The transient's diary, weeks 4 and 5

It seems like we hit the trough at the end of week 4.

It was already getting a bit tedious, this transient existence. Danielle and I were both feeling how pleasant it would be to be able to move home. Not Toffee and Luci, the dogs, of course. We brought our sofa with us, so with their favourite resting place, plenty to eat, and plenty of walks, they had nothing to complain about.

We, on the other hand, were running out of patience. There’s nothing wrong about our rented appointment. Well, nothing except that the pipes start moaning from time to time, for no good reason, when we’ve had the temerity to run some hot water. Nothing I can do seems to stop it – eventually it dies down like the moaning of a banished spirit – so I’ve been reduced to muttering, “oh, do shut up, you ghastly bit of plumbing”. 

Ineffective, you think? No more than anything else we’ve tried.

Still, even without that, we’d want to get home. Home’s home, after all, the place where we feel we belong. Small and modest it may be but, hey, I’m small and modest myself. Well, small anyway.

However much we miss being away, Misty, our cat, is even more fed up. Each time we show up at the old place, where we’ve left him – it seemed more humane than imposing a cat flap-less existence on him – he rebukes us loudly. I mean, he’s happy to devour the food we give him, but he makes it clear he resents our failure to remain in our home. Which is also his home.

Scarcely inhabitable

Still, at the end of week 4, the place really wouldn’t have been possible to live there. Or, if possible, certainly not desirable. Hey, the kitchen gave straight onto the garden, without so much as a door between it and the elements. And, until blocked by a sheet of plywood at night, in a gesture to security, the sitting room-as-was gave straight on the kitchen, so had the sofa been in its accustomed place, it would have been for all practical purposes, in the garden. Or at least, in an annex to it.

That was the trough though.

By the end of week 5, the change was spectacular. Why, the wall-less hole at the end of the kitchen had turned into a real wall, with a real door, and a real cat flap (well, the hole for the cat flap was there. The flat itself will come later).

A new door to lock out the garden
A broom as a sign of optimism
A massive cat flap in preparation

And upstairs, in what will in time be our bedroom, we had – a window! With a view, what is more. Or at least, there was a view until they covered the whole thing (leaks, you know: a temporary measure until they’re fixed).

The beginnings of a view

Still, it’s a huge step in the right direction.

Even so, that was the end of week 5. We’re approaching the end of week 6 now. And we were already getting fed up in week 4.

There’s no joy in vagrancy.