Digging the actors

Over the Summer months I decided to add my name to the digs list of one of Manchester's finest theatres. Within the week an actor had confirmed he would like to move in. Having hated the experience of living with people I barely knew in uni, I was more than a little suspicious about how I would adapt to living with a man thirty years my senior.

I'm embarrassed to admit that before I divorced, I had never spent a night alone - ever. My parents didn't trust me to not have sold or burnt down the house while they went on holiday so I was entrusted to friends parents, or worse still grandparents. Repeats of The Golden Girls and Columbo do not make a particularly thrilling Saturday evening when you're 16.

Then I moved into Halls, followed by a brief stint in a shared house with an English hating French man (this was also in the most burgled street in the UK. How I miss Leeds. No really, how?) and then I sealed the deal and bought a house with the husband. Whenever he went away I would stay with friends, or visit family.

Fast forward two years and I love living on my own. I can iron naked, dance round the kitchen to Hugh Masekela and Herbert the tortoise can roam the apartment without living in fear of being crushed to death. Except he can't. He has to stay in his hut pining, I have to get dressed before plugging in the iron and Hugh's trumpet hasn't blown so much as a single note of District Six since the Actor moved in.

But now the Actor has gone. His run has finished, the curtain has come down. He moved out on Friday after three months of a relatively easy living arrangement. Yes, he did change the locks while I was on holiday, he washed more clothes than I ever witnessed him wearing and he tried to feed the tortoise cheese.

So it is with baited breath that I await the arrival of The Actor 2. He arrives this evening and will be staying with me until mid-December. I've met him briefly, and goodness was he eager. About everything. Like Rupert Everett in Shrek, every facial muscle moved as he spoke and his enthusiasm for my apartment left me questioning the state of the other digs on the list. Because if he changes the locks, it might be me moving out.