The depression...

Welcome to the low point of the year...having arrived back in Sydney where the skies are never blue and it rains an awful lot for the season of spring (that's right folks summer doesn't officially start till 21st December...if you don't believe me look it up on the BBC!)...Amy and I descended into a sorry state of affairs, with in effect no money (None is an exaggeration to make the story more poignant) no home and no jobs.

The hunt for either didnt start off too well so we got progressively more disheartened as the week went on. We managed to meet the most anally retentive man in the world when we went to view the rooms in his house, he pulled out a five page rule book we would have had to of abided by...

1) put newspaper on the floor if you fry anything
2) clean the kitchen/toilet/bathroom after you use it
3) wear the allocated flip flops into the bathroom whenever you use it
4) no shoes in the house
5) no noise after 9pm
6) no drunkeness

Number 7) was probably do not leave the sponge in the sink after washing up and number 8) I think was do not click the battery cover on the remote control open and closed incessantly!

The list went on and on and we sat there trying not to laugh like school children. Oh, and if you were caught breaking any of the rules you had to put $5 in a pot which then went to a house dinner and movie night at the end of the month?! After a quick huddle we decided that we would probably be better off just paying for the entire flat to go out at the end of each month rather than partaking in the fine system, which at the end of the day would defeat the object of trying to save money!

Anyway things started looking up, we found a house that Amy, Alison and I could all live together in. It is in Rand(y)wick between the beach and the city, it houses 10 people legally and as many stowaways as you like. In truth they are still renovating it around our ears but...it has a roof (slightly leaky), one armchair (for the 10 of us), one grill and two hobs (again for 10 people), one small saucepan - half a handle, one small saucepan - no handle, one GIANT saucepan - two handles, two frying pans, one kettle (broken then fixed), one toaster, four forks, 300 knives...it has been likened to the mental ward of a hospital by the folks that have had the pleasure of visiting us there! We have a bed to sleep on which is the main thing and we are all together which helps keep us sane in the madhouse.

If you ever want to know what it might be like to live in the Big Brother house then try living at 1 Botany Street, Rand(y)wick. You move in with a bunch of randoms, you have little money so going out isn't an option (because that inevitably ends in money expenditure), you have no tele to distract you from the boredom and you are rationing your food in an attempt to save money...and the food that you do have, the other housemates lay claim to when you are not looking. For instance, Amy bought some milk one evening, got up the next day and went to work and came home - looking forward to a nice cup o' tea and guess what...3/4 of her milk had just vanished?!

The Housemates - firstly there are the kind of housemates that never really make too much of an impression, like Martin and Erika (these are the sorts of folk who just hide out in their rooms and never interact with people no matter how much you try), then there are the kind that keep themselves to themselves but you definitely notice they are there...like the two slovakian boys who take pleasure in wandering around in small tight pants or towels, we like to think of ourselves as the control of the experiment - the norm (but I'm sure so does everyone else), then there is Tom who is plain and simply a lovely guy but then there's those characters that like to make themselves known in every possible way, Laura and Chantelle and the Italian pervert for instance. Then you have to take into account Marian and the Fruitarian, our in-house DIY/Landlord/Handymen/mechanic/procrastinator extraordinaires traipsing through every day and night.

Chantelle is housemate number 11, thrown in at the last minute to do nothing but stir up trouble...so the dynamics of the house go something like this: you have the Italian pervert offering to get in the shower with every/any girl that is in it, the normal crowd will be sat around the dining room table under the calming and flattering effects of the strip lights, trying not to let the repetitive radio playlist drive us insane, deciding that it is better that everyone gets a chair as opposed to all bar one having to sit on the floor of the lounge, then Martin or Erika (Amy says "who's Erika?") may appear for a two second insightful conversation while he/she makes a sandwich, the Slovakian guys seem to take their fifth shower of the evening and once again strut through the dining room in full view of everyone, Marian will manage to turn the oh-so-normal (enjoyable) day-to-day conversation into a psychological debate and fruitarian man will probably scoff a large pizza or ten sausage sandwiches whilst sitting in his pants then he will attempt some DIY that you can bet your life savings will have fallen off/broken within 24 hours...then just about the time that everyone has trotted off to bed and is on the verge of falling asleep, Chantelle and Laura arrive home trolleyed being as loud as you like, slamming doors and trying to steal people's chocolate ice cream.

Our kitchen is like the Bermuda Triangle...EVERYTIME someone goes into it you inevitably hear them say "where have all the .... gone?" - plates, forks, bowls...my favourite story being one particular sunny Christmas morning when Amy, Alison, Alison's sister Jenny and myself woke up looking forward to our cooked brunch only to go into the kitchen and exclaim "where have all the pots, pans, plates, forks, baking trays gone?", turns out our number one (for eviction only) lodger had "borrowed" all of our utensils to go to someone else's house to cook Christmas dinner for some other people...thanks for that - Merry Christmas to you too! Luckiy there was one saucepan left and we had plans to eat dinner elsewhere otherwise we may have been a little stuck! The tale doesn't end there either because we had to spend another two days after Christmas before said pots and pans and forks were returned!

Can you guess who was the first to be evicted/leave from the asylum....that's right - the Italian pervert followed by Laura and Chantelle (which unfortunately meant the unfortunately soon departure of Tom also)...we can't really say anything though because me and Ayms are next on the list!

Work was scarce for the month of December, mostly because the world and his wife decided to arrive in Sydney a lot earlier than we did and take all the jobs and good flats! T'is our own fault really but like the wise old Miss Amyizzle says...it's all good life experience!