The Landlady is losing trade

One thing I forgot to mention about the fall-out from my birthday party last week, is that I even lost some business because of it. The day after the party, me and five friends returned from drinking several Bloody Marys at the Lion and Lobster, to make a start on clearing up the party detritus at Landlady Towers.

The Big Son, who had been up all night, was still ‘DJing’ vacantly, looking somewhat like an extra from The Night Of The Living Dead, in the lounge. He could not go to bed because two boys I’d never met before were curled up under the duvet in his bedroom.

“Clearly I couldn’t let them in. We sat in very guilty silence until they’d gone away”

Under further inspection, the house looked like a glass and wine factory had exploded all over it. As we were piling bottles and lager cans into recycling boxes, my phone rang. I recognised the number as that of someone who wanted to come and look at the house for their son who will be attending university in Brighton next September. I didn’t answer, but listened to the message informing me that they were outside. Clearly, I couldn’t let them in and we sat in very guilty silence until they’d gone away. They were not very happy about it, but I would imagine that they would have been even less happy to have let their son come and live in a place that was currently masquerading as a den of iniquity. I sent them a text the next day apologising but have received no response, which is unsurprising.

Luckily, it is still early in the season and I am not too worried about filling my rooms in September, just yet.
The following day, when I was still far from recovered from my party, I had a call from the estate agent who is handling the sale of the flat I’m buying in Hove. After five months of toing and froing and now that I have all the finance in place, the vendor has decided to sell to someone else. This means that all my renovation and money-making schemes for this year have been shelved for now, which is actually quite lucky as summer is on its way and I have lost my impetus to scrabble around in overalls.

I am going to have to find some money from somewhere though, as there is an overtime ban at The Supermarket, which is what I usually rely upon to make a little extra cash. I can see that I will have to cram my spare rooms with students all summer long and really make an effort to book people in ready for the winter season, which begins in September. In fact, I have some French people coming tomorrow to look at a room for their daughter, meaning I will definitely not be partying tonight…