It's Oh So Quiet

For a house with 23 bedrooms, it's very peaceful here :)

My building manager, bless her, is worth her weight in gold. These 23 bedrooms are mostly tiny, and I suspect mostly only have a toaster oven. When I told her I wouldn't need the large cooker in my flat, she took it down to the laundry area and had the handyman install a kitchen bench, and then she brought in a large fridge/freezer, so that other residents could use that area to cook a proper meal if they needed to.

A building manager who cares about people... who'd have thunk it?

Free from a kind soul moving out: half a bag of pasta, three frozen chicken thighs, breakfast cereal, rice, tabasco sauce, chilli flakes, fresh chillies, cajun seasoning and some salt.

My housemates are not flush (we pay very low rent, and there are only 7 cars between us). So I was minded to make a "help yourself" area down in the parlour area with things I don't need, as I am struck by how many freebies I say yes to which I just don't use and which perhaps other people might be able to use. I've put two cooking magazines there from work. Today I saw that people have added some books and some spices labelled in Polish.

Not the one in my house...
but it's all in this kind of style.

Yes, I said in the parlour. It's the front room of the house. It has beautiful old chaise lounges, velvet settees, gilt-framed artwork and polished wooden tables and cabinets. The staircase winds around to split in two, half going up to the landing where my room is, and the other leading to the second wing. The front entrance of the house now has a conservatory added - more like an orangery to be honest, and it has bougainvillea growing on the inside walls, with a gorgeous old tiled mosaic floor.

It's fair to say the elegance has long-since faded, but it's clean, quiet, safe, and affordable. That'll do me.