31 Postcodes - Poem 19

 

Basic

I just needed a bed,

so I got a bedsit:

one grim, grey room, 

one sad, brown smell,

gas fire, coarse carpet,

Baby Belling (I imagine),

bar stool, shared shower,

laundrette (somewhere),

seven AM blare

of a regular neighbour;

I never once saw their face

but I heard them (distorted).

RF 2021

Video/audio for this one here.

I think this is what happened. In the summer of 1990 my flatmate moved in with her fairly long-term boyfriend (his flat was nicer) and there wasn’t anyone I wanted to share with particularly so I had to find a different place just for me. I was so not interested in where I lived (at this point it was just somewhere to keep my mixtapes, trainers, car keys and, very occasionally, to sleep) so I took the cheapest, easiest option – a small bedsit in a big Victorian house of about 6-10 other bedsits quite near ‘work’. It was roughly on the Hyde Park/Headingley border, if such a thing exists, for those who know Leeds. It was not a pretty or charming home. It was very institutional (and there were so many other tenants yet I don’t remember ever actually seeing any of them). 

I had a room at the back, middle floor, no view, possibly even the room’s own aged net curtains. I made no changes at all to the room. Did I even unpack? Who would have known? This was still before laptops and mobile phones for most of us but I had my own landline in the room which was my most used accessory. I mentioned a company car in the last post but that must have been a mistake (and I’ve amended it) because I just remembered that I sold my first (crappy) car when I lived here so the full-time company car phase (first an old Fiesta XR2, then a new Citroen AX) must have only started around this time. I sold the crappy car (Fiat 127, barely roadworthy) and it immediately broke down. I apologise profusely if the person who bought that car is reading this (unlikely but ‘hi Fiona!’ if so). I wasn’t sleeping a lot then, I wasn’t in my right mind (and other excuses). She’s a huge success in TV production apparently so well done to her (and karma).

I was still working at the same job, and I went out a lot. Living here, I started seeing a postie (friend of a friend) and his hours were even odder than mine. I wasn’t a very good girlfriend to him (and he was a sweet guy). Looking at an old diary I see the phrase (early in our time together) ‘forgot it was his birthday, forgot for ages.’ I was such a charmer. He was more a pub than club person so my pub hours went up significantly around this time (though they were added onto the club hours, they didn’t replace them).

I did make some tiny headway with writing when I lived here because I started doing reviews for a local Leeds magazine. It was called Leeds Other Paper, though it later changed its name to Northern Star, and it was a workers’ cooperative staffed by members of pre-Tubthumping Chumbawamba and various other hardworking anarchists, leftwingers and the odd hippy. I started off writing unpaid reviews of comedy/cabaret shows (free tickets were the payment – and there was the glory too of course) but I gradually wrote more and more for them (on music, books, clubs, also I did interviews and even worked there, kind of unofficially, later on). Like my quaker school in the ’80s, Northern Star ceased operations not long after I left. I’m not sure what to say about that. Can I blame Thatcher? Answer ‘yes’ (for everything). 

I moved on from this show of a home in January 1991 after only a few months. But where to? And why? Was it an allergy to net curtains? More on this and other news tomorrow at the same time.

This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were mostly taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.