The Memorial Mansion

We thought the place came with a bar and a spa pool - it originally had them when we looked at it - but we had to replace them ourselves. A lot of planning went in, a couple of trips to SuperShed. The spa was bought on Trade Me, and we modified an oil column heater and a 40 gallon drum to heat it. When it’s on you can see the steam from Hamilton Ave. For the bar we had to hire a gas thing and connect it to a keg, do all the pipework. We had to learn to brew our own beer as well: The Queen’s Piss. It’s quite yeasty.

We’re surrounded by old people and posh people, though the old lady next door has been moved out. The cops had come around a couple of times asking about her; “she’s locked herself in there and thinks there’s an intruder, we’re trying to get in. Do you know any next of kin?”. Apparently last year she kept calling the landlord and kept informing him that a lot of unmarried young girls were leaving in the morning.

We’ve hosted a 21st, and we had the opening of The Queen’s Legs, which is the name of our bar. That was on the Royal Wedding night. We had a Law Revue party, and spa parties - lots of spa parties. We’ve had some pretty raucous red cards as well; three this year. One of them was Reverse Wizard Sticks, where we didn’t know what cans of whatever we were drinking. That resulted in one flatmate going to another flatmate’s room with knives - jokingly. “I’ve got knives!” Another time a flatmate turned up with a keg. And we had a casino night: shot roulette, shot poker, shot blackjack. Shot roulette was the worst because you had to drink every single time you spun it. After that we had a good old-fashioned plate smashing. The red cards usually culminate in us destroying the flat somewhat.

Cooking is shared amongst everyone, we cook one night each a week. It tends to work out all right. We had African-American night, which was home made Double Downs with corn, watermelon, and Dr. Pepper. They were quite revolting.

The landlord is great. One of our first memories of him is asking him why there was a hole in the wall upstairs. He said the guy that lived there last year, “his girlfriend obviously got a bit angry. Lucky the bitch missed the stud, though”. He swears like a pirate, but he’s pretty cute. Around us it’ll be all “fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” but when the missus is also around it’s only “bloody bloody bloody”.