(no subject)
As the Census Meme seems to be the only thing keeping LJ going at the moment, I may as well throw in my cheeky tuppence:
2011: I currently live in a one bedroom flat, albeit a one bedroom flat with a big living room and a conservatory on one of the nicest streets in Tufnell Park. It's a little cramped and I share it with a tall Scottish man which makes it more cramped yet. We're looking to move, but only in that vague sense of browsing out-of-date information on real estate websites rather than actually making contact with what HG Wells described as "that lumbering behemoth of the financial world, the estate agent". My education level is where it's been for over a decade: a Cambridge degree, gathering dust and unused ... frankly I think education is overrated (if we are to answer for the whole household then I should note that Paul has enough qualifications for two, including more Masters Degrees than you could count on one finger). What else am I supposed to say for the meme? Oh, my income is excellent but our combined income - now that Paul has moved into the civil service - is merely comfortable. The only religion we have between us is Paul's ardent anti-Catholicism. We have no dependents, unless you count four holm oak acorns harvested from the top of the medieval tower in Lucca, which we are growing in a small pot outside the front door.
2001: I recall the last census coming round with great clarity, back when I lived in a big Victorian terrace house in Peckham with an alcoholic fascist and his charity-worker wife. I was not paid a great deal, but then I didn't do a great deal either and still life was grand. I had no dependents and no religion, and still endured the weight of the same boring and unused archaeology degree. I would spend Saturday mornings going for a run around Nunhead cemetery - still my favourite of the Magnificent Seven - and then spent the evenings undoing any good work with red wine and gin. I rarely went home, as Dom was a scary landlord. He had a poster of Margaret Thatcher over the fireplace, and decorated the living room with union jack bunting (I recall him once standing on the front doorstep bellowing into the night "Fuck off you black bastard". This was his name for the cat). My lodgings were smaller than they are now, comprising the top floor of the terrace house, including my own bathroom and a lethal wooden platform which opened out over the stairwell. I would eat whatever food did not require me to go downstairs into the communal kitchen. Although there were three or four large reception rooms, these would heal up or re-open at will - in the manner of House of Leaves - as Dom pursued a reckless policy of DIY refurbishment.
1991: I had no knowledge of the census in 1991, but I do recall at the time I was a boy of around fifteen years old, full of hormones and with no other young boy to ejaculate them into. I spent my days moping around the family pile, which in this case was a four bedroom detached house on an estate bordering the countryside (I learned recently that it is actually the largest house on the estate, since the original owners bought it 'off plan' and paid extra for all the rooms to be built one foot wider. This turned out to be a really good idea). At this point I had no qualifications, unless you count the Cub Scout Badge I got for poaching an egg, about the only Cub Scout Badge I earned before abandoning the scouting movement entirely. I was myself a dependent, although a young black fish called Fangs did depend on me to keep his tank clean (not for long, as it turned out). I still had no religion, and I'm not certain I had many friends.
1981: Aged five, living in the same house as in 1991. While my father would later see great successes in his career (most notably: inventing the '+' symbol on a certain brand of headache tablet; developing a system for building entire warehouses in one go with the continuous pouring of concrete; and being denounced on the Wogan Show by Sinead O'Connor for killing every fish in the Rhine) we were at this point insufferably poor, and I recall being shouted at for going to the shops to buy milk and spending the 5p change on a bottle of coca-cola. I expect had no religion, although we were dragged along to church every so often to play with the tambourine. I very much had no dependents, although photographs from the period do show that I had some rather superb mahogany-brown velvet shorts.
1971: My father met my mother, and the two were engaged. I did not exist.
2011: I currently live in a one bedroom flat, albeit a one bedroom flat with a big living room and a conservatory on one of the nicest streets in Tufnell Park. It's a little cramped and I share it with a tall Scottish man which makes it more cramped yet. We're looking to move, but only in that vague sense of browsing out-of-date information on real estate websites rather than actually making contact with what HG Wells described as "that lumbering behemoth of the financial world, the estate agent". My education level is where it's been for over a decade: a Cambridge degree, gathering dust and unused ... frankly I think education is overrated (if we are to answer for the whole household then I should note that Paul has enough qualifications for two, including more Masters Degrees than you could count on one finger). What else am I supposed to say for the meme? Oh, my income is excellent but our combined income - now that Paul has moved into the civil service - is merely comfortable. The only religion we have between us is Paul's ardent anti-Catholicism. We have no dependents, unless you count four holm oak acorns harvested from the top of the medieval tower in Lucca, which we are growing in a small pot outside the front door.
2001: I recall the last census coming round with great clarity, back when I lived in a big Victorian terrace house in Peckham with an alcoholic fascist and his charity-worker wife. I was not paid a great deal, but then I didn't do a great deal either and still life was grand. I had no dependents and no religion, and still endured the weight of the same boring and unused archaeology degree. I would spend Saturday mornings going for a run around Nunhead cemetery - still my favourite of the Magnificent Seven - and then spent the evenings undoing any good work with red wine and gin. I rarely went home, as Dom was a scary landlord. He had a poster of Margaret Thatcher over the fireplace, and decorated the living room with union jack bunting (I recall him once standing on the front doorstep bellowing into the night "Fuck off you black bastard". This was his name for the cat). My lodgings were smaller than they are now, comprising the top floor of the terrace house, including my own bathroom and a lethal wooden platform which opened out over the stairwell. I would eat whatever food did not require me to go downstairs into the communal kitchen. Although there were three or four large reception rooms, these would heal up or re-open at will - in the manner of House of Leaves - as Dom pursued a reckless policy of DIY refurbishment.
1991: I had no knowledge of the census in 1991, but I do recall at the time I was a boy of around fifteen years old, full of hormones and with no other young boy to ejaculate them into. I spent my days moping around the family pile, which in this case was a four bedroom detached house on an estate bordering the countryside (I learned recently that it is actually the largest house on the estate, since the original owners bought it 'off plan' and paid extra for all the rooms to be built one foot wider. This turned out to be a really good idea). At this point I had no qualifications, unless you count the Cub Scout Badge I got for poaching an egg, about the only Cub Scout Badge I earned before abandoning the scouting movement entirely. I was myself a dependent, although a young black fish called Fangs did depend on me to keep his tank clean (not for long, as it turned out). I still had no religion, and I'm not certain I had many friends.
1981: Aged five, living in the same house as in 1991. While my father would later see great successes in his career (most notably: inventing the '+' symbol on a certain brand of headache tablet; developing a system for building entire warehouses in one go with the continuous pouring of concrete; and being denounced on the Wogan Show by Sinead O'Connor for killing every fish in the Rhine) we were at this point insufferably poor, and I recall being shouted at for going to the shops to buy milk and spending the 5p change on a bottle of coca-cola. I expect had no religion, although we were dragged along to church every so often to play with the tambourine. I very much had no dependents, although photographs from the period do show that I had some rather superb mahogany-brown velvet shorts.
1971: My father met my mother, and the two were engaged. I did not exist.