Lara Davies

When I moved to London last September – my first time successfully living outside of Wales - I stumbled into this crazy old house with original fireplaces in every room but no working radiators downstairs. The high ceilings and bay windows let the light in, casting shadows that dance delicately on the walls, just pretend you haven’t seen the tired old sofabed and awful blue carpets (seriously, do people choose blue carpets?)

And my new housemates: four separate lives thrown together through a desire for cheap rent; sometimes we’ll go all week without sight of one another, identifying another’s presence solely from their tread on the stairs. Coming from living on my own, having full control of my space, my décor, my stuff (or lack-of, for I’m not a hoarder), this is a big change.

I tell myself: don’t linger on the broken kitchen cupboards, the shared-house detritus, it is out of your control. Appreciate the muffled voices through bedroom doors, the evidence of others.

Recently I spent six weeks living back with my mum, the longest time I’d spent at home in about 15 years. It was difficult, fitting back in to a place where I no longer had a stake, where my mum was curator of the post-its and I was a London postcode next to Sandra Poppies and Bliss Hair Salon. Years ago when I redesigned my parents’ kitchen, I gave my mum a nice new notice board, but she never used it. I guess the cupboards were a more immediate way of keeping track of life – put the kettle on, survey the post-its.

I drunk more tea in those six weeks than I’ve ever done, and I’m a proper tea-pot at the best of times. But in the unchartered waters following my dad’s sudden death, time was measured in tea breaks, my mug an anchor to some sort of normality, to routine, and I’d find myself, cup in hand, zoning out in front of the post-its, marvelling at the unintended compositions and colour relationships, the history and networks, quotes and mantras and daily routines held in these scraps, this map of a life.