The Landlady: Room for a small one?
The Boyfriend and I recently spent a whole weekend in Copenhagen where, by the last day, we hadn’t even eaten out once. Fortunately, on our last day, we managed to make up for it by going to the seaside at Koge (not pronounced how it’s spelt, I can tell you) and finding an ‘eat all you can’ Danish buffet at lunchtime. The Boyfriend, who has a famously disproportionate belly-to-eye ratio (his eyes being about 10 times bigger), ate more than the rest of the restaurant put together. When quizzed about his rather large appetite, The Boyfriend will get a guarded and slightly murderous look in his eye and claim that he was ‘born hungry’. This fact has been confirmed to me by his mother, who agrees that he was indeed born at dinnertime. He certainly got his money’s worth at the buffet – and mine too.
We spent the remainder of the day sitting in the rather gloomy and hideously overpriced Scala bar in the city centre with our luggage and downed a few final pints of Tuborg as we waited to leave for our flight. The Boyfriend’s lunchtime bonanza did nothing to curb his enthusiasm when the BA staff came round with ‘a light snack’ and he naturally had to have two of them.
“We were horrified to discover not one, but two Frenchmen in my bed”
We arrived back at Heathrow just in time to catch the 10.30pm coach back to Brighton and to bump into one of my ex-lodgers from years ago, who was getting the same coach, having spent the weekend away with his girlfriend. This lodger was one that I was especially fond of and, knowing him as he was four years ago, I was surprised that he’d managed to get it together to catch the bus, let alone go to a whole different country, so legendary was his confusion and lethargy of yesteryear.
By the time we arrived home at midnight, we were pretty exhausted and I was delighted to find the kitchen in immaculate order, which was probably down to my highly organised and house-proud son. Now that’s five words I never imagined I’d be able to put together in the same sentence. Unfortunately, upstairs lurked a slightly different story and when The Boyfriend flung open my bedroom door, we were horrified to discover not one, but two Frenchmen in my bed. While The Boyfriend stood there aghast, the charming bedfellows politely enquired how I had enjoyed my weekend in Denmark, to which I replied – through gritted teeth – that it had been lovely… up until now.
Once they were angrily despatched to the sofa in the living-room, I explained to The Boyfriend (who by now thought I was totally mad) that I had told the Frenchmen that they could have my room while I was away, that we were back on Sunday night and they had to be out by Sunday afternoon at the very latest. Furthermore, I’d told them that if they had trouble finding somewhere to stay, they could sleep on my sofa, but that they’d have to phone me and ask me first. They had done none of the above. I’m not sure where exactly the communication breakdown had occurred, but it had and in a fantastically irritating way. Once eventually in bed, The Boyfriend, still tutting and grumpy, said that he didn’t understand how I could spend so much money doing up Landlady Towers in order for it to still be – as he put it – a ‘tramp’s drop-in centre’. And do you know what? For once I have to agree with him…
