minimum stay three weeks

I have lived at least three weeks in these places:

A small house in the suburbs. Long winters buried in snow, lovely summers embedded in a lush garden.

A room in an old school with a beautiful Swede as roommate. The walls smelled like old stone, the attic was a treasure chamber of books and God was everywhere.

A motel room near a Thai beach - shared with history makers, world shakers and the occasional cockroach.

A tiny room filled to bursting with sleeping bags and friends with diarrhoea.

A large flat overlooking grey city streets and rooftops with flags. Full of  file folders, languages and new friends.

A cold room in a Scottish attic and a bed with two eiderdown duvets.

A wooden Swiss chalet where I could hear wolves howl at night (maybe in my imagination).

A Hawaiian house with a slow-moving ceiling fan, shutters instead of windows and sometimes a friendly gecko.

A small flat high above the busy streets, where boys came to woo.

A house in France among endless open fields - with an orchard and boys who brought me tea and taught me ping pong.

A tiny flat hidden behind an elm tree in a quiet street. I slept alone and prepared for the world.

A worn-down attic in a worn-down Irish house, with plenty of people. Buzzed with illegal parties on boozy nights, while deer and sheep grazed outside on misty mornings.

Another attic room, above a bar and beside a mountain. A deep window, creaky floors, a yellow blanket, a beloved bathtub, a Canadian and a Frenchwoman.

The Window Sill room, hardly bigger than the window sill, where I contentedly contemplated my loneliness and my adventures and read English novels.

A terrible room in a suburb, where the only good things were red sheets, a poster of a calla lily and a view over barley fields.

The tiniest bedsit of all in a row house shared with a lawyer. The comfort of a tree outside the window and TV in bed during the small hours.

The House of the Thirteen Clocks. Disastrous, disastrous and dreary. I barely escaped with my sanity intact.

The flat of the eternal moonlight. Fairy lights and a kitchen table as protection against a cold winter. And it had a dance floor.


The Beach Hut - an ordinary flat with an extraordinary sea view. Beauty and weird neighbours.

An idyllic cottage in an idyllic village with idyllic people. Shared with an idyllic sheepdog.

And lastly, the paradise which has been there for me all through the years and which words cannot describe.