Is OK

Another exciting flat mate. I can’t wait to see which neurosis they display once they get settled in. Also can’t wait to see what you mean by “made up.”

Yes, everythig goes ok for a day or two and then you discover a pecularity of irritation that you’ve never seen before. Hey ho, they’d have to be quite bad to be more uncomfortable around than our taciturn current housemate.

I knew you’d make up. This is soo much better than TV soaps u:-) Furtheron aka the phantom spammer!

I agree with furtheron, this is infinitely better than a TV soap, and well written to boot. I’m impressed with your flexibility too, I know needs must and all, but I would hate to share a house with almost strangers.

(For one, I guess there’s no walking about in your smalls.)

Joiners from Chișinău eh?

I remember the last time I did business with a couple of foreign gents with “barely comprehensible Eastern European accents.” Chechnya, the land of the sharpened axe, illegal guns and the willingness to separate a man and his life as if it was worthless. Which of course it is in Chechnya. I still have a faded scar that runs from my hairline to just below my right ear.

Chișinău, Chechnya, they sound so alike when spoken quickly. If you hurry, you might just be able to get Ms Phooey back. For the price of a mere shower curtain you can all sleep safely again in your beds.

F: Hello Graham, hope those pills are working and that Mrs F is suitably tired out now. And yes, I’ll let you know about the reconciliation shortly.

GB: Thanks–and no, I’m not in a position to choose who I live with. But I’ve had great good luck with Ned and Tess and am just hoping the Moldovans work out too.

Chef: Actually they were a lot easier to understand face to face. And although I could only stay for twenty minutes or so last night, as I had to fetch my girls from the bus shelter, they paid the rent in those nice red notes. The counterfeiting equipment they’ve developed in southeastern Europe has really improved in the last few years.

oh, i’m enjoying watching “who’s the next lodger?” on looby-vision! very entertaining! also enjoying the sub-plot, where chef plants seeds of fear and uncertainty!

looby: new lodger is a sheep farmer from essex!

chef: a bit of history, fella! did you know that the first men to acquire sexually transmitted diseases were sheep farmers? i hear there are some new strains that can be transmitted through sneezes…

looby: new lodger is a dancing midget from the ukraine!

chef: is her name ulrike, by any chance? i think i once hired her for a job in kiev. very efficient. flexibility and short stature make it easy for them to hide in closets for the effective ‘knife to the groin in your sleep’ maneuver…

looby: new lodger is a middle-aged housewife from the midwestern united states!

chef: ah, lord. the scariest sort - did you know they have been trained to rip out testicles through the nostrils?

This could run and run…

Oh, that’s all great news all round. And the fire and fairy lights on your next blogpost is making me wish it were Christmas already.

I’ve a colleague from Chișinău. Lovely chap, mumbles into his beard a bit, when he has a beard. It’s always sounded to me like a language of darkly-swallowed vowels, which might be the Slavic/Russian influence on it: I bet that’s why you can’t hear the echoes of Latin coming through, because certainly modern Italian is all in the lovely, bright syllables.

Yes, it’s far more Slavic/Russian sounding than Latin. When you read it it looks like it might produce a mellifluous spoken language, but that’s not how it sounds, not with these two Moldovans anyway.

They told me they speak a mixture of Romanian and Russian, and can understand both.