help. After introducing myself to some of them, an elderly couple eventually trusted me enough and invited me in and within a brief encounter and discussion we agreed I better see my friend (she was also my landlady) in town. As I didn’t have outdoor clothes on, this kind old lady offered her own coat. I wasn’t picky and wore it on top of my very worn tracksuit bottoms with stretched-out knees which had one leg noticeably longer than the other. Luckily I had trainers on, not slippers. So I went to find my friend in the old town. She worked at (one of) the most popular theatres and the play was just starting, well-dressed people entering the building… Yes, I did not particularly blend in but at least I didn’t carry the bucket with briquette with me.
My very first house/flat share in London was centrally heated but similarly cold. And the fact that I’d managed to break one of the window handles didn’t help either. Although I guess the room was always airy… Once I returned from work, my pink curtains, wet through from rain were flapping in the wind through a wide open window. ‘Welcome home! There’s a bit of a breeze today,’ my room said (it’s 1am when I’m writing, so the room could have easily spoken to me, right?). But I think I was rather pragmatic about things and just used as many duvets and blankets as possible and also dressed well (not beautifully, just warmly) for the cold nights. The same goes to when for example we had some friends around and stayed overnight, the three of us had to share my double bed and after my friends had fallen deep asleep I didn’t have much room left on the bed. I decided I’m better off laying on the carpet, but to avoid the firmness of the surface I just put a pair of tracksuit bottoms on on top of the pyjamas for it to be a bit softer.
And eventually on the same note - I haven’t really lived in extreme conditions and haven’t squatted (apart from in the toilets which I covered in my previous post) and actually I have been lucky enough to call many places as my home, both in Estonia and England.
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