This house is the first place I’ve lived in for more than two years since about 2000. Before then I had seasonal jobs, or short-term contracts/courses where nothing was permanent. While it’s fun moving around and seeing new places, it’s kind of annoying living in a single room with no more than a carful of stuff.

I’ve lived in this house since 2007, and it’s nice noticing the seasons passing in a repeating pattern. I know that once the cold weather has passed the farmer will sow the field behind my house, ready for harvest in August. I also know that the oilseed rape will come out in the summer, followed by all the poppies along the sides of the roads and motorways.

I can also mark the passing of time without leaving my house. For example, it’s winter when my bedroom turns into a freezer and mould grows on its walls. It’s summer when I find cornflies walking around inside my monitor, and it’s autumn when wasps invade. I fully expect my outdoor rubbish bin to become a maggot farm again. The slugs haven’t been so bad this year though.

After running my heating at a higher temperature, and pointing a small fan heater at the mould patches, my house is probably drier. I made up a solution of bleach and water and wiped the walls with it. This seemed to take the mould off leaving no visible staining. Hopefully the bleach will also prevent the mould from coming back.

My house is so cold! It’s one of those red-brick victorian terraced houses that had no insulation because it wasn’t invented back then. Also, with a fire place in each room who needs insulation? Just chuck another log on.

Only this is 2008 and all the fireplaces have been bricked up, which is a shame. There is central heating and it does work, in every room except the front room, the kitchen and my bedroom – conveniently the three largest rooms in the house. Well I lie, the heating works fine, it’s just not enough to heat the rooms effectively and I think it’s down to the crap insulation.

I have a thermometer in my bedroom, the highest it gets up to is 16c and that’s during the day when the heating isn’t on! At night it drops to about 10c, with 6c being the lowest recorded (ever slept in your fridge?).

After coming home today I found a letter from the landlord saying they want to arrange a house inspection at some point. In anticipation of this I have done some tidying up. While picking up some random stuff from my bedroom floor I noticed this behind my chest of drawers…

Isn’t that nice! For the curious, here’s a closeup…

Needless to say the heating has been cranked up some more and the timer altered to run for longer. There’s also a fan heater whirring away up there now in an attempt to dry the room out. I think I’m on a losing battle though, what with the space under the house containing a large pool of water…

I have a vague recollection of eating a stew one dinner time before the holidays. As is the way of things I forgot about the empty dish and hid it somewhere amongst the mess on my desk. Before going home tonight I found it again…

I like the folds in the colonies of bacteria and mould. No idea what type of simple lifeform this is,  but it’ll give the cleaners something to talk about when they find it in a bin tomorrow. I decided it probably wasn’t worth trying to save the spoon.