New Project Chapter 1

I’ve lived here all my life. 

the living room where I sit today watching homes under the hammer is the same place I dribbled out rusks over a faded carpet forty or more years ago.

no one knows that I have lived here all my life because no one else who was here back then is still here now, it’s just me.

mister bellamy from next door died in may and the only other person I know from back in the day was gary palmer and he moved out to braintree a few weeks back so he could have a house with a big paved drive and a conservatory I think

these flats have looked after me in ways that feel hard to understand but also easier to accept over all this time. the stairwells have always stunk of mixtures of urine, that of people, dogs, cats, probably foxes and some other things too but that smell is my connection with the building, one of them anyway

if I came home from londis one day and someone had bleached away all the piss, I would be lost and a piece of me would disappear.

no one will ever come and bleach the stairs so it isn’t something I have to worry about.

I am worried about the house that the man on the telly has bought in nuneaton. it looks very lopsided and the windows look like they want to burst out and run away down the street. he says that he will spend seven thousand pounds on it and then he can sell it again to make more money. he could make it nice and just live in it I think until he says that he has fourteen other houses and that is probably too many houses for one person to live in.

they all seem very excited that he will have lots of money

my flat is the same as it ever was. I do some decorating sometimes but I make a mess and cousin keith has to come and help me finish things off. he looks annoyed with me as he sands a wall or repaints a wall that I have messed up. I think I am good at decorating but it never looks quite right in the end. mum and dad bought the flat a long time ago when it was allowed for us to buy it because the government said they didn’t need them anymore. they paid six thousand four hundred pounds for it. not all at once though.

dad died twenty three years ago when he was forty seven years old which is the same age that I am now. I am scared that I am the same age as when he died because people worry that my heart will give up like his did and I will be dead too. I have been for tests at the doctor and he says my cholesterol is a bit high. I tell him that I don’t know why that is but I know that it is because of biscuits. if I die because of biscuits then that will be ok I suppose. I accidentally bought gluten free chocolate bourbons last week and they tasted horrible. even when I broke them up and threw them on the balcony the pigeons looked at them funny. imagine, a biscuit so bad that a pigeon turned its nose up. do pigeons have noses?

I drink tea all day. I see people outside drinking big bottles of water in the street. I can’t imagine drinking in the street. I think drinking is a private matter. there was a health programme on the bbc the other night and it said we should drink lots of water to be healthy but then you need to pee all the time and that doesn’t seem right to me. what if someone knocks on my door and then I have to pee? that would be very embarrassing. tea is mainly water and I pee too much as it is. they also said that I should eat lots of fruit. I do have bananas as a treat but they are very filling. I try to listen to the advice they give you on the telly but it’s difficult to do them all. I tried doing recycling for a while but it ended up being a lot easier to put it all in with the rubbish and put it down the chute. when I was eight I put my teddy bear down the chute to see what happened and then dad had to root through the bins downstairs to find him. dad was cross and georgie smelled of cabbage for the rest of his life.

mum died five years ago. she had breast cancer and she got sick very quickly. aunty kate came and lived with me in the flat for a while because she was worried that I wouldn’t be able to cope on my own. I said that was silly because I am in my forties and not a child anymore. she showed me how to make bolognese but I never make it. I like the ravioli that comes in cans with some cheddar grated on it.  she stayed for three months and I was glad when she went home because she didn't like watching the telly during the day. 

I am going to go to the library today.