I really don't get who made this this image and why - it's not cute, it's just horrible. And it appeared here (where I have drawn the red box), above the hamster cage.
Now this really caught me by surprise. My flatmate Kogo is one of those people who accumulates all sorts of shit that he doesn't need, and our living room is often treated as something of a warehouse. As I mentioned with the frog rug in a previous post, these things often appear without my consultation, even though I have to live with them. The hamsters also appeared without me being asked my opinion; he just assumed I would find them cute, when in fact I find them noisy and smelly. And that's quite apart from the fact that I can't believe I live with a 34 year old who sits there for hours looking at them, feeding them, photographing them and so on...
Well, I can tolerate all this providing nothing goes up on the white walls, as the whiteness gives the illusion of there being more space than there actually is. And since nothing has ever been on the walls, I assumed he saw things the same way. But then, suddenly this poster appears and it baffled me as much as the frog rug. What kind of grown man would actually choose to put that thing on his wall, especially when it's the only thing on the wall?? I suspect it was probably his girlfriend, that almost silent, ever present figure in the house (and I did NOT know she was going to be here all the time before I moved in).
Anyway, I was having none of it, so I told him it had to go, that the walls have to stay clear. And since I don't complain about things often he obliged, but what surprised me came next: I was expecting him to take it down, realise how ridiculous it is and either throw it away or put it away somewhere. Instead, he immediately started pulling down magnets and other posters off the side of the fridge and put it up there. This poster really seems to matter!
Unfortunately, while there was no tension over this, it did seem to trigger off a mini arms-race of minor complaint and counter minor-complaint about various little things around the house. I can't be bothered to go into them all, but suffice to say that he's a patronising cunt at times and takes the line that when there's a "problem" in the house like forgetting to turn off the light in the toilet it can only be me who's doing it. It was complete news to him that he does it sometimes too. Overall, I'm pretty fed up with his idiosyncracies and the intrusions they have on my personal space. I guess to sum it up, I pay half the rent, but I don't feel like I have authority over the flat -- 95% of the crap in here is his. Living here is a very fine balance between the cheapness of the rent and the convenience of the location versus the experience of living with the myriad idiosyncracies of this weird, human hamster and his little will-o-the-wisp concubine. If I can't live with someone I truly like and respect, then I need my own space. I'm not really in a financial position to move, but I may have a chance... and I will aim to have my own place soon, if not at some point later this year, then definitely next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment