Smoke gets in your eyes
The Landlady
Three weeks after the chain-smoking – but otherwise very charming – Saudi finally left Landlady Towers, the smell of his thousand-fag-per-day habit still lingered. I am a former thousand-fag-per-day smoker myself, and when I gave up 12 years ago, I vowed not to become an ex-smoking Nazi as many people become.
In fact, I actively encourage my still smoking friends to smoke in my living room and kitchen – as long as The Small Daughter isn’t around at the time. She is horrified when I tell her that I used to smoke and even The Big Daughter and Big Son struggle to remember me with a fag in my mouth.
Still, the smell of old fag butts in the Saudi’s room was neither pleasant, nor fair to the room’s next occupant, so I decided there and then to ban smoking in the guest rooms.
“When he asked if he could smoke, I heard myself inviting him to smoke anywhere he liked”
Then, last Saturday evening, a completely charming – not to mention exceedingly good-looking – Spaniard arrived to spend three weeks at Landlady Towers. It was around 9pm and I’d recently been discussing with my friend Teri about how I was going to ban students from smoking in their bedrooms.
Needless to say, after a bottle or two of wine, my good intentions went out of the window and, when the Spaniard asked if he could smoke in his room, I heard myself inadvertently inviting him to smoke as much as he liked anywhere in the house, much to the delight and utter mirth of my friend Teri, who only five minutes earlier, had been witness to my firm intentions to ban smoking. I’m such a sucker for a pretty face and a charming disposition.
I think I am becoming calmer as I get older, rather than angrier. I find that things which would have really got my back up a couple of years ago now roll off it like water from a duck’s. I think my new calmness has come about from having to share my living space with so many people from such a variety of cultures for so long. Indeed, I have resigned myself to it. My older offspring are the same and don’t seem to be bothered by much at all. I’m sure that the experience has provided them with – even if they haven’t realised it yet – a worldly knowledge, a deep appreciation for foreign food and an optimism that they would not have had if they’d had the luxury of space to themselves.
I am no longer disappointed when I go out to the roof terrace for a bit of peace and quiet, to find seven French horse dentists revising out there. I don’t get stressed when The Saudi wakes me up at 5am by making strange noises with the shower hose next door – in spite of the fact that I’ve only just gone back to sleep after the shouting outside my bedroom door. I am not irritated when, having spent all afternoon preparing a lovely, multicultural, halal, pork-free dinner, everybody pisses off to the foreign-student disco without having dinner at all.
I’ve learnt to find joy in the fact that, rather than putting his washing out every Monday, The Saudi will suddenly appear with a huge full bin liner once a month. I no longer baulk at the thought of removing seven tonnes of pubic hair from the shower plug, nor get annoyed at having to clean jam off the kitchen table every single morning.
The mortgage will be paid off in six years’ time, so bring ‘em on. Chain smokers and all.
