Phew

After a coupla glasses of the widow I am celebrating the sale of my funky Secret-Life-of-Them pad. Had it for a while. On a windy September day we took Princess back there from hospital, our little bug in a rug who charmed and delighted both me and Ali. It was the place that we fucked in and fought in, the place Ptook her first steps* and the place where I would lie in the bath with her, when she was only weeks old, one of my swollen breasts bigger than her whole body it seemed. It was the place I cried when we split up, the place I laughed and clapped hands at my special birthday when the jangling belly-dancer danced for all and then we drunkenly stumbled down the street to Topolinos all talking too loud at about one in the morning.

It was the place I watched Seinfeld and the place I wrote my first book. It was where I cooked myself simple lunches of pasta and chilli, with a sneaky glass of wine. I sat on the back step and inhaled the sunshine and beauty of the skyline; the red brick roof and gargoyles of next-door.

This was a place where I scraped midnight blue paint off the scalloped plaster walls; where I Japan-blacked the kitchen floor myself after ripping up the old lino. Where I painted a flower mural onto the terrazzo shower wall so that lying in the bath with my book, my baby, I could trace the outlines of the petals with my toes.

This was the place I leaned out of the windows on various nights telling drunks to fuck off, telling men beating up on their women to stop, telling idiots pissing in our front garden to begone. And declining their offers of putting their dicks in my mouth by way of restitution.

This is the place where most of the neighbours were awesome but there's always one, or two and you just have to learn to get by.

Where when we bought it one room was fuschia, one the dark navy blue, one sun burnt orange.

* This is technically a lie. She took her first steps in England. But it makes a better story to have it above thusly.This is creative nonfiction, right Lee Gutkind?