Homes sweet homes


I'm lying on the floor in what was my very first room. I'm on the same patch of floor where my cot once stood only now, the baby in the room is not me, but my son, cuddling up to me on the mattress. Before me, this room belonged to my older brother and not long before that this place was all fields- I'd have been suspended above a meadow. This home has not stood for much time but it has seen a lot. It has served as wintness to 52 years of Bishop family history. It is so much more than bricks- it feels like one of us. Every house I've ever lived in feels almost like a person, a good friend. I have a new house in my life now. I don't know her yet. Or is it a he? And as I welcome this new, almost living friend into my life I'm looking back on everywhere I've ever been. 
Dover Hedge. This photo is a decade old this year. Most things still look the same. the piano is still in the same place. still hugging the same guy.



Here are the homes I've loved and what they mean to me. 


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The house of rats and flies and pencil scribbles on the walls. You choked my sister with your mess. People lived under tables, in lounges and seven people slept in one bed. You tested the boundaries of my adultness. My sanctuary for come downs, soporific music drifting in from Gaz's room. We seanced in your kitchen, I was skinny in your bathroom. I crawled along your hallway gasping for air when I thought I'd die of laughter. We lit a fire on your roof and didn't know that it would melt. It was a happy home. I fell back into love, renaming limbs and replacing rings. I left you with the light streaming down through the crack in the ripped blinds. 

The only picture I seem to have of my first flat
This is just about the only photo I can find of my first flat. It really was a shithole but it was our shithole. 



Southwest road
Oh you beautiful thing. You manicured, different waxes for different woods, art on the walls, beauty, you. Your no smoking sign a sweet joke as we passed around the lighter and the ashtray for the thousandth time. Witness to my most hedonistic incarnation. You had me curled up on your porch behind your prison bars. You asked us to be heros, chasing down noises in the night. Home of the Wickerman. Not the only great love I got know with you- you had a habit of introducing me to happiness. oh how the walls reverberated with our laughter. A house of love with only the neighbors to hate. I don't remember leaving you except the Chinese the night before. 

When we lived here we were apparently ghosts. This was Shen's room. it was basically a hall!          













Langley Medows
Shit through my ceiling. That's who you are when I first think of you. Long summers days wasted in a room with no light. A kitchen you couldn't move in for tripping over a costume. A Christmas tree in June. You'd have been easier to burn than clean and the feuding with the neighbours carried on. And yet were you all bad? Not a bit? Jamie's sliding down the stairs in a wok, I'm rolling across the floor in a duvet, Kens baking something in the kitchen and we're all cuddled up in bed. We're all we'll ever need we thought and it was true for a beautiful little while. 

Tons of pics from this house but this one seems to sum it all up for some reason. I'd been in bed for a few hours but i woke up to join the party downstairs, fag in hand surrounded by my favourites, Winifred Attwell on the walls

Spain
And now I'm away across the sea and there you are, my flat of opportunities, the start of my real living. You're marble and balconied and too small for so many people. You taught me how to be a grown up. Taught me to clean and cook and to always buy all you need before Sunday. You're early mornings walking out the front  door in a duvet. You're early finishes curling up in bed with books and chocolate. You're coming home from the gym to make a meal. You're celebrating engagements with a champagne cake. I left you on the balcony discussing death and knowing I'd have a friendship for life. 
Many happy times on this balcony. i love this pic because I have a tiny tan and i can almost make out my collar bone

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You started with a black out. You ended with a stomach bug and all seems contentment in between. You're working out in the bedroom. You're cooking good food and entertaining and running out of money and not realising. You're tonsillitis and pulling out the sofa. You're smoking in the window and then never smoking again. You're terrible news. You're oscar films, you're meditation classes. You're the boilers broken again. You're wedding planning, honeymoon booking, you're hen night eve and New Year's Eve, you're Christmas cookies hanging from the tree.
Celebrating landing a new job, This lounge was enormous. When we moved out i remember straring out the window and thinking how much i would miss the view. little did i know I'd end up living 5 doors down!

Liverpool
Enchante. I hardly knew you but I loved my little piece of you none the less. 

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The house so loved we had you twice. You are my sons first home and everything about you seems touched by that magic. The clock ticked outside in the car, the decision was made on the sofa, the beginning in the bedroom and the discovery in the hallway. I nested in every corner and grew and grew staring into the full length mirror. I ran like I'd never run before and then I struggled to stand. You saw me in labour and then absence before you became his home too. He smiled, he crawled, he giggled and then before we had chance to notice, we were gone. Starburst left the wall. I keep thinking we'll come back to you but we've handed in the keys! 
My sons first home, our first home as a family. 



Which leads me back to here, lying on the floor in my parents house- waiting to head to the new place to meet my soon to be old friend. 




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