Eliza Doolittle

In my capacity as The Littlest Hobo, I've been getting offered flatsits all summer - folks are having holidays, and I get to play caretaker. This week, I'll be mostly living in a bloody huge Georgian villa in Islington. It's packed with beautiful things, design classics, a hob I had to actually ring for advice to learn how to work (a shiny dial with no markings moves around like a Ouija board thingy to set it off, and then "no pan, no heat" - mental), a shower that took me and a friend to work it out, the cream of BritArt adorning the walls (Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Tracy Emin, Gavin Turk, more early limited edition Banksys than I can shake my rhythm stick at...).

You get the idea - all very fabulous. Yet I've never been less relaxed about staying somewhere in all my life. I got in from a gig the other night, and I managed to set the alarm off (I wasn't drunk - I WASN'T!), so had to call ADT Alarms sharpish before the rozzers turned up and hauled me off to chokey. I'm in constant fear of breaking something, using the wrong cloth to clean the handmade rosewood kitchen, knocking over some priceless heirloom.

So, all this has served to make me realise is, that not unlike the cheeky Cockney Eliza conjured up by the brilliant GBS so many years ago, all I want is a room somewhere. It doesn't have to be fancy, full of luxuries or even very big. It just has to have room for me, my thrift shop bits and bobs, a peaceful haven from the world outside. It's time to think about making a home again. Oooh, wouldn't that be luverly.