The Phantom Visitor!

The shag carpet had dried out and my downstairs neighbour had forgiven me for turning her ceiling into a shower. I was still getting use to the longer commute, almost four hours a day, during which time I often found myself thinking that it would take me less time to get to France, Belgium or Germany than it would to get home. Although I laughed at this little factoid, I also found it rather depressing. Even more depressing though was the cost of riding the crammed sardine can.

During the week, we would leave the apartment at 7:00am and I would get back from work at around 7:30pm. Every so often, I would get the feeling that my pots and pans had moved around the kitchen. On a couple of occasions, I found an empty toilet roll on the side of the bathtub, no toilet paper in sight, when I was pretty sure I had just started a fresh roll. I put it down to not being a morning person, requiring several cups of industrial strength coffee to get the neurons firing.

There is also a genetic component to the whole memory thing, my father, grandfather and great-grandfather all suffered from Alzheimer’s, which can be hereditary. So I did, and still do, find myself wondering about my own memory. Then there were the times when my apartment would smell of roast lamb and neither my son nor I eat red meat, but I put that down to my downstairs neighbour.

Six months after moving into the apartment, I found myself between jobs and applied for housing benefit to tie us over. An inspector came around to check out the apartment and as he was leaving, he asked me if I’d ever applied for housing benefit before. He was very insistent, wanting to know if I rented the apartment furnished. He was sure he’d come to my apartment before, furnished exactly the same way, only it was a man claiming benefits.

This encounter got me wondering if someone was using my apartment as a pied-à-terre during the day; it would explain my things moving around. Whoever this person was, he would have had to spend time learning my routines and habits, not to mention the risk of being caught if I came home unexpectedly during the day. It couldn’t just be about a kitchen and toilet paper; I didn’t even have a television – still don’t.

A couple of weeks later, I was home catching up on mundane chores. My mother was taking me to Tesco for my weekly shop. There was a time when I could remember what I needed without a list, these days I had to walk around the apartment writing one, which was why I knew for sure that I had six full toilet rolls.

An hour later, when we got home I needed to go to the toilet and was more than a bit surprised to find six empty toilet rolls neatly lined up on the side of the bathtub, all traces of the paper was gone! Not owning a cat, I couldn’t logically explain it away.

I contacted the rental agency and explained what I assumed was going on. The agency admitted that it was possible that an old tenant still had a copy of the key. I requested that they change the lock for security reasons. On principle, they agreed to the idea, but it would be at my expense not theirs, and that is where we disagreed.

I had a theory that I wanted to check out, so I took the next day off as well. I spent the morning reading and waiting for my phantom visitor. At about 11:00am I heard someone come up the stairs and stop in front of my door, followed by the jingling of keys. I slowly got off my sofa, put down my book, and tiptoed to the corner of the living room door, giving me the best view of my front door. I could see a medium sized male form on the other side of the opaque glass.

I had left my key in the lock making it impossible for the person on the other side to insert their key, and I had an extra Yale lock on the inside, with no exterior lock. I waited silently while the shape on the other side of the opaque glass tried to insert his key. I heard a male voice curse, try to insert his key again, before retreating back downstairs using some very colourful language as he went.

I rushed over to the window and watched as a brown haired, medium built man, walked quickly down the path, shaking his head and obviously still cursing. My first reaction was to laugh, but I still didn’t know why he took the toilet paper and left the empty rolls behind, such a give away, and I will probably never know.

What I did know for sure was that a man had a key to my apartment and had been hanging out there cooking and doing something to my toilet paper. This wasn’t a comforting thought, I didn’t get why anyone in his right mind would go to such length for a pied-à-terre. I suspected that my phantom visitor would not be coming back in a hurry even so I was getting my lock changed, and sooner rather than later. I wrote to the Agency informing them that a man, with a copy of my key, had tried to gain access to my apartment while I was there. Under the circumstances, I would be calling out a locksmith and sending them the bill – which they eventually agreed to pay!

The Washing Machine & The Fireman

Following the trauma of the uninvited bed guest and then the inconvenience of the loony landlord, I moved out of London up to Royston. After a long search, I found an apartment with a living room just big enough for my sofa, which strangely enough always seemed to be the tipping point. This is what the rental agency referred to as a bijou, in other words small! On the plus side, the wallpaper was white, and the carpeting, apart from being shag, was a neutral colour.

It took me a while and a lot of sweat, to arrange my furniture and empty my boxes, at one point even finding myself trapped by my own belongings due to the lack of space. When my son sat on his bed, arms outstretched, he could touch the wall opposite, as the realtor said, bijou.

Why I chose that Sunday to swap out the washing machines, when I was expecting a lunch guest, is a question I still occasionally ask myself. The apartment came with one, but having seen the vast culture of mould growing inside I decided against using it, and all that was left to do was connect my washing machine. The kitchen was on the small side so it took me a while to move, inch-by-inch, the mouldy machine to the other side of the room, leaving me just enough space to push and shove my machine in its place.

I was proud of myself. The hard part was over, all I needed to do was connect the machine to the water and I’d be all set for my first wash. Now, all you men out there before you ask; I did connect the tube to the tap and tighten the thingy-me-gig until it no longer budged and turned the water on slowly checking for leaks. I even made sure that the evacuation tube was not blocked. I loaded my mould free washing machine and set it in motion.

I still had a couple of hours before my lunch guest arrived and the food side of things was under control. I nipped into the bathroom for a quick shower, changed clothes and sat down with my book. That’s when I heard a strange gurgling sound coming from the kitchen and it had nothing to do with the cuisine. I opened the cabinet under the sink to see what was going on. Big mistake, at that precise moment, the tube came off the tap and a jet of cold water propelled me back against the fridge like a cartoon character. The shock of the cold water left me immobile while my mouth spurted four letter words.

At this juncture, I must say that I’m very lucky to have such a bright, alert son, who rushed into the living room to see what all the commotion was about. My seven-year-old called the fire brigade and then fetched towels from the airing cupboard to stop the flood of water seeping into the living room carpet. I finally jumped into action and fighting the jet of cold water, tried to turn the tap off. However, I received an electrical shock, and as I was standing ankle deep in water, I didn’t try again. As it turned out, that was the least of my problems, my elderly downstairs neighbour wanted to know why her living room lights had gone out and more to the point, why it was raining from her ceiling. I apologised profusely and briefly explained what had happened.

The fire brigade, lunch guest and mother all turned up at the same time, isn’t that always the way. This was the first time I’d ever needed the fire brigade so I didn’t realise they wore black rubber. It seemed that both my mother and lunch guest were very taken with one rubber-clad man in particular. From my mother’s point of view, a future husband for me and from my lunch guest’s point of view, the father of her future children. I on the other hand, was more concerned with the small lake growing in my kitchen. We all have priorities in life.

The firefighters came equipped with a useful industrial sized water hoover and thanks to rubber gloves, my future husband – according to my mother - managed to turn off the tap. Then his super hoover sucked up all the excess water in my kitchen and living room. Thanks to my son’s quick thinking, the overall damage to my apartment was minimal; though the poor downstairs neighbour’s ceiling had taken the brunt of the flood. The fire brigade cleared up the mess, while delighting my mother and lunch guest in the process. They reassured the elderly neighbour downstairs, and hoovered up the excess water in her apartment as well.

I did learn something, other than never to install my own washing machine. That you can be billed for calling out the fire brigade if there isn’t a potential hazard. So looking at this whole fiasco from a positive angle, I guess it was lucky that the water seeped into the downstairs neighbour’s lighting system and was in fact dangerous. Probably not so lucky for the neighbour but my insurance covered the damage, no questions asked.

The conversation around the lunch table had little to do with me installing my washing machine, and everything to do with the rubber-clad firefighter. My mother came up with a plan for me to use my son, go down to the fire station and tell Mister Perfect that he wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up - which was a lie - and would love to take a ride in his fire engine - which he probably would have enjoyed.

I admit that the man was more than a little dishy but I wouldn’t use my son as a prop and to be honest I was happy with my status quo. I did not follow up with the firefighter but I will always be grateful to the man for saving my soaked butt. To all you men out there, I learnt my lesson and now hire a professional to install my washing machine and dishwasher, just in case!

The Loony Landlord

We have all suffered at the hands of the weird, eccentric and all out crazy landlords and the worst ones are those who live on the premises. At least that is what I thought until I moved into shared accommodation in north London.

Having recently moved to the UK, I found it strange that the landlord or agency received the rental guarantee directly, while in other European countries, a blocked account is opened for the guarantee and both parties must sign to release the money. Furthermore, I was used to much smaller rents and much larger accommodation, not to mention shorter commutes and cheaper public transport – but that is a story for another day.

It all started with a simple request, I wanted to pay my rent by direct debit and needed the landlord’s bank details so I sent a letter requesting his information. Next thing I know I get a message from the landlord, via my housemate Vicky, that he wanted me out of the house, no explanation. However, from the general gist of the message I gathered that the landlord had a few screws loose.

Vicky worked nights, and I worked during the day, in other words, I was mainly alone at night. The loony landlord upped the ante and started turning up in the evening after Vicky had left for work. He would pound and kick on the front door, screaming insults through the letterbox, and threatening to kill me. I did what any sensible person would do; I would call the Police, who luckily for me could hear the screaming in the background. As soon as they would turn up, the landlord would slink back into the night, only to reappear as soon as the Police left. This went on into the wee hours of the morning, every time the Police would come back until the landlord would get bored or tired and leave. He kept up his antics most nights for the next couple of weeks.

What I couldn’t wrap my mind around was why such a simple request would send someone into such a rage. So I did some digging and what I discovered explained a lot. It appeared that the house I was renting was a council property in the name of the landlord’s father, who incidentally had died five years ago. It didn’t stop there, as far as I could tell loony tunes was still receiving his father’s pensions and other benefits. My imagination went into overdrive visualising the father’s body rolled up in a carpet and stashed in the attic. First, there had been the uninvited bed guest and now a potential body in the attic, not to mention the lunatic landlord set on killing me. This whole thing was starting to resemble a script from a bad horror movie.

Then the inevitable happened, I had to work late and by the time I got to my tube stop Vicky had already left for work. Call it female intuition but I had a bad feeling that the landlord would be waiting for me. So I did what any smart woman would do and called a cab. Thankfully, my cabby was a strapping young man from Glasgow. I felt like the damsel in distress in one of those old black and white movies and this irritated me, as I was not in control of the situation, read into it what you want.

So, there I was, that cold November evening, telling a complete stranger about my bizarre landlord problems and that I strongly suspected he would be waiting for me. Luckily for me, the Glaswegian cabby proposed to stick around and ensure that I got safely inside the house, which did make me feel a bit better. Now all that was between me and the front door was a dark path lined with tall hedges. I felt slightly apprehensive as I got out of the cab and made my way up the ominously dark path.

The path had never seemed so long and just as I reached the end of the hedges, a large dark form emerged from behind the last hedge, dressed all in black, arms outstretched and screaming. My first instinct was to take a step back, then realising it was my personal loony tune, instinct kicked in and I took a step forward, finger pointing, screaming my own verbal abuse. In the background, I could hear my cabby getting out of his car and coming up the path behind me.

The landlord looked shocked that someone so small could turn into such a ball of fearless furry, and more than a little miffed that it was a woman doing the abusing, so to speak. To say that the landlord was foaming at the mouth would be a total exaggeration but he did rather remind me of a rabid pit bull, no offence to the pit bulls around the world. Even my strapping cabby decided not to tangle with the wild beast. Instead, he drove me to the nearest police station.

The police were very understanding and helpful, even offered me the proverbial cup of milky breakfast tea. Unfortunately, as I was sub-letting, the Police couldn’t accompany me back to the house. They did suggest that I return to the house during the day with some friends to collect my personal effects. However, when it came to the murder threats they took them very seriously and the cabby had been nice enough to make a statement.

Once they looked into the landlord they discovered a ream of domestic call-outs to the landlord’s house, but his wife would never file charges, probably too scared. The next day the Police sent a female officer around to question him, a man not gifted in the brain department. He kept referring to me as the B***h and when the officer pushed him further he called her something derogatory, berated the officer’s mother and then, true to form he threatens to kill the police officer. Obviously, it didn’t end well for the landlord!