Chez Crushed- Where the Heart Is

It's a strange fact that a sense of home is hard to come by.
Having a sense of a place which is yours, your cave, your castle, your domain, is perhaps one of the warmest, cosiest feelings you can have.

At home, you can just be you.
The varying acts you have to play day in, day out, can be put to rest. Here you can think what you like, say what you like, do what you like.

It's not as easy to get that as you think. You don't really have a home as a child- you occupy a room at your parents house, and you don't even have privacy there. I kind of had two homes, I had a room at my parents and one at my grandmothers and as a teenager, I often went to stay my grandmother. As soon as I left for University, the room I had occupied at my parents was transferred to my brother.

Our house at university DID feel like home- it was a house we shared as equals, and since the absence of a TV or stereo in the living room meant my room became the real living room, I felt at home in that house in a way I'd never felt before.

Other people went home in the holidays. I left home in the holidays to visit my parents.

As an adult, I've lived in several places. None of them felt like home. When I lived on my own, I never unpacked half the stuff, never purchased a lot of things homes tend to have, such as washing machines, coffee tables etc.
On the other hand, living with someone else never felt like home either. Sure, the place LOOKED like A home- just not mine.

I would be allowed half of the bedroom and the spare room as my playroom, whilst the living room was turned into something out of a Home Improvements show.
Never a room you felt was YOURS.

Yet now I guess, I've finally settled. This is MY home and it looks like a home. It IS a home. My castle, my cave, my grotto. Chez Crushed.



Our little comfort area. Against the wall is my CD collection, my pride and joy. The gaps are due to the tendency of CDs to form in towers on top of the stereo itself. I won't allow my flatmate to put hers on it- she can keep them in her room. I'm not having Meatloaf and Cascada sitting with my CDs. Period.
The ornaments are hers, though.



I do read a lot. There are two other bookcases in the flat as well, and I'm under a ban from my flatmate on buying any more- we don't have much more room on the shelves.
If you look closely, you will see Marx and Nietzche on the shelves- but also the Bible, the Koran and even the Complete works of Darwin. There is some Sci-fi/fantasy, but it's mainly non-fiction.

You can't see on this picture, because I couldn't fit it in, but there is a replica Icon of the Madonna and Child to the right above the fireplace.



This is Cedric, who I may have mentioned before. He's come pretty much everywhere with me. For some reason, every girlfriend I've ever had has hated him and he has ended up banished from display.
He has been called 'Manky Monkey', 'Scary Teddy', 'Freaky Hippo', to name but a few.

I am sorry to say I never stood his ground when he was banished to spare rooms, or the backs of cupboards.
But his loyalty has been unstinting, so I have decided now, any future Mrs Crushed is going to have to get along with Cedric.

But home can have wider meanings too, I guess. There will always be a place I can go, where everybody knows my name, where I have been a loyal customer for as long as anyone can remember.



Yeah, I feel at home here too!
My local (well it ISN'T that local really, it's not my nearest pub, but certainly my dearest), as good an old fashioned British spit and sawdust workingman's pub as you can get.
Here too, I can just be me.
(The landlord of the pub in the picture, not a happy chappie that day, West Bromwich Albion AND the bookies let him down again....)

I guess I don't ask for a lot, really.

But knowing you have a place where you belong is gold dust.