It was a Tuesday, so Sacha started her search for a house by waiting 24 hours for the Wednesday 'paper, which always had a token few ads for share-houses in it. The majority of the ads, of course, were placed in the Saturday 'paper, and though Sacha would get that too when the time came she wanted to start her search before then.

For it was a fresh start, for the most part: now that she'd decided to look for a house and definitely not a flat, she had to retrain her radar accordingly: this was the case to some extent in the newspaper, though for purposes of economy the ads there mostly neglected to mention whether the room in question was within a house or a flat; but it was especially the case on the numerous websites which Sacha perused in order to find somewhere to live.

She was unsure of the ethics of using her allocated computertime at the Word on the Street for searching these websites rather than, say, working on her column - but she did it anyway. Why not? Everybody else did such things. Well, with the possible exception of Rona.

"Funky housemate wanted for cool house." Sacha wasn't entirely sure what qualified as "funky" in a housemate - but she was quite certain that she didn't meet those criteria. That suited her just fine, she didn't particularly aspire to be "funky", or to live in a "cool" house - she'd settle for somewhere quiet and unfashionable. Somewhere she would feel comfortable without feeling the need to uphold an image. She had a vision of herself living by herself: that was fine, she didn't mind that except that it was entirely unlikely that she could afford it. And of course, looking for a rental house by herself would necessitate dealing with an agent, rather than with people already in residence in a house - and she doubted greatly that "currently unemployed" was what any agent looked for in the "occupation" box on their application forms.

"Friendly housemates, crappy house." She wondered sometimes what went through people's minds when they were composing their ads. The honesty was to be admired, she supposed - but all the same, what kind of a person were they hoping to attract? Then she remembered her student days: visiting her few friends (now long forgotten) in their shambolic ex-government houses in Canberra, in which they scratched by on Austudy and café tips. Needs must, she guessed. Nonetheless, she couldn't see how somebody could possibly live in a place like that. Oh, she supposed, not everybody's like me. But all the same, it was strange.

So - a clean house with a garden. As her sister had scolded her in a recent text-message conversation that Sacha had reluctantly entered into, she was getting more picky by the day. Sacha preferred to think of it as "decisive." She scrolled further down the screen. "Tidy house, quiet location." Sounded good. Date available: two weeks after the lease on her flat expired. That'd be right. Who advertises that far in advance? The same kind of person, she thought wryly, who looks for a place this far in advance. She wondered, briefly, if she could extend her lease by two weeks - but it was too much of a risk. It was contingent on her actually getting the place, which as she knew from her previous experience was by no means a given, even if she performed well in the interview. And then where would that leave her? Still in her flat, with the clock ticking louder than ever against her, and back to square one. No, definitely not worth it. They're probably really annoying people anyway, she thought sourly. They always are. Or, occasionally, they're tolerable people in intolerable houses. It was one in ten places, and that was being generous, that Sacha felt she could actually stand to live in - and then she was competing against all the other people who felt the same way.

It was all getting rather dispiriting.