H&G INSIDER

I was also, at that time, the TV critic for Rolling Stone magazine, meaning that I got paid to sit around the bachelor pad of my dreams watching rubbish all day. It was magnificent. But it wasn’t a home. I had nothing to share with anybody. Mythen-girlfriend, now wife, lived four hours away. I’d lost visiting rights to the inner city, and to all my friends who lived there, at the end of my last relationship. I wasn’t lonely. Writers are used to their own company. But I was as profoundly disconnected from the world of other people as I had been in that warehouse where I lived with 15 goths and their pet goat. The goat was my best friend there. I still believe that, after me, it was the smartest guy in the place.

As perfectly set up as that beach apartment was, and as much as I enjoyed living there, it was no more a home than my hotel room in Melbourne. Comfortable, convenient and, at times, great fun. But I had no reason to care for another person there, and of course, there was nobody there to care for me. Not even an emo goat.

That was what made a home, I came to understand: the simple fact of having under that shared roof someone who cared about what happened to you, and for whom you could return the favour. That connection doesn’t have to be as deep or significant as the bonds of familial love. A share house can be as caring a retreat as any family home. If your soul feels nurtured there, you belong, not just in that place but to those people, to each other. You are home.