Who's been sleeping in my bed?
Split up with a live-in ex back when I was in my mid-20s.

It was her house, so I needed somewhere to live, spent a while looking unsuccessfully, then the mutual friend we met through suggested I take his flat on - he'd moved elsewhere for work but couldn't rent the flat out because the Victorian house it was in had subsidence problems and the front of his flat was undergoing structural repairs.

But for a one-bed flat in Clapham at half-rent I could certainly put up with that.

Mentioned my luck to my old ex-door neighbour down the pub, who asked a bit about the flat (basically it had a sofa bed in the living room and a separate bedroom), then said, "Oh, Jamie" - another regular, originally from Brum but working in London - "needs somewhere to stay, that'll do nicely for him".

Well, several beers later I had been convinced that it would be the decent thing to let Jamie move in with me, and I now had a one-bed (shared) flat in Clapham at quarter rent. Most weekends, he'd be up in Brum seeing his kids, during the week, one or both of us would be out, so it suited us both fine.

A couple of months later, one evening down the pub, my ex's lodger ran in and told me I'd better get round there sharpish, our (well, by this point, her) cat had been run over and killed and my ex was in a very bad way.

So I went over and stayed the night, and the following night, and the rest of the week, which turned into a fortnight... (after a couple of days, once it was clear this would be an extended stay, I'd gone back to the flat to pick up clothes etc).

Anyway, after a couple of weeks, I went back to my flat so we could have a bit of space to work out whether we wanted to get back together and when I walked in, I found Jamie looking sheepish and startled at the same time, if that's possible.

Turned out the cheeky git had figured I wasn't coming back so got a mate of his in to share without telling me. This new guy was built like a brick shithouse and I wasn't about to turf him out, so I went back to the ex's and left them to sort things out with my mate/landlord.

Length? Another year before the relationship finally hit the buffers at Break-Up Junction, which coincided with my first year at uni (mature student) and meant I really didn't enjoy my first year as much as I could/should have (certainly made up for it in the second year, mind...)
(Capo, Fri 27 Feb 2009, 13:21, Reply)