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Writer's Block: Places to Lay Your Head
May. 27th, 2009 09:49 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]Curious. I saw ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jennywooyay 's version of this earlier and thought it might be interesting to try and work out all the places I've lived, and before I knew it I'd written them all out so I may as well post this. I'm not doing all the map links, though. I can't even work out where my first family house was any more; they've rearranged a lot of the estate round there and I think its road name has changed, bizarrely.
Places I have lived:
1. A foster home in Rochdale for the first 12 weeks - spring 1976
2. Highfield Drive, Standish, Wigan, a nice big family house until my parents got divorced - 1976 to 1983/86
3a. The Alms Houses, a small but nice terrace of three houses converted from what had been five alms houses in the grounds of Haigh Hall, Wigan, where my dad moved to - 1983 to about 1988
3b. Tenter Drive, Standish, a little bungalow, where my mum moved to once the big house got sold and still lives - 1986 to 1994
3c. This flat above a shop in Orrell, where my dad lived temporarily while some financial weirdness was happening between houses - 1988/1989 ish
3d. Grimshaw Road, Skelmersdale, an ancient farmhouse that had had a new town happen around it, where my dad moved to next - he's moved twice since, but I never lived in those. He moves a lot, I don't know why. - 1989 ish to 1994
4. Palmer's Garth, Hatfield College, Durham - in halls for my first year of uni, but then I left - 1994 to 1995
5. The Old Chapel, Catsfield, Hastings - my boyfriend's parents' house, where I lived for that summer - summer 1995
6. Davigdor Road, Hove - there was no central heating and we had a tiny room but it was still fun - 1995 to 1996
7. The Drove, Brighton - a cheap summer let perched on the side of a very steep hill in Brighton - also fun, the first house I shared with Tom - summer 1996
8. Hollingdean Terrace, Brighton - a proper student house - 1996 to 1997
9. Holland Street, Brighton - kipping in a friend's spare room for about two weeks between lets - May 1997
10. Upper Lewes Road, Brighton - another cheap summer let, also immense fun, between plainly having failed uni and doing lots of temp jobs and trying to buy a house - summer 1997
11. Springfield Road, Brighton - my lovely flat near the park and the open market, which I still own and will probably move back to in October or so - 19th August 1997 to 2006
12. Mossford Street, Mile End - moving to London to do the PhD at Queen Mary, only then we all changed university to UCL - Oct 2006 to March 2008
13. Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park - a short term let while my life was rearranging itself in all sorts of odd ways - March to May 2008
14. Holloway Road, Holloway - right here right now, for now - May 2008 onwards.
My favourite in terms of the time itself were all those cheap student summer lets. Brighton is a great place to be in the summer, there was all sorts of odd temp work to do, the houses themselves were proper student pits but it didn't matter because we had booze to drink and arsing around to get up to. My favourite house as a house is still my flat in Brighton, because it's my house, and I did the things I wanted to it like giving it a Temple Of Shower in the bathroom, although let's not think too much about the rotting sash windows at the back and the dodgy bungaroosh construction. The Old Chapel was good because it was a converted Methodist church with gothic stained glass windows, and the family were Christadelphians, and therefore the scourge of double glazing salesmen and Jehovah's Witnesses alike. I dunno, all the places I've lived have had things to like about them. Possibly the grimmest was that flat above a shop in Orrell, where me and my sister slept in bunk beds in what was really the landing, so you could still hear everything happening in the lounge when you'd gone to bed at whatever time it was I went to bed at weekends when I was twelve. But that was a sort of long-ish term temporary, and there was the shop downstairs, where I used to hang around and help behind the counter - that's less weird than it could be, because the family business was a wholesaler's / cash and carry, and the owner of the shop and flat was a major customer, a loud Portugese man called Fernando Da Silva, so I knew about all the products because I also helped sell most of them wholesale in the school holidays. Looking back, a twelve year old shouldn't really have been selling cigarettes, but it's not like I ever even tried smoking myself.
Somewhere out there is a string of the family houses I never lived in that were my birth family's, which included ones in Rochdale, Elland, Halifax and Oldham, I believe, although these days they live in Milton Keynes. Anyway.
jennywooyay 's version of this earlier and thought it might be interesting to try and work out all the places I've lived, and before I knew it I'd written them all out so I may as well post this. I'm not doing all the map links, though. I can't even work out where my first family house was any more; they've rearranged a lot of the estate round there and I think its road name has changed, bizarrely. Places I have lived:
1. A foster home in Rochdale for the first 12 weeks - spring 1976
2. Highfield Drive, Standish, Wigan, a nice big family house until my parents got divorced - 1976 to 1983/86
3a. The Alms Houses, a small but nice terrace of three houses converted from what had been five alms houses in the grounds of Haigh Hall, Wigan, where my dad moved to - 1983 to about 1988
3b. Tenter Drive, Standish, a little bungalow, where my mum moved to once the big house got sold and still lives - 1986 to 1994
3c. This flat above a shop in Orrell, where my dad lived temporarily while some financial weirdness was happening between houses - 1988/1989 ish
3d. Grimshaw Road, Skelmersdale, an ancient farmhouse that had had a new town happen around it, where my dad moved to next - he's moved twice since, but I never lived in those. He moves a lot, I don't know why. - 1989 ish to 1994
4. Palmer's Garth, Hatfield College, Durham - in halls for my first year of uni, but then I left - 1994 to 1995
5. The Old Chapel, Catsfield, Hastings - my boyfriend's parents' house, where I lived for that summer - summer 1995
6. Davigdor Road, Hove - there was no central heating and we had a tiny room but it was still fun - 1995 to 1996
7. The Drove, Brighton - a cheap summer let perched on the side of a very steep hill in Brighton - also fun, the first house I shared with Tom - summer 1996
8. Hollingdean Terrace, Brighton - a proper student house - 1996 to 1997
9. Holland Street, Brighton - kipping in a friend's spare room for about two weeks between lets - May 1997
10. Upper Lewes Road, Brighton - another cheap summer let, also immense fun, between plainly having failed uni and doing lots of temp jobs and trying to buy a house - summer 1997
11. Springfield Road, Brighton - my lovely flat near the park and the open market, which I still own and will probably move back to in October or so - 19th August 1997 to 2006
12. Mossford Street, Mile End - moving to London to do the PhD at Queen Mary, only then we all changed university to UCL - Oct 2006 to March 2008
13. Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park - a short term let while my life was rearranging itself in all sorts of odd ways - March to May 2008
14. Holloway Road, Holloway - right here right now, for now - May 2008 onwards.
My favourite in terms of the time itself were all those cheap student summer lets. Brighton is a great place to be in the summer, there was all sorts of odd temp work to do, the houses themselves were proper student pits but it didn't matter because we had booze to drink and arsing around to get up to. My favourite house as a house is still my flat in Brighton, because it's my house, and I did the things I wanted to it like giving it a Temple Of Shower in the bathroom, although let's not think too much about the rotting sash windows at the back and the dodgy bungaroosh construction. The Old Chapel was good because it was a converted Methodist church with gothic stained glass windows, and the family were Christadelphians, and therefore the scourge of double glazing salesmen and Jehovah's Witnesses alike. I dunno, all the places I've lived have had things to like about them. Possibly the grimmest was that flat above a shop in Orrell, where me and my sister slept in bunk beds in what was really the landing, so you could still hear everything happening in the lounge when you'd gone to bed at whatever time it was I went to bed at weekends when I was twelve. But that was a sort of long-ish term temporary, and there was the shop downstairs, where I used to hang around and help behind the counter - that's less weird than it could be, because the family business was a wholesaler's / cash and carry, and the owner of the shop and flat was a major customer, a loud Portugese man called Fernando Da Silva, so I knew about all the products because I also helped sell most of them wholesale in the school holidays. Looking back, a twelve year old shouldn't really have been selling cigarettes, but it's not like I ever even tried smoking myself.
Somewhere out there is a string of the family houses I never lived in that were my birth family's, which included ones in Rochdale, Elland, Halifax and Oldham, I believe, although these days they live in Milton Keynes. Anyway.
