The Landlady: Escape to the country

The Cuban Boyfriend has now been over four times. I don’t know quite how it’s happened, but he’s already managed to move two and a half bikes, three travel bags, a Tag Heuer watch that I’m terrified of losing and a selection of forgotten shoes and clothes into my house. I fear that, given more time, my house will resemble the stage set from Steptoe and Son.

Having years ago suffered the results of a similarly hoarding tenant in Hastings – the man clearly couldn’t walk past a skip without depositing the entire contents in my flat – I am rather worried that The Cuban Boyfriend is going the same way. More perturbing still is that much of his cache was purchased in Hastings. So far though, he manages to balance his more unattractive tendencies with much more agreeable ones, like buying me flowers first thing in the morning, which goes some of the way towards negating my worries of disappearing behind a pile of oxidising bicycles.

Behind a pile of oxidising bicycles

In an attempt to divert his attention from the multitudinous antique and bric-a-brac shops of Hastings, I whisked him away for a night in a boutique hotel in Chichester, hoping to do some cycling around the nearby countryside. Alas, I hadn’t figured on such a large amount of second-hand shops scuppering my cunning plan. Our first day was spent in the sunshine, or more accurately, out of the sunshine delving through piles of other people’s discarded rubbish.

The next day, I managed to tempt The Cuban off the high street and on a mini cycle ride to the Marina in Chichester. As usual, I was ill-prepared for the route and we got lost pretty much before we’d started. My terrible map-reading, plus the Boyfriend’s decision to change his clothes halfway back to the station resulted in our missing the train back to Brighton, thus having to pass another hour in the (deep joy) Charity Shops of Chichester. At least someone’s benefiting from my misfortune.