Where Do I Begin? All I Know Is Gone

The next week flew by. I spent most of my time hanging out with either Padge or the whole band. Bailey and I had a few lunches and went shopping together, and I met the other guys' families. They were all a close group, and it still felt odd to be considered a part of it all. The girls were all lovely, but I spent most of my time with Bailey, because she didn't have kids, and she was very entertaining. She actually reminded me of my brother, which was a little scary.

Sunday morning I had woken to find myself once again sharing a bed with Padge, something that had now become habit. It was just easier that way, I suppose. Padge had explained how he didn't feel comfortable in his own bed, how there were too many memories that replayed themselves over and over, how it smelt like Rhosyn. So instead of me drinking myself to sleep, and him suffering the same insomnia as I did we shared a bed, talking and distracting each other until we fell asleep. It had worked pretty well, aside from the few times I kicked him in my sleep.

That afternoon we caught up with Matt and Bailey, as planned, and looked over my options for housing. Bridgend wasn't overly big, so there weren't that many people looking for flatmates, and I couldn't afford to rent a house for myself. That left me with making appointments to view three possible new residences for the next evening.

Next up was to look for a job, I needed to do that soon or my money would dry up. Back home I'd been working in admin for the last few years, but being stuck in an office looking at a screen all day didn't really do that much for me. At one point I'd been in the office at a department store which a bit better. There I'd gotten to interact with customers, drawing up hire purchase contracts and making the odd sale. The variety was great, but working for less than the legal minimum wage got to be too much when I needed to save as much as I could for shifting.

Ideally I wanted to go for something more manual. I'd always loved doing labour, taking metalwork and woodwork classes when I was at school. Helping my aunt build the bookcases for her library was a lot of fun too - getting covered in sawdust while sanding, being meticulous while varnishing, and then finally hauling all the boxes of books she had down from her attic and into their new housing. It had taken over a year to get the whole thing completed, but it was such a good feeling to look at the full shelves, knowing I'd done it all myself.

After spending most of Monday at Caerphilly Castle with Padge, Moose and his kids I was rather worn out. I wasn't really in the mood to inspect flats, but knew I needed to anyway. Of course, Padge was there to take me, and Bailey had decided to come along for some moral support too.

The first house we almost skipped completely, after finding a burnt out car on the front lawn, but decided that these probably weren't the kind of people to get on the wrong side of. They actually turned out to be some really lovely people, but not really anyone I'd want to live with.

My second option looked a little more promising, until the door was answered. Being splashed with holy water before we could enter was just one of the strange happenings that completely put me off even coming down this street again, let alone moving in. Needless to say, we were out of there as fast as we could, waiting until we reached Padge's car before bursting into laughter.

"That was... different," Bailey managed to make of the situation.

"I know! I didn't know there were actually people that strange in the world. Makes our lot look sane," I joked, poking Padge in the side with my last sentence.

He just grumbled with a pointed glare as he took us to our final location. That quickly lost its appeal as a fist came flying through the glass of the front door, a domestic fight in action behind the wooden frame. Not even bothering to knock we fled to the car in silence, staying that way until we arrived back at Matt's.

I'd been invited along to a band practice on Wednesday. That had been a lot of fun. I was surprised to vaguely recognise a few of the songs they played as some of my brother's favourite songs. His taste was a little heavier than mine, but we did listen to a lot of the same things. He'd play me songs he thought I'd like, and if I didn't he'd just keep playing them until they grew on me. I did like these particular songs, however, and managed to shock the entire band by singing along with Matt on Room 409.

For some reason that song struck me, particularly the line, 'I take a step to the left, now you see me'. I think initially I found it humourous, but once I paid attention to the rest of the lyrics I fell in love with them. It's rare to find songs that are written with such honesty, especially about situations like that, and then to place them against such beautiful, powerful music just makes it mind-blowing.

"You know our songs?" Matt seemed dumbfounded while the others matched him from their own positions.

Curious looks were trained on me as I nodded. "A few. My brother loves you guys, but I only started listening to you a few weeks ago. I didn't realise you were... Oh my god, that means you do the peanut butter song! Jamyn is gunna flip so bad when he finds out!" I was already pulling my phone out of my pocket to send him a text message, knowing it would be the middle of the night back in New Zealand.

"The peanut butter song? What the hell?" Jay was laughing out his confusion.

Taking a second to raise my sight from the small screen of my phone I saw him walking towards me. "Yes, the peanut butter song," I poked my tongue out at him. "Otherwise known by most people as Welcome Home (Sanitarium)." Still only blank faces met my view; I could see that their minds were trying to work out how the hell the two related to each other. "Sanitarium makes peanut butter..."

"You and your brother are weird," Jay professed.

"Thank you," I smiled back at him cheesily. "Now get back to playing?"