For better or worse, people define
themselves by what they have and what they do.
People have nice cars, or a motorbike,
around which everything else revolves.
Some people are mothers and that’s how they
identify themselves. Look at Facebook. There are so many women who are no
longer themselves. Their profile picture is either their child, or them and
their child. I find this intriguing, but I digress.
A lot of people live, breath and eat with
the sole purpose of buying a house, then once they have it, they live, breath
and eat with the sole purpose or paying the house off. I think this is a bit of
an empty life, but “to each his own”, as some old person once said.
The house I have lived in for the last
three years is in a really nice spot, but it leaves a fair bit to be desired
regarding upkeep. In short, the landlord is a tight-arse.
When my tenants ask for something to be
fixed, it gets fixed. I’ve never said no. My landlord let our place be let out
with a front door that wouldn’t close. Luckily I inherited a little
practicality from dad and was able to fix the door, but this was just an
indication of the strained relationship we’d have with the landlord throughout
our tenancy.
The landlord served a Notice to Vacate
recently (in the same week I was made redundant – another story entirely) which
requires us to leave the property by mid-January! Merry Christmas pregnant
couple! He clearly had spared no thought for our situation, but again, this was
not out of character.
So we set about house hunting. We quickly
found a much better house, in the same street, for the same price.
Understandably we were pretty happy. Imagine our absolute delight when we were
informed that the landlord is getting a gang of tradespeople in to do maintenance,
repairs and cleaning, in preparation for our tenancy.
This is how things should be. My baby will
come home to a clean, freshly painted house with new carpets! Perfect!
Now, a final word on respect. My street is a nice street all-in-all. One of
the things that makes it nice are the pubs. There are two within two hundred
metres and one on a side street, plus a couple of restaurants. This means our
street serves as access for foot traffic. For some reason someone, or a few
people, get a bit of a thrill out of kicking or bashing car mirrors in ours and
adjoining streets. I don’t understand! I’m glad I haven’t caught them in the
act, as it makes me so angry I have to stay out of the house for a while. I
think I could get into trouble or killed, depending on how many and how big the
mother-f%#@ers are.
I’m not sure if it’s comforting that I am
not the only one who has had this happen, or whether it just illustrates a real
lack of respect.
What is the world coming to? (as another
old pessimistic person once said)
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