When I was handed the keys to my first flat I wasn’t entirely sure what happened next. I stood in the desolate kitchen – my kitchen – and surveyed the scene. Do I take a meter reading? How do I take a meter reading? It wasn’t immediately obvious. Should I familiarise myself with how the heating system works? Introduce myself to my new neighbours? Perhaps walk through the property and analyse what kind of storage space I have before everything is moved in? I considered all of these options before I reached into my bag for the bottle of Perez Cruz Cabarnet Sauvignon Reserva 2014 which I had been saving for more than a year for no particular occasion other than such a time as I might feel like drinking a bottle of wine. I poured the fragrant red wine into a small neon green plastic party tumbler, and over the course of the next two hours I proceeded to drink the entire bottle. The remainder of the night was lost in a grape infused fog.
A week has passed since that day and as far as the experience of owning my own property and living by myself goes, I am still winging it. Every day feels to be a constant struggle to remember what I’ve done with my keys. I find myself reaching for my pocket to handle my keys at intervals so frequent during the day that it could only be classed as obsessive behaviour. I like to know that they are there, in a manner similar to how a younger self newly discovering the virtues of boyhood enjoyed knowing that his testicles were there. When I am in the flat my favourite place to sit my keys is on the breakfast bar and I will regularly make trips through to the kitchen, under the guise of ‘making a coffee’ or ‘recycling’, to make sure that the keys are still there. I am never sure where else I think they could possibly be or who could have moved them considering that it is a small flat and it is only me living in it, but I can’t stop myself from checking anyway. Though often when I am leaving I will reach the other side of the door only to realise that my keys are still stranded on the breakfast bar.
Much of my first few days of flat ownership prior to moving in day on Tuesday were spent considering whether there is some kind of specific science behind the way humans decide which kitchen cupboard will be allocated to certain goods. I have inherited thirteen cupboards of varying size, which not only sounds like an unlucky number but also seems too many for any single man. Some of those cupboards have an immediately obvious purpose: the two with glass-fronted doors are ideal for displaying wine and beer glasses; the short and wide cupboard situated above the oven hob is surely built for the storage of pots and pans; the area under the sink is the natural home for cleaning materials, while another cupboard nearby is already populated with crockery. But what goes in the other eight cupboards? This question would trouble me over the coming days.
I embarked on my first pantry shop on Sunday afternoon, stocking up on typical kitchen necessities like oil and vinegar and salt and pepper and stock cubes and pasta and rice. I felt good about this achievement as I went about the task of storing cans of tuna fish and peeled tomatoes, yet doubts began to creep into my mind as condiments were introduced to one another like children on the first day of school. Is it alright to store different ethnic flavours such as soy sauce and Dijon mustard in the same place? Surely it is in 2018. I decided to keep them separate, but then what if there is an occasion where I need pesto and mayonnaise: will I be able to find them? Will there be confusion if macaroni and green Thai curry paste are stored in the same cupboard? It could lead to a terrible culinary catastrophe and mockery at dinner parties. The issue kept me awake for hours on several nights last week, and even today I am not settled on my organisation.
When moving day arrived I decided that the best way of focussing my mind amidst all the upheaval and of providing company in an otherwise lonely flat would be to surround myself with houseplants. There were three left for me, at my request, by the previous owner and I have since added a further two. I imagined that it would be beneficial to have another living element in the place, something to freshen the atmosphere and give me some form of company, like some horticultural masculine version of a cat lady. My credentials as a ‘plant man’ were furthered on Friday evening when I added the latest addition to my family and decided to name it. It seems only natural to me that all houseplants are female, and so I gave this new plant the name Sally, after my favourite Lou Reed song Sally Can’t Dance – because, for as lovely as she is to look at, she has little in the way of rhythm.
Having been told that the majority of my plants belong to the cacti family I undertook a Google search to learn the best methods of caring for them. I was pleased to find out that these plants require very little attention, infrequent watering and for all intents and purposes practically thrive on neglect. They are, in that respect, broadly similar to the majority of my social relationships.
Music is going to be a frequent feature in my flat. I have been telling anyone who will listen that my place will be a place where people can drop by any time and listen to good music and drink responsibly priced wine; a sort of refuge for the bohemians and the boozers, for the lovers of Merlot and Marillion. To that end I invested in one of the well reviewed Sonos sound systems and it was one of the very first things I made sure was in position on removal day. The quality of sound emitted from such a relatively small speaker is remarkable. It can fill a room with ease – my flat is so small that filling the living room with sound pretty much fills the entire apartment – and in order to achieve this the Sonos app employs what it calls ‘Trueplay Tuning’. During the initial setup, once you have decided where in the room your speaker is going to be positioned, the app asks the user to walk around the room waving their phone up and down so that it can tailor the sound produced by the speaker to the room. It was at this point on Friday morning, as I walked slowly around my living room waving my phone like a magician suffering a seizure, that I felt thankful that I live alone and have net curtains.
After a busy moving in day filling my living room with music and decanting my books onto the bookcase – which is more of a book cupboard – in alphabetical order by author and organising the wardrobe with suits and shirts being arranged by colour, dark to light, and ties folded neatly onto a tie rack I set about cooking my first meal in my new flat. Being short of time I opted for something light and easy and tossed a couple of venison burgers into the oven. I wouldn’t normally buy venison burgers on account of finding them a little deer, but they were on offer for £1.99 from Lidl and it seemed like a good buy.
Not every meal has been such a straightforward success. Whilst I greatly enjoyed a baked salmon fillet and made a tasty chicken breast stuffed with brie and pancetta, the accompanying sweet potato wedges have been a source of consternation. My first attempt resulted in a scattering of the paprika seasoned root vegetable leaving the oven slightly blackened, although not to an extent which prevented them from being edible. The next night I expected that I could learn from this experience by reducing the cooking time by several minutes, therefore lessening the opportunity for the wedges to burn. But to my disappointment and surprise I found them charred to an even greater extent than the previous attempt, with many of the wedges so black that an FBI forensics team would have great difficulty identifying them. I can’t fathom where I went wrong and can only assume that this event was some kind of kamikaze act of rebellion from the sweet potatoes over their placement in the kitchen cupboard.
Diaries of a single man 