So here we are reminiscing about Coombe road

It's one of those strange things: you wait and wait for a day to come then, when it's finally there, you wish you were months away. I started this blog around the same time I began to seriously think about the bloody mémoire. This correlation was no coincidence: strapped to the desk and chained to the computer for weeks, I needed something to do that wasn't European politics related. So for weeks I scribbled the blog and wrote the infamous bloody mémoire, waiting for one thing only- the day it would be given in and I could finally be on holiday.

So here we are, on holiday, and feeling lower than low and far worse than I did at any point of the bloody mémoire. Some friends reckon it's because I put so much (actually, everything) in to the mémoire, that I now need to go through my transition phase. Others reckon that it is down to nerves about next year: should I write a thesis? should I get a job? what jobs should I apply for?

I think there is a bit of both in this, but the biggest reason of all I reckon is that I am bored out of my fucking brain. My friends are either working or on holiday, my best friend is out of town, as are my boyfriend and my parents. So here I am, in grey muggy Paris (some July we're having here), with a movie card and lunch-and-drinkie-dates with aforementioned working friends, but there is nothing to get my brain into during the day, or rather nothing that can even begin to be compared to the intellectual investment the bloody mémoire demanded. I've got the point where I am researching Harry Potter (not just reading, but taking notes and testing hypothesis- how sad), inventing recipes (dozens of them, I have all this cooked, rotting food in the fridge), watching seriously bad movies (Pirates of the Caribbean III managed the no-mean-feat of being even worse than PoC II), and even walking to places instead of taking the metro (not in cutesie areas of Paris, but ugly ones). All in all, the hours stretch ahead endlessly.

This is not to say I don't have anything to do. I should be seriously looking in to the thesis option, getting in touch with Prof Mouchard to ask him carefully thought out questions about the next step in my higher education. Failing that, I should be looking in to the European think tanks, and start sending them amorous covering letters, CVs, and copy of the bloody mémoire. All I've done so far is suscribe to the e-newsletter of one of the left-leaning (Social-Democrat) think tanks based in Paris, Notre Europe.

Other than that, I should be doing the annual clean-up of the flat, maybe even change the furniture around, and generally look in to the court case that my residency is about to launch into (against the wood yard that lives and works downstairs, it's a long story). Finally, I could of course be volunteering to hand out soup, teach underprivileged kids to read, or working with the mentally ill (i.e. hanging out at my local café). Despite this plethora available to me in the City of Lights (finest museums in the world et al) I find myself at home, bored, bored, bored, too bored even to get up and stop being bored.

It sounds really dumb, but that's how bad it is. Knowing me, this will only last a few days before I spring up in a flurry of activity and start redecorating the flat while printing CVs while having dinner with friends while on the phone to the lawyer. I go on holiday in a couple of weeks (to Italy for four days with my parents and Harry Potter VII). Until all that happens, I am currently suffering from what I call "Coombe Road syndrome."

Coombe Road was the house I and three mates (all boys) shared during our second year of uni in Brighton. Liban, James, Raj and I met on our very first night at university. It was early September and all of us were starting our first year, and living in Hove, Brighton's siamese town, where the uni had some student residences. James, Liban and I lived in Holland Road, Raj in Brunswick Place, just around the corner. We (and a handful of others) became friends that fateful night after Nicole, our friendly Residential advisor, asked who wanted to go down to the pub to introduce ourselves over a few beers. Only a few hands went up: mine, James, Liban's and Raj's among them. We became firm friends. At the end of our first year we decided, now that Holland House was kicking us out, to find a house together as most second-years do.

Finding the dreaded Coombe Road was a nightmare in itself : it all came down to Liban to find a place to live. Liban is both the funniest and nicest guy I've ever known, but he is also the most disorganised and leave-it-till-later bloke in the world. He was left with firm instructions: four bedrooms, not-too-far from uni, nice, furnished, near shops, cheap, garden (I had a vision of being the perfect modern Hausfrau and raising chickens for lovely organic eggs), near the sea, near the centre of town, etc. I set off for India with my friend Olivia, James went back to see his girlfriend in France, Raj disappeared back to Londonstan where he comes from. Good luck Liban.

To his credit, he did find us a house, around end of August if I remember. Unfortunately, it was 108 Coombe road, the worst shithole known to students. Liban found the place drunk and in the dark, which I suppose didn't exactly bode well. He was off to Italy with Kate, and found and answered the ad the day before. He visited after dark, said yes, and then fucked off on holiday. We all heard the news in our respective holiday places, and were ecstatic, it had looked as though we wouldn't be living together for lack of house, and this was terrific news.

The first thing I remember about Coombe Road is the fact it is a sodding great big hill. I got to Brighton early September and met my friend Teherul at the station. All I remember is us puffing up a quarter of a mile of very steep hill, before climbing up another 200 meters of excruciatingly steep hill. We made it. Coombe road is a typical street of small, terraced houses, in a working class/student neighbourhood off the main road, halfway between the center of town and the Uni, i.e. in the merry middle of nowhere. The shops were a petrol station, an overpriced Indian cornershop that stocked nothing but Pot Noodles, Marmite and out-of-date frozen dinners, and a garden center. To get to town was at least a 15 minute bus ride, to get to uni was at least a 15 minute bus ride, and to get anywhere meant, one day, having to come back up that horrible hill.

The garden was overgrown, the kitchen hideous and out-of date, the bathroome avocado and leaky, the living room grey. Then there was the bedroom issue. One of the bedrooms was huge and lovely, another was big and the nicest as it gave on to the garden. One was medium sized and downstairs, its window giving on to a freezer and washing machine annexe that gave on to the garden. The fourth bedroom was under four square meters. It was obvious some people were going to get a bad deal, so we decided to swap the bedrooms every so often. Raj refused, and so we pulled short straws. I got downstairs bedrom, Liban got the tiny one, James got the medium one, and, twisted fate, Raj got the massive one. To cut a long story short, I hated the downstairs one as it had no window and was next to the kitchen, so I ended up with the tiny one for two terms, James taking it for one term. We never forgave Raj for being such a selfish dick.

Bedrooms aside, Coombe Road became the place of nightmares. Four sloppy students left free in a not-very-nice house of their own can only lead to disaster. We were the archetypal student tenant nightmares. The front room became a giant ashtray, the hideously ugly (and amazingly comfy) armchairs and sofa became hiding places for old plates, beer cans, lecture notes and bills, cigarette ends. Through spilllage and dirty shoes, the carpet went from the colour grey to an indeterminate greyish colour; the dust, the smell... All that was "civilised" about that front room was a huge TV, complete with about a thousand channels. The boys had got it on the very first day, before they even signed up for electricity.

The kitchen which had been old fashioned but at least clean when we arrived became a mad-biologist's lab. I clearly remember some orange juice being spilt around February, and James furiously scraping the mould off the floor the following August before we gave the keys back. The oven became a oily grotto of old fat and cheese and forgotten bacon slices. The microwave was revered. The washing up, which never happened except when a not-too-foul plate could be salvaged, was everywhere, in various nuances of mould, the sideboards were under three inches of crumb, grease and dust. Smells belched out of the sink, which was clooged with weeks worth of decayed food. All in all the kitchen was best avoided, which is why we never set foot in the garden more than once (it became jungle, the chickens were forgotten on day 3) . When James's girlfriend Chloé (known as "the bitch Chloé" or "the fat bitch" when James was out of the room) came to stay, she jolted to a stop the second she came through the front door, taking it all in. The next day, rubber gloves were being ripped out of packets and bleach bottles being unscrewed. As good friends, Liban, Raj and I left the house to give James some quality time with his girfriend. That evening, the kitchen was spotless, and over dinner (dinner!) Chloé described the various mushrooms she had found in our sink and behind the appliances. She was evidently horrified that we corrupting James like this.

The bathroom was also bad, full of dark mould in the corners, old puddles of damp and the smells one associates with three young men. The loo didn't have much pressure and we were always out of paper. Soft porn belonging mainly to Raj sat next to the sink, which I disliked more than all the mould in the house put together. James once attacked the bathroom with bleach and did a fine job. Liban was good at doing the living room. I tended to go around doing the little things, like throwing out papers, emptying the bins. Raj however did nothing, and was proud of it. I his defence thoughwe were all terrible. Our landlord, a real geezer in his late 20s called Toby would sail in from time to time for rent and to nick hash off us. he was always bitching about something but we took no notice.

Over the months, all of us became incredibly depressed though it came through in different ways. Raj disappeared to London half the week every week (despite having biggest bedroom, snarl). James went about stoned; he had a car and could disappear a bit, he also had a decent room but was not mean about it unlike Raj. He spent most of the time in there, smoking joints. Liban stopped leaving his bed during the day and disappeared to Kate's most evenings. I got in to a routine of spending as much time at uni as I could, then coming back to my tiny impeccable room and reading for hours. James & I got closer, as we did with Liban, though he was now clearly screwing up his year. I can't remember how but James, Raj & I got our year.

At the time, I was depressed beyond belief, in this horror house with a bunch of selfish dicks, hating economics (this was before I specialised in the interesting stuff), going from my tiny room to uni, then back up the hill in the evenings. Liban and I turned to deep conversations and both strated writing poetry, his good, mine terrible. This is the only example I have of my stuff, which I clearly remember writing in an evening, sitting cross legged on James chest of drawers, with Liban and James nearby.

Ink flows more slowly than time
Yet immortalises the present, meaning I'm
Remembering, but forget what occured,
My feelings lost when turned into word.

Poets say that language was wrought
To give texture to knowledge and thought,
Transmit experience and allow to reveal
Other minds, so as to know what we feel.
Poets even conceive the empty as worthwhile,
By inducing feelings with the power of style.

So why do my thoughts, in words, confuse?
My mind is clear but my hands abuse
Some vital messenger, until a drunken scribe
Corrupts the purity of what I would describe.
So my language does not make the message transcend,
Nor does it beautify, innovate or defend.

It yearns to duplicate heaven and hell-
In vain! It poisons pleasure and pain.

Terrible, I know, but it illustrates the gay mood I was in pretty well.

We left Coombe Road at the end of August, having, I think about 24 hours to clean the place. It was hideous, and when the mad geezer Toby came to check everything was ok, Liban and I nervously laughed till we cried as we ran from room to room trying to hide all the stuff we had broken, dismantled, forgotten to clean and stolen. A long, thin wardrobe I had been using (on its side) as a window seat in Liban's room gracefullly collapsed seconds after Toby left the room, Liban had been oh-so-discreetly trying to hold it in place when he had toured the bedroom. The daggers at the top of the stairs had broken the first day and no one could find them. The washing machine (which had leaked continuously for the past 6 months, including one time when it poured through the carpeted corridor out of the front door) was bust. The sitting room carpet had dissolved from beer and ash. Most of the furniture was scratched, burnt, broken, or missing. I can't remmeber how much he took from our deposit but it was a lot.