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The house is really shaping up nicely. I can’t believe this is what my mother wanted her whole life (I grew up listening to her talk about it) and she only gets it now, once my father moves out. She’s finally getting a real kitchen. Because my dad was the house-husband he put his indelible (messy) mark on the house when I was very young. Every room became a storage room for books, cds, videos, coats, shoes etc. The place was always frightfully messy and I would never in a million years invite a friend over. Even when myself and my sister would spend out mid-term cleaning the place from top to bottom, tidying things away, it would take only a single day for my dad to restore it to it’s former non-glory. I was a kid but it hurt to see how little respect he had for our home.

Today he is in Eastern Europe, living in a small cottage in the countryside that he bought with the separation money. Except he’s not. He returned after 2 weeks as the cottage was going to take longer than the predicted fortnight to renovate. He’s now been living on the couch in my mother’s flat for the past month. And guess how long it took for the flat to turn into a pigsty? A single weekend. The weekend my sister was away, I was dog-sitting and my mother on holiday abroad. When I came back to the flat I was shocked. I had forgotten this aspect of him. There were crumbs all over the kitchen counter and floor, floating in the puddles of water spilt from endless cups of tea; clunks of cups with dried teabags inside clustered along the sink; boxes of food torn open as though a starving bear had found himself in the pantry; shoes scattered under the coffee table; piles of coats over the back of the sofa and every other chair. Books and DVDs were stacked around the couch where he slept/lived. The TV was loudly chattering away while he was there, sunken into the sofa with his laptop on watching a DVD. The room is usually dark as he either hasn’t figured out how to raise the blinds or he has a phobia of sunlight.

Since he’s been back I’ve spent most of my time in the furniture-free house. It says a lot when I ‘d rather sit on the floor of an empty house ( with no food or cooking appliances) and spend the night in my old freezing cold bedroom which is full of misplaced furniture from the rest of the house than stay in the flat with my mother, father and sister.