The Landlady is shut out of her own room

I am currently sitting in the Small Daughter’s bedroom, listening to my well-to-do next door neighbours’ kids playing some kind of game in their garden with a ball that inevitably ends up on our side of the fence, never to be returned. There are now probably enough balls in our garden to rival any Ikea soft play. They are so posh that they are probably playing lacrosse, or polo. Meanwhile, across the hall in my bedroom, the Austrian lady currently renting it, is barking out ferocious-sounding orders in German to her two small daughters who sound like they’re fighting so much that they’re about to fall through the ceiling into the living room below.

I am in The Small Daughter’s bedroom because I am renting my beautiful, en suite bedroom to the Von Trapp family for two weeks in order to pay my tax bill. I have realised, rather too late, that I have insufficient and highly unsuitable clothing for current weather conditions. This is because I was going to pack a suitcase, as if I was going on holiday for two weeks before the Austrians arrived, then realised that I’d lent both my suitcases to my friend B, who was off to Madrid for a week and couldn’t decide between Celia (the pink suitcase) and Wayne (the black one), so took both. All I have to wear is a pair of cut-off shorts and a pink vest top – highly unsuitable for driving rain, gale-force winds and freezing temperatures – and my work uniform, which is frankly unsuitable for any occasion, even work.

Moreover, since the Austrians moved in, they have not gone out, except to go to language school, which is while I’ve been at work, so I have been unable to go into my room and get anything. They have refused the dinners I’ve cooked for them, claiming to be ‘too tired’ or ‘too full’ to eat. Hell, I’m even using The Big Son’s deodorant, which smells like a particularly heady night down West Street. Bar donning welding masks, nailing shut the doors and letting loose a trailer-load of cockroaches, the Austrians’ unwillingness to leave my room is starting to remind me a bit of the film Pacific Heights.

“I skulk around the lacklustre kitchen and take unsatisfying showers”

As well as having no clothes, deodorant or jewellery, I am having to suffer the indecencies of using the facilities which are normally the territory of my lodgers and children. Like the Secret Millionaire, or Undercover Boss, I skulk around in the lacklustre kitchen and take unsatisfying showers in the sub-standard bathrooms vowing to, at the end of this trial two weeks of living in relative squalor, present myself with a cheque for £5,000 so that I can make a better life for myself in case I have to rent out my bedroom once more in the future. The Austrians had better go out before Saturday, as I’m off clubbing with my friend Mr P and need my Betsey Johnson stilettos. I hope they go well with my work uniform.

Illustration: Jake McDonald www.shakeyillustrations.blogspot.com