New Abode on the horizon - will I finally escape student living?

After three years of house sharing while at university, one might assume that when you collect your degree you leave those days behind you. I assumed this to be the case. How wrong I was.... In the three years since I left uni, I lived a more grown up life of cohabiting with a boyfriend, and even living and working abroad for a year. But necessity spoke and in moving to London, or "emigrating" here as my Grandma described it, I took the easy option of moving in with my student brother and some of his friends.


To be fair we aren't exactly roughing it. This isn't quite the hell hole halls I experienced first time around. My parents took advantage of fallen house prices and bought to rent when my brother knew he would be coming to London for uni.

It is a nice house, I can't complain, but I still do. For I didn't think I would be mixing with quite so many 18 year olds when I was 23. I don't care to know about the student union nights and which societies at Freshers week were giving out the best goodies.

I am past the stage of teaching fellow housemates how to use a washing machine and cook, and waking to find strangers in the house the next morning, not knowing whether the sofa or a housemates bed has been their place of rest.

I am fast tiring of the mother figure role I seem to have found myself in. (Mother figure is how I describe it they call it something all together less flattering.)

It would be nice to get back to some privacy and independence from the mayhem. It would be nice to be able to invite my boss around when we have changes to make to documents. Instead of which we can currently be found huddled in a crowded Starbucks hoping for Internet signal and knocking coffee over the laptop.

A lifeline appeared this week when an old friend of mine from University noticed my facebook status and got in touch saying she was looking for a flatmate to find somewhere in Camden from late Jan.

When I say old friend, we actually lived together for two years of uni along with 6 other girls. Of all of them I got on with Bex the best. She has a healthy appetite for shopping and fun like myself, and if we could indulge these hobbies in Bournemouth just think what we could do together in central London.

Here comes the tricky bit.... Bex and I stopped talking right at the end of uni. She began seeing someone from our course who I had had brief thing with that year. This is before I met G and before Bex was ever interested in this guy. Neither Bex or I had done anything wrong to one another it was just one of those uncomfortable situations. Suddenly our course mate who I had history with was around our house all the time and everyone found the situation weird. Luckily it was only about 3 months until we handed in our dissertations and packed up our lives in Bournemouth for good. But the result of these events meant Bex and the male trouble maker dated for the next three years and she always found it too weird to continue her friendship with me.


I didn't feel any great loss from the situation, I moved to Thailand for a year with G and am embarrassed to admit a lot of my friendships back in the UK took a back seat to my new life there. Once back in England, I heard through the grapevine Bex was working and living in London. About 6 months ago she added me as a friend on facebook. Then 6 weeks ago I noticed she and our mutual male had split up and she was listed as single and looking for fun.

I don't know what happened to break them up it would be inappropriate to ask but I did wonder if it would mean she got back in touch with me. Then all of a sudden yesterday, a voice from the past enquired whether I would like to search for somewhere to live together in Camden.

I am excited on a number of levels - firstly I may actually leave behind student life once and for all. Secondly, it seems as though this is an olive branch offering and Bex and I could still have a friendship despite a three year absence from each others lives. I don't know many people in London and Bex was like a sister until a man came between us.

Funny isn't it, how you come back around to the important friendships in your life, but almost all love relationships have an expiry date.