Families and Other Creatures

Families are important and my family, including my extended family, is very important to me. I want to make that statement at the outset. But family members are not always the ones you turn to in times of crisis. Very many people have completely different lifestyles to their nearest and dearest.

I spent most of my late teens and and nearly all of my twenties co-sharing flats in Dublin and London with three other girls. Different girls at different times, naturally. None of my siblings has done that. When I start telling stories about that Chinese girl we had as a flatmate who thought that garlic kept away evil spirits, who dragged me to church every Sunday morning when my body was screaming for a lie-in, all because we once had a discussion on religion and I said I was a Christian, I know my family think I'm making it up. I could tell them about the party we held at New Year when the darts team we played with arrived unannounced and uninvited dragging two kegs of beer and my Scottish flatmate dashed in late and let the haggis she'd brought fall on the kitchen floor - we salvaged most of it and I must say it was very tasty.  Or - less fun - the night I was locked out because someone's mum who was staying with us thought it safer when in London to snick the lock on the door. We lived in the basement and the bedrooms were all at the back so no one heard my calls and knocks. I spent the night on the basement steps and I was never so glad to see the milkman and his float appearing in the early hours to make me feel human again even if I had to wait another hour before someone in the flat got up.

Anyone who has not co-shared will not understand how any of this could happen.
I think my experiences made me more tolerant of other people. I never put a notice on a piece of cheese in the fridge at work warning people off. As far as I was concerned, they could help themselves as long as they left some for me as well. I never got into a tizz as I've seen a work colleague do, over how people put paper in the printer. Yeah, some people make a pig's ear of it and the paper gets stuck and you think you've printed that report off just before the meeting and when you come to fish it out all you hear is that awful bleep bleep. We've all been there but hey, most colleagues get it right and we are all bad at something.

I think the inspiration for my second Christmas novel (untitled as yet) which I am currently working on came from all the different personalities I have met through flat sharing. Two of my flatmates are still close friends after all these years. If I am at a crisis, I can rely on them to give me some down-to-earth advice. After all flatmates very often know you much much better than your family do.