Buckle up and enjoy the ride, flatties
It wasn’t one of those flash diaries you can get these days with fancy covers, and inspirational photos and quotes. Just a plain, dark blue A5 Collins diary. It was even less fancy after I threw it at the door after the new owner of the building I flatted in had gone. He had a right to buy the building, he had a right to put up the rent but he didn’t have a right to try and diddle us. Thankfully, when I showed him the dates and counted the weeks he agreed with me. I was still angry though and the munted corners of the diary reminded me for the rest of the year.
It’s that time of the year when thousands of young people leave home to go boarding, flatting or into a hostel.
My first flat was in the Northland Fire Station in Wellington. It was still a working fire station but with firefighters no longer living on site four flats were available. It was cheap rent but, of course, at times noisy. What was worse was the place was ageing and sometimes wastewater would overflow into the carpark. It was also where I woke up one morning to find a strange man coming out of the toilet. He wasn’t a burglar or even drunk - just some guy one of my flatmates had hooked up with the night before.
My second flat had 90 steps up to it and even more to the clothesline. When I had my ankle in a cast after cortisone shots I had to temporarily move out. As soon as my flatmate and I could afford something bigger and better we left. The landlord started
stripping the wallpaper before we had cleared everything out and I can still remember the now exposed walls in my bedroom were covered in mould. We had a lucky escape.
Once I house-shared with the owner of the house and a friend. Her son, the apple of her eye, lived under the house and would come and go at all odd hours. My friend and I were wary of him. Fittingly, the house was opposite the Karori cemetery and the sexton lived next door. He invited me to an open day at the crematorium and took much pleasure in showing us the hip and knee replacements that had been collected from the ashes.
When I was at journalism school about 10 years later, we had death week. We’d visit the cemetery, crematorium, funeral directors. I was mighty pleased I’d already been exposed to that ice cream container of people’s bits and pieces.
When I decided I wanted to live by myself I chose the worst possible flat. I still don’t know what I was thinking. The old house in Aro Valley had been converted into four flats. Outside my bedroom window were the stairs to the neighbouring house, the wardrobe was in the kitchen, and you had to squeeze sideways to get into bathroom past the washing machine. Most importantly, I never felt safe there and only lasted six weeks. An expensive and timeconsuming lesson.
I moved to a place with great harbour views. The landlord lived above. I fell rent, bond and agreement for her list of improvements she was going to do. Number one was carpeting the upstairs so I couldn’t hear people walking around or her toddler nephew running. That never happened. Even when the kitchen cold water tap started hissing and leaking so badly it was hard to sleep, she wouldn’t fix it. The worst though was when she decided to have sex with her “flatmate” in her bath, above my bedroom, and I could hear everything.
I do have good memories of flatting and renting too, but I’m ever so grateful those days are well behind me. Buckle up and try and enjoy the ride, flatties!