At the start of the week, someone at Wonder House had reached into two baskets and pulled out one word from each. The words were “Dream” and “Disco”. By the day I arrived, that had become the job of the volunteers and the community manager: turn two random words into a night for the whole house.
I was there for exactly one night, on a detour from a long road trip, with one question I had carried for a while. Everyone I had met in other colivings described Wonder House the same way — constant parties, constant costumes, and not much say in whether you took part. For someone who is, by temperament, on the quiet side of any room, that last part was the whole question.
The Dream Disco answered it.
Two words, one terrace
The house runs on a weekly rhythm. Listings describe a theme set at the start of each week and a themed event built around it1. My week’s event was a small disco on the roofed terrace outside the main building, decorated as far as anyone could manage to look like a dream.
One of the volunteers played DJ, and the music was 90s-style electronic. It was the tail end of summer, the day had been sunny and hot, and the heat had not gone anywhere when the dancing started.
Somewhere between eight and twelve people were staying in the house, and at the start roughly half of them were on the dancefloor.
The evening followed straight on from the communal dinner, which two of the guests had cooked and which I had only been allowed to eat once I was wearing a feather — the house’s costume rule, applied gently but applied. Drinks came from the bar in the cellar, which runs on an honour system. This far from the nearest shop, that is less a quirk than common sense, and I liked it from the moment it was explained to me on arrival. Somewhere in the course of the evening, one of the owners also told me the history of the house and the community that had grown in it over the two years they had spent renovating it.
The dancefloor and the nerd corner
Every school disco I remember had at least two groups: the people dancing as if nobody was watching, and the people standing next to the dancefloor, wanting to be part of it without doing the dancing part. Wonder House turned out to be no different, and I was firmly in the second group.
Our group sat beside the dancefloor, chilling with drinks. Then, as the heat and the dancing took their toll, some of the dancers came over and joined us. Somebody put a nerdy card game on the table.
That was the moment the evening settled into its final shape: the dancers on one side, the card players on the other, both of them part of the same party, for the rest of the night.
Leaving without an exit interview
Then people started to go, one after another, and this was the part that surprised me most.
In a house where so much is organised, I had expected leaving early to carry some social cost. There was none. Everyone seemed to understand that someone might want to go, or need time on their own. Most people staying there have a day job, and the evening event is how they relax after the working day, not a second shift.
I left at around eleven. I had to ride the next day and did not want to do it wasted, and I wasn’t. There are no explicit quiet hours at the house, but after eleven people were considerate without anyone having to ask, and nothing woke me that night. I slept very well — at a disco night, in the house hosting the disco.
What made it work, and what would have broken it
It worked because the split was accepted rather than resented. Half the room dancing and half the room playing cards is not a failed party; it is two parties that happen to share a terrace. And it worked because leaving was free.
It would have been ruined by pressure — to stay, to dance, to match someone else’s evening. There was none on my night. Whether that holds on every theme, every week, I cannot tell you from one visit.
It is also worth being clear about who this is not for. If you need your evenings quiet, a terrace disco at the house you are sleeping in is not your evening, however early it ends. The event is outdoors and at home; there is no other building to escape to within walking distance, and the nearest town is ten to thirty minutes away by car or bike.
For the quiet ones
The stories I had heard said you cannot choose how much of Wonder House you take part in. The Dream Disco said something more useful: you choose your corner. The dancefloor is there, the card table is beside it, and the path to your room is open all night.
For someone considering a long stay in a house with a loud reputation, that is the fact to know before booking. The programme is intense. Taking part is not an exam. And the people at the edge of the dancefloor are not missing the party. They are at it, with cards.