Farewell, Bethnal Green Road

I will be moving house at the end of this week to a flat occupied by (hopefully) fewer mice.

I have to admit to being a bit naive when moving to London. I expected my flat to be riddled with mice and rats and to just have to learn to deal with it. That's the reality in London, right?

It was not until after a few useful conversations with locals that I found out that this is not the norm here in the big smoke. Apparently, I do really live in a crap flat.

Naiveness aside, over the past few months, I have learned to accept and tolerate my house guests. After all, they were there first. They have become a fixture of the flat, much like a stove or a fridge. Or the deadbolt on the door that doesn't work.

We have an informal agreement - they stay out of my way, and I stay out of theirs. They are mainly content to keep to themselves, and we only occasionally awake to the sound of them running through the ceiling moldings or prancing under the stove.

They have only crossed the line a few times - using the electrical cord from the fridge as a jungle gym, waking me up at 3:00 in the morning, violently fighting over some miniscule scrap of leftover fish and chips. Behaviour such as this is highly discouraged, and usually heralds a firmly uttered 'NO'.

Learning to live with my little Mus musculus friends has been just another one of those experiences that I both did not expect, and would not take back. Life really is all about perspective.

I cannot guarantee that the new occupants in the flat above the sari shop will be as tolerant as we have, but I hope that the mice in my flat will look back at our time together and appreciate it. In a city where the rodent population has been estimated as equal to the human population, there's just not enough room for all of us.