Those familiar with my living arrangements over the last year will have followed me through the stresses and the worries of moving out of my rented one-bed flat to buy a house with my two childhood friends, Blonde and Busy. The three of us shared an idyllic childhood in Zimbabwe, brought up in similar fashion by parents who had grown up together and been brought up in similar fashion and so on… Our politics and moral values are similar, we have shared experience, and strong and wonderful friendships which stretch back over most of our lives.

Blonde and Busy are cousins, and prior to our buying, they lived together, renting rooms in a house. We were aware that there were lifestyle clashes which may affect us on moving in together – they are both vegetarians, I am a carnivore. They both stopped smoking, I didn’t. They had both been living in shared accommodation, I had become used to living with a partner, and then by myself. But we knew that our basic ethos was the same: and that while I am a carnivore, I do not buy processed meat, and while a smoker, I am happy to pop outside for a cigarette. And as large amounts of our time before moving in was spent together anyway, both as friends, and in the campaigning and fundraising work we did with Zimbabweans, we hoped the transition would be a smooth one.

Blonde and Busy will agree when I say that the nine months which followed our completion date saw some of the most challenging times of our lives together. Without apportioning blame, basic differences in how we individually felt our house should operate led to irresolvable clashes, which inevitably escalated when our differing temperaments would meet to address possible solutions. And without talking of any actual examples, I think it is fair to say that in our own very individual ways, each of us at various times displayed an intransigence bordering on the pugnacious in our inability to reach concurrence on various issues, which had we had the ability to access some perspective, would have doubtless been revealed to us as trivialities.

Towards the end of the last year, we were all ready to move out. The experiment had failed, our friendships were becoming irreparable. When I found out that our kitchen was to house a steady supply of seed trays growing wheat grass for juicing, I lost all semblance of having a sense of humour about the situation, and found myself forced into a position where I was considering the advice of one of my friends to cook veal in the kitchen and leave a bloody mess on the work tops, just to re-assert my right to my own space.

The end of this story is anti-climatic. I don’t know how or why, but Blonde, Busy and Recidivist have sorted out their differences. We have got to a stage where we sit down and eat dinner together. Where we are going for a facial together before my birthday party on Saturday. Where we advise each other on our lives, and more importantly, seek and value each other’s advice. I remember now why we were friends as children, and we laugh over the same irrelevancies as we did then, when our lives were uncomplicated.

While I was languishing with my throat infection last week, Blonde called me from the kitchen one morning, saying that she had made me a wheatgrass shot, and that as I was ill, I would really benefit from it. But the measure of how well our differences have mended is not that she thought of it, but the fact that I not only accepted, I was actually quite touched that she had thought of it, and secretly harboured suspicions that she may be right! But please don’t tell anyone…

This entry was posted on Monday, February 21st, 2005 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Levity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.