Wie Ist Das Neue Zimmer? - What’s The New Room Like?

It’s not bad, thanks. After almost eight months in my new place (or rather just place now), I’ve finally started to cover my insipid lilac-coloured walls with actual stuff. The resulting mishmash of movie and music posters, maps, photos and postcards do make it feel like a new room, and certainly a lot more homely. There’s still loads of space to fill though, and working out what to stick there isn’t easy. Putting up naked ladies doesn’t interest me that much - pictures of them that is. Having live ones Blu-taked to the wall on a permanent basis wouldn’t be that much fun either. They’d need feeding, watering, and would end up making far too much noise and mess than their pleasing aesthetics were worth. Cars and football are the other major subjects of posters adorning male bedrooms, both of which interest me about as much as cheese or staplers - footballers in cars even less so than staplers in cheese. Caaaw, check out that exhaust pipe, it’s well sexy. Awww I’d well go gay for that Ronaldo, he’s wicked. No, give me pictures of brie-encased stationary any time. And I don’t even like cheese. I considered framing various types and styles of wallpaper for comic effect, but then thought if that’s the aim, why not just mount several issues of the Beano or Dandy and put them up? But it’s unlikely most people would get the understated non-comedy, and my room would just look like it belonged to an eight year old. What am I saying? The fact I have a single, rented room in a house, rather than my own place with a mortgage makes me less of a grownup than any framed Mini The Minx centrefold ever could. Owning my own home with Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper in the kitchen, a bed wrecked by constant jumping (of the innocent kind), and having my mum round every day to wipe me after a poo would still make me more of a man than I am right now. But that’s fine with me because I’ve never been that comfortable being called one. Not due to being secretly a woman (although that is a much better excuse), but because I still feel like a kid. A deeply cynical one at that, but certainly not an adult. Being constantly asked for ID helps reinforce the perception, as shop assistants, doormen and barmaids all seem to agree I‘m just a child too. Buying a house would doubtless rid me of my perma-kid complex, but there’s too much of the world left to explore - a planet full of adventure and experiences that take precedent over tying myself to a life-long financial commitment. Call it naïve, tell me I’ll be a pauper when I hit sixty, I don’t care. It’ll be where I’ve been and what I’ve done that’ll make me a wealthy old boy. Well, that and my priceless stash of smutty Beano porn.