FINAL DAZE..... (part 1).

Touch me in the morning
Then just walk away
We don't have tomorrow
But we had yesterday
Hey, wasn't it me who said
That nothin' good's gonna last forever
And wasn't it me who said
Let's just be glad for the time together
Must've been hard to tell me
That you've given all you had to give
I can understand your feelin' that way
Ev'rybody's got their life to live

Easter 1995 and Matty and Christine walked out of my life leaving me in an almost empty house.  Empty of furniture, empty of life and empty of love.  As much as I wanted to make Matty's last days and wishes happen for him, I couldn't help but hate Christine.

Every piece of furniture in the house had been bought with my money, much of it before I had even met Matty.  Christine was determined that we should split the furniture as by now she had given up work and was on a carer's pension so her excuse was that they couldn't afford to buy new furniture.  I don't know it Matty ever told her that everything belonged to me but he seemed as adamant as she was that we split everything down the middle.

I had, by this time, had enough of everything.  I was sick of the jealousy and petty arguments that Christine had perfected.  I was sick of being cast as the villain for just being me and I was sick of watching Matty using Christine just as he had used me for the past 9 years.  I gave in without much of a fight.  Thankfully when we had originally moved in the house had an existing lounge suite which was the owners.  So apart from my bedroom furniture and the few antique items and pictures which I had owned before I even met Matty, I let them take everything.

I only had two weeks to find another house and was happy to live with minimal furnishing.  The less I had, the less I had to move.  My only issue was in actually finding a new house to rent.  In the inner west house rental prices were becoming outrageous and much more than I could afford.  On top of that, I had a dog and most rentals were not 'dog friendly'.

The pain of Matty's casual departure was erased by both my school commitments and my frenzied search to find a place to live that was both affordable and willing to accept a dog.  There was nothing in the area that fitted the bill, so I started looking further afield, but still without much luck.  It was one of the taxi drivers from work who told me, a week before I was due to move out, of a house that might be suitable.

It was about 5km further out from where I was living and looked to be in the middle of nowhere as far as transport and shops were concerned.  I couldn't have been more wrong as it turned out.  I was by this time desperate to find a house and gave the agents a call.  They were very friendly and the price they were asking was extremely cheap - $175 per week.  The only downside was that the previous owners had been kicked out for having six dogs in the house and the property owner was not keen on having a tenant with dogs.

I decided to meet the agents and arrange an inspection.  At the agents they were surprised that I was interested and were very honest in telling me that although the house was a good bargain, it was in a disgusting state due to the previous tenants, and the owner had refused to spend any more than was necessary to clean the property before renting it out.  They weren't lying!

I got the keys and arrived at the house.  It was a 1930's semi-detached bungalow and situated on a main road which was very busy.  The front garden was totally overgrown and walking down the side passage which led to the entry door I could already smell the noxious odours of mildew and urine.  On opening the front door I was almost knocked out by the smell.  It was so bad that I couldn't go inside and instead went around to the back door (via a broken gate) and opened it to be met by an even more disgusting smell.

Being me, I had a few joints in my cigarette pack and as the back door was inset to the back of the building, and my adjoining neighbour didn't seem to be home, I decided to sit and smoke a joint while waiting for the smell to dissipate with the air flow from the opened front and back doors.  One thing that I liked was that, even though the back yard was small and half of it was taken up by a shared car-port with my neighbour, it looked out across a beautiful green paddock that stretched up a hill for a few hundred metres and was full of gum trees and flocks of Rosellas.  Unlike the cheap, small houses which lined the main road, the houses in the streets behind were all big and had huge gardens which seemed to be well tended - later I would find out that this area was mainly full of Italian immigrants which explained the lovely gardens

After smoking my second joint, and realising that I only had 40 minutes before the estate agent closed, I summoned up the courage to go inside. It was the worst place, including many squats I had been in during my 'street days' I had ever seen.  The back door opened onto a built in verandah with a laundry and separate toilet - both stinking and covered with mould and black spots all over the ceilings (this turned out to be 'fly blow').  A step up and there was a dining room and kitchen, again covered in mildew and fly blow.  The kitchen was small and had virtually no bench space but I figured I could use the dining room table (when I bought one) for food preparation.

A huge lounge room was next.  If you overlooked the mould on the walls and the diminishing fly blow on the ceiling and the carpet which was an unrecognisable colour as it was covered in moulding piles of matted dog hair, then it actually wasn't too bad.  It was spacious, had beautiful original art-deco cornices on the ceilings and the large windows overlooked the neighbours garden.  Through the lounge room and a long hallway led past a bathroom, a second bedroom, then the entry door before ending up in a huge master bedroom.  Thankfully the further down the house I went the cleaner it became.

The bedroom was about 4 x 5 metres with an attached (built in verandah).  To get to the verandah were original art-deco doors and windows.  The veranda itself was nothing special but as it was built in would give me a study area and also the owners had at sometime double glazed the window so the traffic noise was barely audible.  The only room I hadn't yet looked at was the bathroom.  This was the selling point!  Totally original art-deco fittings, enormous bath tub (a rarity in Australia) and the most gorgeous yellow and black art-deco tiles.

It would take a lot of cleaning but I knew I wanted the place. I think the agents were not only shocked that I put in a lease offer, but also that I said I was willing to pay for steam cleaning the carpets and fixing the side gate provided they give me a one year lease and re-do the kitchen linoleum (which was in shreds and filthy).  I didn't mention the dog.  Surprisingly I got a phone call the following afternoon to say the owner had accepted my offer and I could sign the lease agreements immediately.

 Rambling on about a cheap rental seems trivial in terms of my life story.  However this decision would be one of the best in my life.  Firstly it gave me a focus to take my mind of the terrible loneliness of having Matty out of my life.  Secondly it would be a place where I was to find the first real friends I had made since Betty died. Thirdly it took me away from the almost constant work/life existence that living and working in Camperdown had become.  Lastly it would be, in time, the start of re-finding myself.  The first 9 months were to be possibly the hardest of my life but after that the next 7 years would possibly be the best times in my life- although, typically for me they wouldn't be without their ups and downs.