The Greenhouse

There’s about four of us who’ve been here for three years; the rest merged from two other flats that disbanded, because some of them have gone to get careers – the rest of them are languishing here. The rent is $450 between thirteen, so that drops it right down to between $25 and $50 each. Our flat shops are pretty ridiculous; they consist of about 30 loaves of bread, 40 cans. We get some pretty weird looks at the checkout – two trolleys filled to the brim, about $650. We each only need to cook once every two weeks, and we’ve all only got one bowl, one cup, one plate each, so it cuts down on dishes.

A couple of the rooms have bunks set up, built by the builders who’ve lived here. They’re structurally sound, so that keeps the mums pretty happy. It’s a safe zone if there’s an earthquake.

It’s a fairly relaxed flat. There’s always issues, but it’s all good. It’s a bit of entertainment for the people that aren’t involved. If you’ve got a problem with someone, you have to get over it fast; you can’t just single someone out and have that problem with them. There’ve still been a couple of fistfights.

It’s been a bit of a dull year out of the three years, because of the earthquake, but we’ve had a couple of massive nights. We found this fairly potent Asian drink called Chum Churum. A good crew of us – probably about twenty; we had a couple of other boys down as well – decided one night it’d be fun to go into town and get a bottle each, when they advise you to have a bottle between four. Everyone turned up the next morning with different stories about where they ended up – one of the boys comaed outside, someone came home at 8, picked him up, and threw him into the paddling pool. One of the boys drank one of the other boys’ goldfish. 

We had a lock-in red card, where everyone had to invite someone they’d pashed, someone they wanted to fuck, someone they didn’t know, and someone from a sporting or other “extracurricular activity”. We were only supposed to tell them why they had been called around when they arrived. That made it quite awkward for the whole night. “You’re here because I don’t know you.”

Each year we do a flat crawl called the Shanks’ Mile, with six or seven flats scattered around Riccarton and Ilam involved. Every person in every flat has to supply 20 standard drinks. Everyone goes to the first flat and has to drink the lot before they leave. And there’s always a surprise at one of the flats…

We’re the proud owners of a website: PlankingPlanet.com.