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High Vol­tage
A hot air balloon caught up in power cables, light blue.
Game Set Match
Pla­ying pong, old school gaming.
Road Block
A wal­rus bloc­king the road from an ice cream van.
Like Father Like Son
Two figu­res with came­ras as heads, one large one small.
Pan­da­mo­nium
A panda figh­ting off tanks and bombs.

I have a new house. I live in a stu­dent house with my six other stu­dent friends. The boy-girl ratio is 5:2 in their favour. We’re paying £220 a month for a large appro­xi­ma­tely 1850’s house. It has seven bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen a large bath­room, a sepa­rate sho­wer and a sepa­rate toi­let and high cei­lings. There’s also a base­ment but it needs work done to it. My ado­rably beau­ti­ful and won­der­ful girl­friend, who will undoub­tedly be rea­ding this, has bles­sed me with the lar­gest room in the house. A 14x15 ft ex-lounge, pic­tu­res doth follow.

We first loo­ked at the house in January – it was the last of the hou­ses we loo­ked at and the day had been exhaus­ting. We’d been to a run down old miner’s house in Coventry that half of our group wan­ted us to get, while being pres­su­red by the land­lord. We’d been to two flats on the parade in Lea­ming­ton Spa, each above a pub or res­tau­rant. The first was very nice des­pite its locale, yet it was expen­sive, split into three sec­tions and lots of peo­ple were inte­res­ted in it. The second was small, cram­ped, had a nice living room yet had NO CENTRAL HEATING. Seriously, wtf. So we pas­sed on those two. On we went to the last house. To be frank, it was a dump – the peo­ple living there at the time were slobs, untidy. They’d been there for two years and the house was rot­ting. But under­neath the mess there was actually a NICE house, it felt like a home, it loo­ked like a home, it had room to breathe, it func­tio­ned and the rooms were of a decent size. The main pro­blem was the lack of decent fur­nishing in the two bac­krooms, which were tiny – and one even had a dou­ble bed stuf­fed into it. We deci­ded to take the house, much to the dis­com­fort of one of my hou­se­ma­tes. We pic­ked rooms out of the hat.

Those mucky stu­dents have left now. In the con­tract we asked that we get a decent dining table, pro­per fur­nishings in the back rooms and a lot of clea­ning. Over the sum­mer the land­lord repain­ted some rooms, re-carpeted the stairs and hall­ways and fit­ted rooms with tall war­dro­bes and nice desks. We also had our kitchen redone to pro­vide us with a new gas oven, a new work­top, new cup­boards and various other little perks. Now the house is near per­fect (des­pite a wee­kend of clea­ning in Sep­tem­ber). We got the gas sor­ted, the elec­tri­city sor­ted, the phone and inter­net sor­ted, the rent sor­ted, the TV license sor­ted and now we just have to pay bills. We have yet to get the Xbox Live sor­ted, but that story will be coming in an all new jour­nal instalment.

I am now sett­led in but I still need things to fill up my room. It seems sparse. I have bought a 6ft indoor tree plant that I enjo­yed carr­ying home on the bus, but it did cost only £20. I have also bought a lamp from ikea and some other small things. But it is still lac­king, my pri­mary hope is to get a pool table – a six foot one with 48mm balls. There’s one at argos for £200 but the pro­blem that ari­ses is, “How do I move it from A to B?”

Pho­tos:

This is it unfur­nished (no pos­ters, few deco­ra­tive fea­tu­res) and lac­king pool table!!!. The room is 14x15ft. My tv is nicely lin­ked to the PS2, VCR, Aerial + Boos­ter and PC + soon to be Xbox Live. All anten­nas on top of the war­drobe, inc­lu­ding wire­less. Surround sound also installed.

Other Rooms in the house

I purcha­sed one of these beau­ties from Ama­zon recently,
here’s a pic­ture: