Malone comes to terms with dumping by text

We’ve started looking for a flat to rent. It’s hard work. It’s becoming a job. I may have to give up work to commit fully to finding a place. I’m obsessed with property websites. I could go on Mastermind and specialise in ‘properties listed between 12 December and 5 March in Brighton 2012’. You describe its features and I’ll tell you where it is. “Mama Malone, for ten points can you name a patio flat with three cat flaps?”
We thought we had found the perfect place. It had a roof terrace.

I was already imagining myself on it, sipping on a badly homemade Mojito in the summer. We were on our way to view it, when we got a text to say it had just been taken.

No-one wants to be dumped by text. It was like being told not to bother coming when you’ve already left for your first internet date because the date in question met someone before you, and now they don’t even want to meet you. “But you haven’t met us yet!” We should have shouted at the text message we’d been sent. I can see why they text rather than call…

“It felt like we were in a pet shop trying to replace our deceased rabbit with a gerbil”

No-one wants to be shouted at for what is essentially doing their job. It could have been worse. Like some online daters they could have let me meet up and then turned me down because my job wasn’t as good as that of the person on the last ‘date’. Thankfully my ego is still in tact, it wasn’t my face or job that didn’t get the boy – I mean flat! It was just timing.

My boyfriend was understandably upset and had to go for a walk to shake off his disappointment. He sent me photos of other similar flats in estate agent windows, but it just felt like we were in a pet shop trying to replace our deceased family rabbit with a gerbil, staring into cages and crying “no-one can replace our Snowy!” (We haven’t got a family rabbit, it’s just a metaphor.)
I’m waiting for the five year old’s pleas for a pet soon though. As a child, my father was an asthmatic and that was the wall of reason that I could not penetrate however hard I cried for a pet.

(I will use the same ‘reason’ on my child.) I’ve got enough cleaning to do without clearing up rabbit poo. Mind you, would the rabbit clean my floor of meals and save me sweeping? Hmm, sell the idea of a pet to me as a living Hoover and I could be converted to a pet owner. Estate agents wouldn’t like that. I better not become a pet owner as estate agents ask you if you have pets like “do you have an Asbo?” Best I’m a home owner with a property to let who has a very secure full-time job. Perhaps I can get work as a lettings negotiator…

Illustration: Jake McDonald www.shakeyillustrations.blogspot.com