The Landlady is not your mother

I have now been letting rooms in my house for over ten years and would recommend it to anyone, especially if they have a fairly laid-back attitude to life. Most of the people who come and stay in my house are either very nice or terribly boring, both of which I can cope with. It is not very often that I actively don’t like someone, but it occasionally happens. Normally, the people I don’t like have something in common. They are generally men of around my age who either still live with their mothers, or have a doting wife at home to look after them. I am neither motherly, or doting, and therein lies the fundamental problem.

I can see why a typical, conventional man in their late ‘30s and ‘40s might be a little confused by my lifestyle. I live in a big house and don’t have a husband and appear not to work very often, yet am always going on holiday. I am sometimes visited
by the occasional boyfriend and often stay in bed all day with a hangover.

I think they either assume that I’m an unemployed hooker, or a major drug dealer and therefore decide to treat me accordingly, which is either with contempt or patronisation.

“He moaned that the shower didn’t switch off quickly enough”

One of these ‘people that I don’t like’ is currently billeted at Landlady Towers, although thankfully only for a couple of weeks. He is Spanish and I disliked him from the moment I opened the front door and he was already whingeing and moaning about the amount of steps up the front door. There are five. Imagine the moaning after the further 27 stairs up to his room, even though I carried his large suitcase. The moaning continued about the speed of the internet, the fact that he had to put his plate in the dishwasher and even – and this is a first – the fact that the shower didn’t switch off quickly enough. I think he’s about 40, although he’s a heavy smoker and could easily be 30 and he still lives with his mother, who clearly washes all his plates for him and switches off the shower for him when he’s finished.

To be fair, he is made to look even more unpleasant by the shining example who is renting my other room at the moment. The other student is a French paratrooper who looks like a Premier League footballer, cooks his own food while giving consideration to my use of the kitchen, cleans the kitchen like a demon, thanks me for doing his washing and carried both of his enormously heavy bags up 45 stairs without a word of complaint. I even take him out clubbing with me occasionally, which is unheard of. Mr Moany probably wouldn’t make it up the steps.