Horrible Housemate

Sharing is not a strength of mine.  

Fleeing the marital home meant making a jump from financing 0.5 to 1.2 households.  As a woman used to living to the limits of her means, this was going to involve some major lifestyle changes; keen to minimise these, I briefly considered renting a room in a shared house.

Briefly.

Then I remembered the previous times I’d shared houses with people who were not bound by matrimonial vows to put up with me and decided that it wasn’t fair on anyone to pursue that option.

As an undergraduate, I shared accommodation for three years.  Whilst I dearly loved many of the people I cohabited with (indeed, fourteen years after graduating, I still count three of them amongst my absolute dearest friends) I never particularly enjoyed communal living.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy company – when the wind is blowing in the right direction, there’s nothing I like more than hanging out with my nearest and dearest – it’s just that I like solitude too.

On the recommendation of those who’d trod the path before me, I spent my first year at The University of Manchester living in Owen’s Park – the largest of the halls of residence.  Somehow, I ended up as the only first year on a corridor of third years, sandwiched between an Italian dentistry student and another girl I only remember as being big and geeky.  Right now, I imagine there are some very lucky Italians getting their oral hygiene attended to by a beautiful woman in her late thirties.  Sixteen years ago however, she was just a stunning student with a steady stream of European suitors who, disappointed with northern England’s female offerings, were content to sit in her room all night and remain sexually unfulfilled while listening to loud europop.  They also had to deal with me knocking on the door every hour or so, apologetically asking for the music to be turned down.  I could see them turn to her for guidance as to how to respond – do we laugh in the face of the quiet, nerdy young girl from next door in a bollock-waving display of masculine dominance, or do we politely and considerately acquiesce to her request in an attempt to showcase our maturity and new-manliness?  Either way, it didn’t win me any friends.

The housemates of 1 Latchmere Road

Second year was spent in a mould-filled house with five other people, one bathroom and a shoebox-sized kitchen.  I was the asshole who was never happy.  Why couldn’t people wash up their crap after they’d used it?  Why did they feel it necessary to share their shitty music tastes with me?  All night?  Why did the door have to be slammed?  It was unlucky for everyone that the room-allocation process plonked me in the ground-floor bedroom between the front door and the living room.  As the least social member of the household, giving me the room which everyone had to walk past when they got in late at night was a bad idea.  With hindsight, it would have made sense to stick me in the attic.  It didn’t help that I was exceptionally uncool and sharing a house with a bunch of people who were into the kind of lifestyle that necessitated coming home at 4am on drugs which made them noisy.   It also didn’t help that I was incapable of putting up with this without coming over all snotty and uppity.  Either way, 4/5 of those housemates realised they couldn’t stand living with me, so when the time came to look for accommodation for the third year, only Lucy came with me.

The ladies of 255 Yew Tree Road

255 Yew Tree Road was a beautiful house.  Four of us lived there during our third year and I imagine that the reason I am still close to all of them is because I was rarely there.  I met my future husband at the end of my second year of university and spent half of my third year at his house, meaning my uncanny ability to piss off everybody with whom I live was diluted by half.  Hurrah!  Clearly the way to keep my friends was to not live with them – I am only a nice person to be around when I have chosen to be in company.  I am not good enough at the social dance to follow the steps when I’m not feeling the music.

My long-suffering ex-husband lived with me for thirteen years.  During that time he was berated for just about everything.  I need my home to be a place of safety, sanctuary and stability so if he so much as changed a door handle without telling me first he was in trouble.  Toothpaste and stubble in the sink?  Big-time bollocking.  Recyclables put in the normal bin?  Unforgiveable.  Dirty crockery left on the side rather than put in the dishwasher?  Banshee-level outcry.

I don’t mean to be a difficult housemate.  I consider myself to be thoughtful and reasonable though I guess my cohabitants thought the same about themselves.  Currently, my tiny house is shared with a cat.  So far, she’s not showing signs of wanting to leave.  We’ve only been here a year though; it’s early days…

Single Dweller

Invisible from the road, my house is reached by a single-track private road off a single-track public road on the outskirts of a single road village which no one’s ever heard of.  It’s three miles from the nearest pint (of either beer or milk) and about an hour’s drive from the nearest motorway.  During spring and summer it’s like living in Disneyland; as I come home I am accompanied up the driveway by partridges, hares and squirrels and I often share my space with swooping barn owls and circling raptors.  In short, it was the perfect place to flee to twelve months ago to lick my wounds and recover from the break-up of my marriage.

Whilst I knew I would appreciate freedom, I hadn’t entirely realised the many forms that freedom takes, or how much joy there would be in the simplest of them. 

If I want cereal for dinner, I’ll damn well have cereal for dinner.  And if I want to cook a massive stew and eat it every day, then that’s fine too.  Washing up been sitting there for a few days?  So what?  There’s no one to blame but myself, and somehow, when it’s only my mess, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Invitations can be accepted or declined without giving any consideration to anyone else’s social responsibilities or desires.  Stay out every night for a week or lock myself in with a bottle of wine and a cheesy rom-com?  Not only do I get to make that decision, but I get to make it at two minutes’ notice. 

My books on the shelf, my knickers on the floor, my wine in the cupboard – being in control of one’s own surroundings is like building a hug you can live in.  Add an open fire and a year without discovering a single odd sock and suddenly you’re swaddled in an all-enveloping embrace from a favourite, fragrant, buxom, childless aunty that you haven’t seen for years.

Obviously it’s not all red wine and daffodils.  It took me a couple of months to develop an effective way of folding fitted sheets, and I am too short to vacuum the spiders’ webs out of the top of the stairwell, but all in all it’s been a much needed year of breathing space.  It’s been a year which has allowed me to experience these freedoms and realise that I don’t want them forever – they come at too high a price to be a long term indulgence.  Is going straight from work to the pub without having to make a quick ‘phone call first worth a lifetime of having to nurse my own hangovers?   Probably not.  Is a ‘Step Up’ trilogy marathon three nights in a row worth never again smiling as I glance at a nicknack which evokes shared memories?  Almost certainly not.  Is the pleasure of eating a bowl of Shreddies whilst my knickers languish on the floor worth the sacrifice of not regularly waking up next to someone who loves me?  Definitely not.

Disneyland may be magical, but magic must be shared to be fully enjoyed.

Strong

On March 24^th I will be attempting to run just over 13 miles on forest trails for no reason other than bloody mindedness; I didn’t think I could do it so now I have to prove myself wrong.  Twisted, I know.  The upshot of such recklessness is that I have been training pretty hard in an attempt not to embarrass myself on the day.

In the last few days, several people have assumed that I am exercising regularly because I want to lose weight.  I comfortably fit into size 12 clothes – below the national average size of 14/16 – and am a healthy weight for my height, with a BMI in the normal range; why would I want to lose weight?  I am strong and supple with a wonderful wardrobe that I’d hate (and can’t afford) to shrink out of.  Sure, I wobble, and there are bits of me that aren’t as perky as they used to be, but that would still be the case if I were smaller, I’d just be colder and less well dressed.

If intelligent grown-ups are still buying in to the idea that women should be trying to be thinner then what hope is there for young girls?  How can we show them that healthy and strong is what matters?  The Olympics helped but there’s more to be done.  The average person in this country is overweight so I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that most people should be trying to lose some poundage, but when skinniness alone is the goal, it is often achieved (or not) at the expense of health.

One of the things that I love about roller derby is that there is a place on the team for anyone who is fit enough and dedicated enough to earn it.  The teeny blocks of solid muscle who don’t present a spare inch to hit; the long, lithe girls who pass you with one slippery step; the powerhouses of unshiftable mass who are speedy and nimble enough to always be in the way – a group of roller girls is like a campaign poster for all the different ways that strong and healthy can manifest itself. 

I’ve been fat and unhealthy.  I’ve been slim and unhealthy.  Being strong brings confidence and happiness.  Busting out a hand clap push up makes me ridiculously proud, as does knowing that I am in control of my body, it isn’t in control of me.  Come the 24^th March I will run that half marathon with my super fit friend and I will not let her or myself down.  She’ll beat me, but that’s fine; my competition is with myself.  Physical strength and mental strength feed off each other and this spiral can serve to strengthen or weaken – take control of the direction yours is going in.  Be strong.

Overthinker

“You think too much.”

I’ve been on the receiving end of this observation since I was about 13 years old.

Back then, I didn’t understand why people were saying this to me with varying degrees of pity, confusion and exasperation; surely thinking a lot was a good thing?  My diaries from the time are a never ending saga of introspection and dwelling, with occasional bouts of self-loathing thrown in just to break the monotony.  I second guessed my friends and enemies, analysing every tortured twist and traumatic turn in our dysfunctional circle until I drove myself insane.  I assumed that everyone did the same.

A particularly prolonged period of inner wrestling almost saw me drop out of university.  I simply couldn’t see what the point was in writing essays about what other people had already written.  Discovering that my romanticised ideal of three years of stimulating and earnest academic discussion where fresh insights on old issues elicited approving and admiring nods from bearded professors before we merry students retired to the bar to get drunk and have experimental and fabulous sex was but a pipe dream, I became slightly disillusioned.  The reality of mostly dull lectures delivered by academics who neither knew nor cared what I thought and judged my understanding based on a 2000 word essay summarising what everyone before me thought, followed by retiring to the bar to get drunk and have disappointing and vanilla fumbles was unfulfilling to say the least.   While my peers just got on with enjoying themselves, I was unable to stop questioning everything about the process.

Profundity is often sought but rarely achieved by those seeking to dish it out, but Professor Brooke was (probably still is) one of those people who never wasted a word.  In 1998 he said something to me which has since often provided a key with which I can unlock myself from destructive cycles of overthinking.  “Sometimes, Karen,” he said, “You just have to play the game.”

This new way of looking at the world was a revelation!  It gave me permission to occasionally stop trying to ‘understand’ everything and everyone and to just go along with the world around me as it appeared on the surface.  Clearly I was not cured of my excessively analytical nature but I felt like I’d been given something to control the condition.

Fast forward to today and six months of immersion in the world of dating has led to a massive relapse.  ‘Playing the game’ doesn’t work when you’re trying to work out why he hasn’t texted or what the exact significance is of how many times he’s written ‘x’ at the end of a message or what it is about you that’s putting everyone off.  What even is ‘the game’ when it comes to dating more than one person or deciding when it’s time to put a label on the situation and if so, which one?  I never appreciated how far a stable relationship had pushed this side of my personality into dormancy or how all-consuming the analysis monster would be when she grew full size.

My old ‘play the game’ medicine doesn’t work on this new strain of overthinking; I suspect because the condition has changed and is now augmented by a deficiency in self-worth and a lack of understanding of the new symptoms.  The only solution is to try new cures.  Distraction works but is tiring; the same goes for getting in shape.  Surrounding oneself with friends is always a winner, but after a while a resistance builds up as they, understandably, become fed up with such constant navel-gazing.  Wine absolutely has its place, but it is contraindicated with the aforementioned treatments, rendering it best reserved for serious attacks.

Ultimately, acceptance is the only way forward.  Acceptance of oneself, the situation and the ever-changing nature of the world.  Acceptance that nothing stays the same, good or bad, and that there really is some truth in the idea that what doesn’t destroy us makes us stronger.  Acceptance that whilst being overly analytical and pondering can lead to dark and twisted places, it can also lead to self-understanding and wisdom and that, either way, if that is who you are, then that is who you are.  Someone will love it.

Fantasy Headteacher

Since New Year’s Resolutions are doomed to failure, I’ve decided instead to consider what I might do if I were someone else.  School starts again next week and I find myself thinking what I might do if I were a secondary school headteacher. 

1.    Before making any decision, ask myself ‘will this help the students to learn?’

Too much of what happens in school is done to please OFSTED and parents.  Almost all of my other resolutions are the immediate result of instead focussing my attentions on helping students to learn. 

I understand that it is necessary to judge schools and hold them accountable, but the current system necessarily focuses on what is easily measurable as opposed to what actually matters.  I wish I could offer a solution, but I can’t – my only suggestion is that all headteachers refuse to play this stupid game and instead focus on doing what they know is right.  (I realise this is never going to happen, sadly.)  If every school did this, OFSTED would be forced to develop an inspection regime that did schools justice and the tail could stop wagging the dog.

2.    Remove the focus from exams

Much more easily said than done, this one.  However there are ways to accomplish it and good reasons for striving to do so.  Resits would be allowed in my school but parents would be billed for both the exam entry fee and any extra after school support provided.  We wouldn’t even discuss target or predicted grade in the first year of any course of two years or longer.  Meaningful courses with no resulting formal qualifications would be provided and professionally taught.

I’m not suggesting that passing exams is unimportant, just that we seem to have lost sight of learning for learning’s sake.

3.    Ban homework

Homework is set because parents expect it and because it is easy to monitor.  It is often educationally pointless or worse, counter-productive.  I would remove any notion of a ‘homework timetable’ and allow teachers to decide whether it is relevant or necessary to set homework at a given time.  Poor quality homework tasks encourage a negative attitude from students and arguments at home.  We perpetuate the unhealthy notion that the working day does not stop upon leaving the workplace and unfairly disadvantage students from less academic households.

This is not to say that I would be encouraging students not to seek learning opportunities outside school.  A bank of inspirational, optional projects, combined with support for parents in how to develop a love of learning at home would complement the ethos of my school regarding learning being about more than just passing exams.

4.    Allow failure

Life includes failures.  Learning to handle these and move on from them is a life skill.  When we allow a student to hand in vital work after the deadline, or clutch at straws to find something, anything, good to say about a shoddy and lazy piece of work, or enter them for their third resit without demanding some change in effort or attitude we are doing them no long term favours.  When we correct their work for them, rather than insisting they work out where they went wrong, when we give them rewards for simply doing what is expected, when we lie on their university references we are just passing on problems to the next teacher, professor or employer who has to work with them.  Allow failure, catch them, support them in their quest to avoid it again.

These ideas are all impractical, for one reason or another, which is one of many reasons I shall never seek to be a real headteacher.  In reality, headteachers have a ridiculous variety of conflicting stakeholders to try to satisfy.  Most of them entered the profession to teach in the classroom, not to sit in an office balancing multi-million pound budgets whilst being pulled in a dozen different directions by department heads, governors, parents, pupils, the Council, the Government and the local community.  They do a mostly thankless job, mostly very well – it’s too easy to forget this and we shouldn’t.  Here’s to the headteachers.

Reviewing

In January, I shared my New Year’s Resolutions.  As 2012 draws to a close, I feel it only fair to honestly review them.

1.    Relearn to focus.

Getting there.  I still watch television with the laptop and/or ‘phone close by but I have become much better at not turning the television on at all and with the odd show I really like the computer gets a definite back seat.  As I become a student again in February I really need to continue working on this.

5/10

2.    Be a better friend.

A horrific failure on this one.  When I wrote these resolutions, I hoped my marriage was reparable.  It turned out that it wasn’t.  The echoes of this have spread through every facet of my life and reverberate into the most obscure corner. 

In a (largely unsuccessful) attempt not to bore everyone to death with how miserable this year’s been I have kept a lot of the darkness inside.  One of the results of this is that there’s not a lot of room left for other people and their lives.  This has led to me being a lousy friend, though also an incredibly grateful one.

-2/10

3.    Be able to turn stop in both directions.

I have practised and practised and practised and all I can do is resolve to practise more in 2013.  I WILL nail this. 

0/10

4.    Explore different ways of making a living.

Started this.  Didn’t get anywhere.  Anyone want to pay me for being me? 

1/10

5.    Stop being the drunkest person in the room.

Achieved this on a technicality by hanging around with a lot of very drunk people, rather than by drinking less myself.  Result. 

10/10

6.    Get happy.

Definite progress here – I’m certainly much happier than I was at this time last year.  I have a wonderful bunch of friends, for whom I’m very grateful, an amazingly generous and thoughtful family, a great job, a lovely house, my health and (almost) my freedom.  Short of a lottery win or Johnny Depp realising he’s completely in love with me, I’m not sure how things could get much better. 

9/10

According to a survey, 92% of New Year’s resolutions are not kept, so I’d say that my score of 23/60 is not bad at all.  How did you do?