Short cuts

Long distance commuting wears me down so I stay in Paris two nights a week. I am pouring all my income into house, schooling & domestic expenses and at the last financial crisis I had to sell my town flat. I can't afford to rent a room. So I sleep at friend's houses. I rotate them so that nobody gets too tired of seeing my face, and to maintain the creative surge I get from being with interesting people.

Henry Miller had a list of about 40 people he would rotate through for dinners etc. My list is a damn sight shorter. I have art friends like Olivier and Stephanie (see blogroll) theatre friends -always very stimulating and full of social excitement, my self defense peer group some of whom I've known for twenty years (and still don't know what they do - in that particular social group one doen't ask) and a literary friend or two. Part of my housing list choice is governed by various unspoken rules: No single women no matter how apparently platonic the relationship (or not). No work colleagues. No wheeler dealers. Right now I have friends who are redecorating, friends who are fighting with their mates, friends who are moving house, friends whose mother in law is visiting, friends whose work load is crushing them, friends I'd stayed with too many times recently...

I was getting desperate. I thought I was going to have to break one of the basic rules - and then the phone rang.