The Landlady
Broken deals and shenanigans whilst the Landlady’s away
While my two Tunisian ladies were staying, I had quite a few nice chats with the one who wore the veil. It was very interesting for me to speak to her about love, life and the universe, as when I have travelled to North Africa in the past, I have never actually spoken at length to any of the women. For a start, they don’t exactly hang around in bars and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to get a word in sideways for all the men hanging around with – in my experience – their unwanted advances and marriage proposals.
Meanwhile, the other Tunisian lady who was rather hard work, fairly unpleasant and constantly wore a fur hat, was becoming more and more demanding. One evening, my friend Teri and I were sitting in my living room having just eaten dinner, when Miss Fur Hat waltzed in and asked if I had a spare room for the coming weekend. Alas, I had not, as I had a trio of French horse dentists arriving and told her as much. She explained that her sister would be arriving from France to visit for a few days and she would like her to stay at my house. Again, I explained that I did not have a room available. Then my friend Teri – even though she wasn’t terribly keen on the idea – kindly offered her spare room for a couple of nights for the same rate as I charge for B&B. We thought this would be ideal, as Teri only lives around the corner, thus giving the sisters the opportunity to spend as much time together as possible. Miss Fur Hat thought for a moment and accepted the offer with fairly bad grace, as if Teri had just offered to tie her sister up and billet her in a rat-infested dungeon.
"She left me a very long letter explaining that Teri and I – dumb bints that we are – had misunderstood"
Later that week, the day before the sister was due to arrive, Teri was on her way back from the pub late at night in a fairly bad mood, when she was accosted in the street by Miss Fur Hat, who then proceeded to try and beat Teri down to half price for the room rental for her sister. Because Teri was tired and fed-up and she wanted to get away from this woman, she half-heartedly agreed and then, once she got home realised that it really wouldn’t be worth her while, so she phoned me and asked me to cancel the rental. I agreed with Teri. After all, the sister had the potential to be even more horrible than her sibling and no one – apart from me, obviously – wants horrible people staying in their spare room…
Needless to say, the Tunisian was very angry that the rental had been cancelled – I told her I thought it was very bad form to try and renegotiate on a done deal – and later that day, she left me a very long letter explaining that Teri and I – dumb bints that we are – had misunderstood her and that her sister was very rich and had intended to pay us both rent. Yeah, right. I can only assume that the sister took her huge budget to The Grand Hotel in the end, because I never saw her.
During their final week, I spent a couple of nights in London and on my return, realised that the Tunisians were eating separately and appeared to be not speaking to each other. I asked the veiled lady what had happened and it transpired that, while I’d been away, there had been a certain amount of shenanigans between Miss Fur Hat, The Italian and some Saudi guy!
