The Landlady ponders in her empty nest

It is Sunday night and for the first night ever, I am destined to be alone all night at Landlady Towers. It is 8.30pm and I am sitting in the empty living room alone drinking a can of Budweiser (a solo, well-hidden survivor of The Big Son’s recent dawn raid on the fridge). I am wondering whether to watch Downton Abbey, or go to the pub. The Big Daughter left home on Thursday and has embarked on her ‘round the world’ travels. Of course, she has no real reason to contact me – bar possibly asking to borrow money – yet I have already been fed a couple of titbits about her whereabouts. Her Boyfriend merely told me that she’s still alive and The Small Daughter showed me a picture of her on Facebook, sporting a large foam finger and Yankees shirt at a baseball game. She is now, apparently, on her way to San Francisco.

“I run out of un-shocking conversation after the first two hours”

The Big Son is at his girlfriend’s house, in a somewhat pre-meditated ninja-style tactic, executed in order to avoid being present during a visit from my elderly relatives from Lymington, who came over for Sunday lunch and have only just left. It is always nice to see them, yet especially nice to see them go, as I run out of un-shocking conversation after the first two hours and then have to resort to busying myself in the kitchen so that I don’t have to say anything. The Small Daughter stoically turned up, rifled through, then wore some of the remaining clothes from The Big Daughter’s wardrobe, but has now gone to the Metropole with her father.

I don’t even have any lodgers at the moment either, as the large, old Kuwaiti gentleman with a lot of luggage had to move out because there were (still are, actually) too many stairs in my house. I have to say that the stairs didn’t seem to agree with him at all and he huffed and puffed his way up and down. He was a charming person, but his lack of understanding of the English language was spectacular and, the other night he was in the kitchen with The Big Son and proceeded to ask how to use the microwave in order to heat up a chicken and bacon roll. The Big Son then rushed into the living room to ask me if the lodger was Muslim, which indeed he is. After very little pause for thought, The Big Son told me that it was my duty to tell the lodger that bacon was pork, which, after much miming and snorting, I managed to get across. My lodger – who is a large gentleman – looked so crestfallen at the loss of his dinner that I gave him mine and wrote him a list of danger words on food packaging to avoid in the future.
It is now 9pm and I’m still alone. Don’t fancy Downton Abbey much…