The Landlady’s new tenant has a culture shock
My dithering French girl has finally moved out. She was replaced two days later by a very opinionated North African who is here for just three weeks studying English. He arrived on a very rainy and cold St Patrick’s Day, which is possibly not the best day for a strict Muslim to view the population of Brighton, who appeared to be pie-eyed by 5pm. If the Sodom and Gomorrah at 9pm in my local pub was any kind of benchmark, it looked like people had started drinking at 10 in the morning and I was one of the more sober customers, which made a pleasant change.
My new tenant, who is bold in his views, yet quite sweet, is already extremely shell-shocked by British culture and told me that he’d been horrified to see a man flirting with a woman at Heathrow Airport, which would be a punishable offence in his country. He has never touched alcohol in his life and I told him, while drinking a large bottle of Leffe (I asked his permission first) that British people drink way too much. He said it’s probably because the weather is so awful here, which is not a bad way of looking at things and probably quite true. I am also, for the next few weeks, switching my meat-purchasing allegiances to Taj, as my tenant can only eat Halal meat.Talk about bending over backwards…
“She was awoken by the sound of someone falling spectacularly all the way down the stairs”
It’s a good job that the new lodger wasn’t here a couple of weeks ago. Miss T, a friend of The Big Daughter was going to her job on the seafront at 7am on Sunday morning, when she saw a commotion across the road. A crowd had gathered round a man who was so drunk that he was teetering to the point of collapse, then righting himself and staggering determinedly forward, before stopping to teeter once more. She crossed the road to investigate the spectacle further and realised that it was…The Big Son. Embarrassingly, the story doesn’t end there. I was chatting with my downstairs tenant, who asked if The Big Son was OK. Wondering what new hell was about to be revealed, I said he was fine and asked her why she asked. She said that a couple of weeks ago, at around 8am on Sunday morning, she was awoken by the sound of someone falling spectacularly all the way down the stairs, followed by complete silence. You don’t need Miss Marple to work out who that would be. My tenant opened her door, to see The Big Son sprawled, out cold, in the communal hallway. She asked if he was OK and he grunted, so she left him, then went to check on him five minutes later. He had woken up, staggered to his feet and planted two large kisses on her cheek, before attempting the stairs once more. She then heard him fall over in his bedroom, followed by 24 hours of silence. The Big Son cannot remember any of this. I’m so proud…
