Spaceman Barry

Today’s podcast episode contains distressing descriptions of events. Please don’t listen with your kids in the car. There are signposts along the way where you can switch off or pause if you need to. Please take care when listening.

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Hi,

Today’s Webworm is a podcast episode which tells the story of Barry — and I just thought I’d show you a few photos to go along with it.

Barry (photo credit: Noah).

Barry at his trestle table. A cat looks on (photo credit: Noah).

Barry on his swivel chair: “Just ‘office space’ it!” (photo credit: Noah).

More specifically, it’s a story about Barry as told by my neighbor and friend Noah.

Noah lived with Barry for six years, first as a housemate and then as a friend. This all seems pretty normal, until you realise that Barry was about 50 years older than Noah.

I think I’m always attracted to stories about unconventional people living together. 

I guess this is because so many people — myself included — have had these experiences of having to live with someone out of necessity. Of having a roommate so you can make the rent each week, or maybe a boarder so you can keep up with mortgage payments.

Because of this, we end up co-inhabiting these spaces with people who often start off as strangers, before one of three things can happen:

1. We become really good friends with them

2. We stay sort of strangely aloof the whole time and just put up with each other

3. We don’t get on — and things go a bit wonky.

I think of that podcast episode I did about “Gary”. Gary’s life was going pretty great until his housemate strolled across the road and killed the neighbor. Gary kept living with the killer, watching TV shows like Dexter, as police solved the case.

Today’s episode is another story about unconventional people living together. It’s very different to the Gary story — there’s a death, but no murder.

I guess you could say it’s more of a story about an unusual friendship, but one based on a fairly big secret.

As usual, I will be in the comments all week if you listen and have any questions.

David.

Many thanks to Noah and Jess for your time, and for clarifying and refining various details over the last month. This podcast episode was edited by Samuel Robinson, who helped me wade through various timelines and deviations to arrive at our final destination.