The Landlady is not getting enough sleep

It has been a very busy week at Landlady Towers. For a start, The Small Daughter started secondary school, which now involves me getting up an hour earlier than I have done for the last ten years in order to furnish her with boiled eggs, soldiers and hot tea prior to her long bus journey to school. It is now Wednesday and I am absolutely exhausted as, in preparation for my forthcoming holiday to Ibiza, I ‘practised’ going out over the weekend and managed to go to bed at 5.30am and 7am respectively on Friday and Saturday. I now feel like a distant relative of Count Dracula and am dying for an early night.

I also have a New Boyfriend here in Brighton, which has put something of a spanner in the works with what has been going on in Cuba. I was supposed to be going back to Cuba in October, but have had to postpone my trip until next year, which has upset quite a few people on the other side of the pond, yet made The New Boyfriend here very happy. It is true that you cannot please all the people all of the time, especially in matters concerning the heart, where it seems to me that you can and should please one person at a time.

“She will be aiming for a new world record in space management”

It has to be said that The New Boyfriend does not help with the lack of sleep, as an early night for him is equal to something approximating 2am, which is definitely the middle of the night for me. We are slowly narrowing the gaping abyss between our respective bedtimes, but I fear I might be in my coffin – Dracula style in fact – before the matter is fully resolved.

To make matters worse, it is that time of year when I have a changeover of student lodgers and leap from Summer Students to the more permanent Winter ones, who appear from all over the globe with just about everything but the kitchen sink in their copious amounts of luggage. Fortunately, I had a couple of days grace after coming back from Portugal which enabled me to paint and polish both of my letting rooms to perfection.

One of my new French girls moved in today and she and her mother have been going up and down the stairs moving her belongings in for the past two hours. The room is so tiny, I fear that in order to fit everything in, she will be aiming for a new world record in space management in the style of ‘how many elephants can you fit into a Mini?’ With all this activity and so little sleep, I am glad that I’m soon going on holiday to Ibiza, which is just the location to get loads of rest and relaxation. Yeah, right.

Illustration: Jake McDonald www.shakeyillustrations.blogspot.com