Where should Lily live (skip to the end)

Ok, so we left off in Manchester (I think) and then I suddenly moved in real life time and forgot to update my blog for four months. It's the kind of thing that could happen to anyone.

Except, it doesn't seem to. A couple of things happened that meant suddenly I could move. I'd been living in the house my mother bought when I was in junior school, that she left when she went to look after my grandparents, living with my husband until he decided he didn't want children and then it was just me.

It was a house, and most single twenty eight year olds don't have a whole house. But there should be some purpose in your home. You live there because... that's where your job is, your family, your partner, your cat? Something. My brilliant friend Stephanie Goldsmith was expostulating about the brilliance of my situation over a burger and Diet Coke.

"The brilliant thing is you've got nothing, nothing holding you back. You've got no partner, no family, no home..." and then the light in her eyes sort of fizzled as she realised she was telling me the kind of things people usually shout from the wrong side of the ledge.

But she was right, if there had been something I would have stayed and limped on. With nothing I could move on. Just me, alone, with nothing. So I did my tour and it gave me a kind of answer, I had an amazing time because I was enough.

For a long time I thought that t I needed to an opportunity. But if I was enough, I didn't need to wait for the right thing because I already was it. So, off I went. I found a course that made sense to me, Inclusive Arts Practice, that meant Brighton. So I found a job, coordinating activity at a new visitor's centre. Then in went my notice, an offer materialised from a recent University of Brighton graduate on my mam's house. So the house got packed up and my mam drove me down to Brighton. She insisted. And I wanted Brighton to know that although I had nothing, I have my amazing mother. Who drove 352 miles when she hates motorway driving now. Maybe she wanted me to know that I had her too.

So until at least June 2019 the answer to 'Where Should Lily Live?' is in an overpriced bedsit with a window looking out on a courtyard and a front door that opens to the sea.