The Landlady on mistaken identity & squirrels
One would have to be a hermit not to have noticed that international student season is once again in full swing in our sweltering city. The queues, congregations and human confluences of students blocking pavements and reducing bus capacities to ‘standing room only’ belies the fact that there is a Europe-wide recession on at the moment.
As a Brighton resident who profits greatly from the seasonal influx, I cannot complain about the blocking of our pavements and public services. For the next ten days, I am playing host to a set of French boys who, due to a lack of language (of any sort, as far as I can determine) their age and country of origin have thus far remained a mystery. They can be no older than 16 and, rather than attend the lavish gamut of activities laid-on by their language school, choose to lie on their twin-beds in their baking hot room with the blind down, playing games on their iPhones.
Although I open their window every day, by the time they’ve been home for an hour, it’s tightly shut and shrouded like a hermetically-sealed musical shoebox with gaming music tinkling monotonously through the slightly ajar door.
The Small Daughter, who is herself entering ‘the awkward years’ and will not leave the house without the application of eyeliner thicker than a beefeater’s hatband, huffs in disgust at the presence of the boys and asks why they don’t know how to close a door properly, then blushes furiously when an accidental encounter occurs in the hallway.
“He emitted a series of syllables that sounded like a terrified pheasant being pursued across crazy-paving by a combine-harvester”
This morning, there was a language breakthrough and I entered the kitchen to find one of the boys pointing excitedly towards the kitchen table and maybe the window beyond. In a cracked voice, he emitted a series of syllables that sounded like a terrified pheasant being pursued across crazy-paving by a combine-harvester. I thought he was telling me that the cereal had run out, so took a new box out of the cupboard and shook it at him, telling him to help himself. He looked bewildered and I realised why when it later dawned on me that what he’d actually said was that he’d just seen a squirrel in the garden. Further investigation revealed that they are actually Spanish…Oops.
