China Mieville, having been evicted from his flat, walked for a while, picked a house at random, and moved in.
He emerged in the moments when the inhabitants of the house were asleep or absent, and when they were up and about he slept in the roof space above the porch like a bat.
The family that lived there only discovered his existence because they had had an internet security webcam system installed, which used motion sensors to take pictures of burglars if they were broken in to, and they usually only switched it on when they were at work or on holiday. One night they forgot to turn it off, and in the morning the system emailed them some photos of China Mieville in the kitchen, eating weetabix straight from the packet, entirely dry.
It took them a few weeks to find where he slept. When they finally confronted him and asked him what he was doing in their house, he began to recite a history of socialism that went on for several days.
“That doesn’t answer our question,” said the mother.
“That [socialism] doesn’t answer anything,” thought the father, and he decided there and then to vote conservative at the next election.
He had actually voted conservative at every election since 1997, but fabricated himself a new excuse each time. You couldn’t call him a conservative, he would say, internally, to himself, just because he voted conservative. He wasn’t an arsehole. He was just worried about the economy.
When people asked him who he voted for he used to say the lib dems, but since 2010 he’d tell them that he wasn’t really political and hadn’t had time to vote.
The son neither said nor thought anything. He didn’t even know who China Mieville was. He didn’t even even care.
China Mieville, having been evicted from his roof space, walked for a while, picked a house at random, and moved in.
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Notes:
1. Written on July 23rd, 2018
2. I woke up at about 4 am and wrote this
3. I am not sure why