Gay Nazi Sex Vicar in Schoolgirl Knickers Vice Disco Lawnmower Shock!
« The road to nowhereTake me to a posh hotel and abuse me »

Write off

  Tue 14th March 2017

Seriouscrush and her boyfriend -- the owners of this house -- came round this morning.

Had the lodgers not still been in bed, they'd have been able to have a look round, and might have been surprised at the state it's in. One of the panes in the back bedroom window moves away from its rotten frame if you try to open it. There was a ten foot by four foot patch of damp in the front bedroom until Nadia painted over it with anti-damp paint. I was very grateful to her for doing it, but I doubt that anti-damp paint solves anything in the long term. The kitchen floor is buckling and the bathroom has no shower, not even into the bath. From my side, there is the issue of my rent arrears.

Nadia's boyfriend told me last night that they'd be giving the room up at the end of the month. Nadia's landed a highly sought-after job in avian conservation, which involves them living in situ on a island in the Inner Hebrides.

Whether I haven't had enough sleep lately, I don't know, but I was almost tearful with the idea of yet again, having to beg interview another set of strangers, and having to adjust, again, to another's modus vivendi, with its pleasures and irritations. I don't earn enough to live here, but I've been here for so long I am sedimented with furniture and bookcases and records and a futon and sofas and god knows what. What do I do with all this stuff? Give it away, I suppose. I'm not attached to anything, apart from my clothes, my records and my futon and the autobiographical geegaws on my mantelpiece, the records of my friends. I haven't got any money and I knew one day that things would start unravelling; and as things unravel, they can hit you.

Anxiously clutching at straws, I rang Trina, and broached the idea of living on her narrowboat for a while. She refused, and said that she wished I hadn't asked her. Afterwards, by text: "...go and live with your mother in Middlesbrough...I'd have done anything to help you if only you'd been able to love me. Good luck x"

I let Seriouscrush and boyf in. I had to shorten middle daughter's phone call; she was sparkling down the phone at having heard this morning that she's got a recall for the acting course at The Old Vic (applicants: c.900; places: 14), and wondering if I could pay her train fare to Bristol in a month's time.

Seriouscrush and boyf wandered wonderingly around the ground floor of the first house they lived in when they got together. In ten (?) years since I moved in, they've been here once. We talked about the state of the windows and the kitchen for a while.

"Well," boyf said, crossing his legs ominously. "Shall we talk about the rent?" Seriouscrush showed me a back of an envelope account of my arrears, which began to accumulate about three years ago. They are more than double the figure I had in my head. They then made this stupendously generous offer.

"Right. We need to sell this place. Our business isn't making much and we need the money -- like we said last time. But it isn't saleable at the moment, and I'd like to do a lot of work on it over the summer then put it on the market." I could sense what was coming, and breathing more deeply with anticipation.

"You can't afford to pay us back this, can you? You're broke. So how about -- we give you notice, say, the beginning of June. We write off this [debt], and you stay here until then with no further payment."

"Maybe if you didn't have to pay us till then, that would be enough for a deposit on a new place."

We let out a collective sigh that the elephant in the room was going to be banished soon. "Why don't we all just go out for a drink in a week or two?" boyf said.

All my life, I have been treated with kindness, each incidence of which surpasses in generosity that of the previous one. They left, and I wanted to run to the pub and douse the tension and anxiety that has tensed me night and day since they told me they were coming round. So I did.


As I go to post this -- sitting at a table next to the jazz section in the library -- I notice to my left a Sonny Rollins CD.

2 comments

Comment from: kono [Visitor]

When you look around at things and see how shit people can be to each other and then something like this happens it gives one a small modicum of faith in humanity… of course some might call it good karma or good juju, you don’t just get that my friend, it’s earned, and so it appears in that account you are in good stead… but why do i have a feeling it’ll all shake out in the end? now off to the pub you!

Wed 15th March 2017 @ 02:16 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

Had a great afternoon – it’s Cheltenham Festival at the moment and the main horseracing pub in town was very busy and doing a sweepstake and some free scoff.

Trying to think of a way to thank Seriouscrush and boyf now – make a cake I suppose. That’s always my Thank You Fallback Gesture :)

Wed 15th March 2017 @ 09:11 Reply to this comment


Form is loading...

looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person


M / 59 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.


There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008

The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek

Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner

La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes

Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity would be able to use the word again.
John Whale

One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011

The Comfort of Strangers

23.1.16: Big clearout of the defunct and dormant and dull
16.1.19: Further pruning

If your comment box looks like this, I'm afraid I sometimes can't be bothered with all that palarver just to leave a comment.

63 mago
Another Angry Voice
the asshat lounge
Clutter From The Gutter
Crinklybee
Eryl Shields Ink
Exile on Pain Street
Fat Man On A Keyboard
gairnet provides: press of blll defunct, but retained for its quality
George Szirtes ditto
Infomaniac [NSFW]
The Joy of Bex
Laudator Temporis Acti
Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder
The Most Difficult Thing Ever
Quillette
Strange Flowers
Trailer Park Refugee
Wonky Words

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

5:4
Bristol New Music
Desiring Progress Collection of links only
NewMusicBox
The Rambler
Resonance FM
Sequenza 21
Sound and Music
Talking Musicology defunct, but retained


  XML Feeds

Social CMS engine
 

©2024 by looby. Don't steal anything or you'll have a 9st arts graduate to deal with.

Contact | Help | b2evolution skin by Asevo | Open-Source CMS