I really wasn’t in the mood, but I was going to have to make myself do it. I peeled myself out of my warm chair and headed upstairs. If I was going to have a lodger living with me, the room needed to be ready. I wasn’t keen on decorating, especially painting, probably because it wasn’t one of my strong points and I didn’t have much confidence in my own ability. I wanted to be good at it. I had the patience and took a lot of pride in my work; but because I wasn't that good at it, it meant I was slow at getting anything done. That's what frustrated me and probably what caused me to avoid it as much as possible.

I switched on my old paint spattered radio cassette player. There was an old David Bowie tape in the cassette deck. I’d purchased the tape at a village fete one Saturday in 1991. I’d loaded the tape in to the right-hand side of the twin cassette deck as soon as I’d got home that afternoon and played it through — as I was quite keen to hear it and also wanted to see if the tape worked properly. The tape had been sitting in the cassette deck ever since. I really liked David Bowie come to mention it. I’d always liked the style of his Seventies music and when he made the change to an Eighties style, I found I really liked that too. In fact, I really liked the Eighties as a whole. I can’t say that I was really part of the scene, but I did admire it from afar. David Bowie fascinated me. Maybe it was due to his enigmatic reclusiveness. He is one of the most famous and influential music artists to ever live and a pioneer of the music movement. He has such mastery, charisma and stage presence; but behind that, the real David Bowie is shy and quiet. We were similar, in that I was quite the shy quiet guy; yet the way we interacted with the world and dealt with the person we are within was completely different. It was as if I was like him — and yet at the same time nothing like him. I played the tape while I painted.

The room was a fair size with a double bed, wardrobe and large chest of drawers. A small flat screen television sat on top of the chest of drawers, and a black and white picture of Michael Caine on the telephone in the film ‘Get Carter’ hung on the wall in a silver frame to the left of it. The room also had an en-suite with a toilet, sink and shower. I had brought new bedding at my mother’s suggestion and thrown out the old beige curtains in favour of a white Venetian blind. I thought it was a nice touch and made the room seem clean cut and modern. I had also bought a new beige carpet to put down after I’d painted. That was about the limit of my interior design skills. I’m quite happy to leave that kind of thing to Handy Andy and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen from that programme, ‘How clean is your changing room?’, or whatever it’s called.
The room looked out over the park. I thought that this would be quite an attractive feature to any would be lodgers. I was on the second coat and had about half of the wall area left to do. I was actually quite enjoying myself. I had Bowie playing quite loudly and I was working at a good pace. My mind was on the music and the paining and it was like having a little time off from thinking about the work situation all the time.
Suddenly, I became aware that the phone was ringing in the downstairs hallway. It was half past nine at night, not usually a time I would expect to be called, or bother to answer the phone, but it may have been someone calling about the room. I put down my brush, hit pause on the tape deck and rushed down the stairs.
I just got to the phone in time.

‘Hello’, I said in a rather flustered out of breath voice.
‘Hello, my name is James Reed. I’m calling about the room that you have advertised in the paper. Is it still available?’
‘Yes, it is still available.’
‘Whereabouts is the property located?’
‘Well as you already know, I am located in Stevenage. The house is in Woodview Garden’s. It backs on to Fairlands Valley park. The room itself looks right out on to park, the sailing lake and the woods behind. It’s a nice quiet area but also has good access to the motorways.’
‘That sounds great. Could you tell me more about the room?’

I went on to explain more about the room and facilities and also that he would have use of the kitchen and sitting room. I also explained that I was in the process of decorating the room but hoped to have it all ready for use this coming Thursday — which was two days away.
We then went on to discuss the ins and outs of the formalities like utility bills, rent and how he would prefer to pay it — and so on and so forth.

‘It sounds really good. Would I be able to come and view the room at some point this week?’
He sounded very keen to have a look and I was very keen to get him on the hook.
‘You could come on Thursday around 6 p.m. if that’s convenient for you?’
‘Yes, that would work well for me. I will head to your place straight after I’ve finished work.’
‘Great; I can text you the address if you like as your number has displayed on my phone.’
‘Ok, thank you. I will see you Thursday at 6 p.m. then.’
‘Ok, I will look forward to it. Bye.’

I was pleased that I had another potential lodger lined up for the room. It had been three whole months since the announcement at work and things seemingly hadn’t got any better. My plan was to take on a lodger and save all the rent money up so that if I did have a pay cut, or more likely lose my job, I would have some extra money saved up as a safety net. I jotted the man’s name and number on a piece of scrap paper, sent him a text from my mobile, then tucked the piece of paper inside the newspaper that had my advertisement in it.
Feeling rather positive, I went back upstairs to finish the painting.