Friday feeling

Today is Saturday, and a smile is creeping back to my face after the hideousness of yesterday. Let us commence the tale.....

Once upon a time Jon-ster was living alone in his rented house, all nice and dandy with no problems except for the fact that there was no-one else there. Then along came the evil landlady.

Basically, on Thursday evening I had a phone call but owing to the usual event of 'using-your-mob-when-someone-else-calls' lead to me accidentally hanging up on this phone call. Never mind, I checked my call register and didnt recognise the number, but worked on the principle that if it was important, I'd receive a second call. Not so, so I just put it down as a wrongie or a cold call, never mind.

Friday morning, after lots of coffee, show tunes and general buzzing around like a big bald idiot (and as camp as anything, I'm so ashamed), I get a message left on my answering machine from landlady saying that she's outside my house and cant get in because the key doesnt work. This was a major surprise, since my keys have been working fine and also I was not aware she was coming. I rang her to discover that she'd called out maintenance guy to sort it out, and they went in the dodgy back door to get in and obviously set of the alarms.

Now, with the subsidence at the back of the house, the back door is rather wedged and very difficult to make sure it is properly closed and locked. And also, the secondary locking system is buggered. This is in fact a very good thing, because since they entered at the back, the secondary lock would have prevented them AND they'd have set the alarm off. As it is, they went in that way and apparently had no problems.

Anyhow, I was absolutely paranoid that they'd not shut the door properly, or do something equally daft like leave the windows open like the time before. Since I'm away this weekend, peace of mind forced me to return home on the train to check, and then go back to work - a wasted time of about 2 hours, courtesy of bloody landlady. And all this without actually informing me they were coming. Let me copy and paste the precise e-mail I found in my inbox once I'd checked for it to be there;

Coming tomorrow am to bring some people. Why cant I get you on the phone??? Nina

Now, isnt that nice and polite? Considering it was sent Thurs evening regarding Friday morning, that doesnt sound like 24 hours notice to me. Also, if you fail to get through on phone or dont leave a message after one try, isnt it a good idea to at least try to ring again a second time? Apparently not.

So, all my stuff had been rearranged carefully - I'd have moved some of it myself if I'd know she was coming, to include;

• anything on kitchen surfaces put away in cupboards. Daft - a place that's a shared house ought to look at least lived in, no? And chucking it all in the cupboards gives the impression of absolutely no storage space. Plus, I dont see the problem with having a bottle of cordial, cooking oil, salt, some wine, s+p, a bag of rice, a jar of coffee and a mortar and pestle on display in a fucking kitchen;
• My motorcycle boots, previously placed on and next to a shoe rack in the corner of the living room, quite out of the way, are now lined up in the entrance hall and stand out as being in the way. To 'make it look more like a living room', well, now it looks like a living room that nobody goes into and like I'm an idiot who blocks up the hallway;
• My coats hung up in the damp cellar next to the mouldy old ones left behind by landylady's daughter;
• Blinds in the front room looking onto the street opened wide for all and sundry to look in - normally these remain closed for a spot of privacy, and so that people cant tell if anyone's at home or not, but I bet now they're still wide open advertising the fact that there's nobody in.
  

The woman, for all the fact that she has quite a housing empire and has been doing it for years, is a bit of a numpty. 24 hours notice means 24 hours, and a single phone call attempt the evening before doesnt actually work. Hey, how about using the postal service and recorded delivery, then we definitely receive it? And while we're on the subject matter, get your mail forwarded to your own address if it's that important rather than leaving me to do it.

After all this, I showed inhuman quantities of self-restraint when cold-called in the afternoon by Orange wanting to offer me broadband. Somehow, I managed not to swear profoundly at the poor woman doing the calling, but just lied my way out claiming I have no computer. Did not help the calmness levels.

AAAAAARGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

Right, back to the normal stuff.

So work-wise, Friday was a bit of a wash-out. But I'm now feeling less like I'm treading on toes, it's all a bit more relaxed. I still need to do my job applications lark, but it's just so depressing to do so.

Train trip was quite funny, I managed to think of loads of stuff to blog about but it's all gone.....should have been scribbling it all down in a handy notebook, no? Never mind. The big shock of the day comes in WHSmiths at Leeds station. I went in to buy a paper and see if there was a new edition of Bike or something, when I looked upwards and saw proudly displayed, just above 'What Car', the popular hobbyist magazine 'BDSM'. Fascinating. There's a bigger market of pervs in Yorkshire than I previously suspected!

And now I'm here at P's while he has an early morning snooze and I eat cold pizza from last night. Life is much more delicious than it was twenty-four hours ago.