Share house living for introverts

Last weekend I moved* into a big new home. A new home with four other (extremely lovely) people. Four of 'em though! That's the most people I've ever lived with in my life, apart from when I was growing up in a family of five (and I don't believe that counts because we were a family of hermits).

Lovely though all my new housemates are, I admitted to a friend last week that I was a little aprehensive about how I would cope with such a big share-house situation and confessed that I was treating it as an experiment (with me as the guinea pig).

I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am a true introvert, but other people rarely seem to understand why I need time and space on my own in order to not go totally bat-shit crazy. Non-introverted people just don't get this at all; and it's hard to feel you aren't being constantly judged by the majority of extroverted people who just can't fathom why you wouldn't want company for every little aspect of your life. One girl had her brother tell her, "we didn't know you were introverted; we just thought you were a bitch", and I'm sure there are a slew of people I've come across in my life who thought that of me; or maybe just that I was shy, aloof, snobby or very quiet.

Man, introverts get some bad press.

To help with the adjustment, I have tried to make my room as much of a haven as possible (it's a lovely big, quiet room on the top floor). But there is much to love about the rest of this rambling house (besides the people, natch) - we have a backyard with a barbeque, goldfish, 5 people's worth of kitchen gadgets, and OMG Sky TV! We also have a seriously big kitchen, and I am looking forward to getting stuck into some serious baking for my new flatties. It's been a long time between muffin batches.

Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes. Fingers crossed it doesn't go horribly wrong...


* This will be my ninth address in eleven years. It's fair to say that I am a bit of an expert with the moving now. The secret is to get boys to help you.

Brrr!

I know in my last post I was despairing about global warming, but BRRR! It has been freezing here the last few nights! Our crappy old boiler was on the fritz again on the weekend, so we survived for 3 days and nights with no hot water and no heat. It was like camping, but even less fun, because at least with camping there is hot(ish) water to be had at the communal showers. At least camping, you are semi-warm for 10 minutes out of the day.

I think our gas bill is going to implode this Winter, because we are just beginning to become aware of the utter igloo-like freezingness of our top floor flat. I never understood that all the houses in London are huddled together and piled on top of one another - eureka! - in order to share as much communal heat as possible.

The bedroom and bathroom at one side of the flat are especially cold. The bathroom floor is particularly bracing first thing in the morning - "like an ice-rink" in the immortal words of the Boyfriend. The bed itself has become uncomfortably tomb-like, so that laying your head on the stone-cold pillow at night is eerily similar to laying your head on a marble slab. I feel like there should be an epitaph etched into the bedhead above us, saying "Here lie two poor souls who froze to death before their time".

I am currently petitioning our landlady for a new boiler. We already have plastic sheeting over the windows and vents. Plastic sheeting stuck up with sticky-tape. I would hate to use the phrase "trading on former glories", but it must said that the proud British Empire is certainly not what it used to be.