I’m finding out! …Oh.

Posted on by inkbiotic

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Finally we find out who’s been invading our rooms and leaving dog hairs, sweetie wrappers and moving my ketchup.

Word of the day: Heuristic – helping to discover by trial and error

So it was tense when me, Jinjing, Hamoudi and Neville sat down beneath the watchful eyes of the cat picture. Did I only imagine that those eyes followed us as we sat down? Yes, I did, but it would have happened if this was a horror movie. I tried to keep things light, but Neville looked shrivelled and wary, Jinjing was cool and sharp and Hamoudi was a big innocent bear, as always. I suspect I looked like I’d wandered in by accident, that’s kind of my thing.

Jinjing started by saying we all had to remain calm and honest and work out a resolution, fair enough. Then I shared my news about the perfume wafting around the flat when I got home.

‘Isn’t that just the landlady though?’ said Neville. ‘She always makes the place smell.’

‘What?’ we all said. Because of course we know the landlady, we each met her before we moved in, but she shouldn’t be in the house, not without us knowing, not without 24 hours notice. And here is Neville talking like it’s a common occurrence we should all be aware of.

‘What do you mean always?’ asked Jinjing.

‘She comes round quite often in the afternoons,’ said Neville. ‘I guess it’s when you’re all at work.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ said Jinjing, she was getting shrill, which summed up how I felt.

‘Does she have a dog?’ I asked.

‘She had a dog when I had my interview,’ said Hamoudi.

‘Does she eat sweets?’ I asked.

‘Does it matter?’ said Jinjing.

‘Well, yes, because she if she eats sweets, she’s been in my room. And if she’s been in my room, then she’s the one who broke my laptop. In which case,’ my turn to get shrill now, ‘I want some bloody money for it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us that she’s been coming in the house?’ repeated Jinjing to Neville, I think she wanted to continue blaming him for something.

‘I assumed you knew,’ he said.

After that there was some general annoyance and tetchiness. The only thing we could agree on was that one of us needed to tell the landlady to stop turning up when we were at work, but that none of us actually wanted to do it. Stalemate. We left it at that.

So, aliens, Illuminati and sleepwalking are out, and a small middle-aged lady with a bad perm and a yappy dog is in. My life just got 43% more dull.

27 thoughts on “I’m finding out! …Oh.”

  2. Oops. Awkward. It’s like the fable in which there’s no response from the assembled mice when one of them asks, “If it’s such a good idea to put a bell round the cat’s neck to warn us when it’s coming, who’s going to bell the cat?

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  4. She might still be an alien who knows, i have heard they have infiltrated us long time ago : ) well i dont know about your country but here it is a tricky thing to confront landlady or lord i mean once they dont like you they start making stuff up to get you out. It once happened to me but i was already planning to move out soon. Good luck and i hope she will understand your concern. I want to add i always feel tension when talks happen between roomates oh gosh i just hate it because i dont know how to handle confrontation that s why i live alone

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    1. The landlady turning on whoever confronts her, I think that’s what we’re all worried about. I like this flat,, I’m not ready to leave!

      I’m hoping the tension between us lot will calm down now that we know who is sneaking around, because like you, I hate the arguments.

      I definitely like your idea that the landlady is an alien! Maybe the sweets are how she gets her oxygen – was that what the aliens did in Mars Attacks? That would be exciting 🙂

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  6. Text her and say ‘Hi, just to let you know, we all think that someone has been walking into the house in the day, nothing’s been stolen, moving ketchup that sort of thing’. That will give her the opportunity to say ‘Sorry that was me’ she might have a good reason like she has had a bad experience in the past and had to go on that programme Slum Landlords, Bad Tenants. or she might be stalking you. Or she might have a good reason. Or she’s an alien…

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    1. That’s a smart idea, I’ll run it by the others later. Even if she’s had a bad time with previous tenants, she still shouldn’t be coming in the house, though. I’m still hoping for an alien to be honest 😉

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    1. He knew she was coming into the flat, but not that she was going into our rooms. I get the impression that when she turned up, he hid, so he wouldn’t have known much other than she was there. I think until Jinjing started shouting at him about it, he didn’t know there was a problem at all.

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