Between Sunday 11th of April and Wednesday 26th of May 2004 I was invitaed into 17 different homes. These visits, although rarely acknowledged as such, were intimate gestures, and both parties relied on certain amount of trust. One ad, I recall, was written by two women. They were seeking someone who wouldn’t kill them in their sleep. They re-posted their ad on the internet every day for weeks.

What I found interesting was to compare the different ways in which people co-existed. Knowing that it was on these points that made sharing a home a joyful experience, or, alternatively, a nightmare, I asked questions about their domestic habits.

After more than six weeks of looking, I finally found a place and moved in. That was three months ago.

Part of me wants to get on with the business of settling in. Another part of me is restless. It says I might have made a mistake. To make sure I’d made the right decision, I decided to go back, on bike, to all the houses I went to see, and to get a glimpse, perhaps, of whom I might have been.

I planned my route: from Battersea I would cycle south until I got to the house in Camberwell. Then I would come up north again to Elephant and Castle, and then over Tower Bridge to continue through northeast London. There would be little connection between the order of the houses on my reconstructed journey and the original order in which I visited them as a potential housemate. I estimated the journey would take me until evening.

Follow my route