Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Landlord annoyances.

Just been asked pointedly if I know where the bags for the recycling bin are (er, yes, because I was the one who brought them up from outside). Because I put stuff in the recycling bin when there wasn't a bag in there. Except the lid was on it, and there was other stuff in there, but clearly it's my fault his guest disrupted his system.

And then he asked me if I enjoyed the meal the other night. Blank face ensues. Oh, you mean the leftovers? The spoonful of bits of burnt garlic and the fillet of miscellaneous, very deceased fish (I saw the Morrisson's Value packet, so don't pretend you know) no wider than my thumb and about as long, so basically a single fish finger sans breadcrumbs. That one? The one I already thanked you for? And which was conspicuously not a sumptuous repast? Although what you left for the other flatmate apparently was? I have got the right one, haven't I?

Well, if we're doing by-the-ways, did you see I'd added those pictures [you forced me into taking*]? Yes, those. Oh, I see, now you suddenly lose interest in talking to me. You "don't mind". What does that even mean in this context? You treat me as a free event photographer, and can't even thank me for that? You've suggested I'm being paid in hospitality, in my own home [which I pay you, profitably, for], often with things I provide, and yet at every stage I get half the amount you dole out to anyone else, the charred tag-ends, because I'm just make-weight, making up the numbers, just there to document from the outside and keep quiet? What, you think equality would distract me from the pro-bono work? You expect me to bugger off entirely for half the day when it's one of the many gatherings you throw at which you don't need my services, make comments about the way I never have anyone round, yet when I do you decide that now is a really great time to need help to set the mousetraps, break bits of the kitchen to show how badly made it is, turn the oven off to save energy and scour that baking dish (by the way, it was non-stick and it's still not clean)? That or come in and sit on people.

* Yes, I know they're not very good, but you expect perfect rendition in candlelight without anything so disruptive as a flash, of people who treat me with patronising disdain and so who generally don't display their best side in front of my camera, and you sulk when the edited results aren't on Facebook by the time you're going to bed?

Well, screw you**. Except it's probably your expectation that I would that's made you like this.

** Except I do need somewhere to live, and the other guy's nice, and house-hunting is hell even when you have proof of a fixed and significant income.

Ho hum.

Anyhoo,

Et maintenant mon, euh, landlord et sa nièce est dans la cuisine. Ils parlent en français avec beaucoup des rires. J'entre. Il y a silence. Il y a une remarque. Il y a des rires. Mais je la comprends. Je n'aime pas mon landlord.

If you're going to talk about someone behind their back in front of them in a foreign language do try to pick one they've never learnt, however badly. You managed it perfectly well with the stray Italians you picked in the street and then let sprawl for days.

Except that's not such a good thing. Even with the other flatmate there's a sudden silence aborting the laughter when they hear my door or the stairs creak, as both suddenly remember they have things to do.

The only good thing about to paranoia is when it is.

Anyhoo,

Seriously?

According to this the maximum rent for where I live is £85 a week. Trundle over to Gumtree. Stick in "Max £85 pw", tick "Borough Where I Live", await expectantly.

Apparently I can get a half-day share of a photography studio, some ambiguously described desk-space, a self-storage unit or parking space. There is one bedroom listed*, in which a shared bed is mentioned, along with other requests.

Widening the net a little and I can find somewhere on at £83 pw, in... oh wait, that's over the border in the next LHA rate area, which doesn't even pay £85 pw.

Who the hell came up with this? Apparently someone who concludes that Kennin'tun is Cla'am is Ca'fo'd.

* Oh, so it turns out I was in the wrong section. But even so, my rent, which is cheap even for a not-wholly salubrious area (don't worry, I've never shopped in that place round the corner where those people got shot, and I wouldn't be seen dead in KFC [hopefully]), is still above what I am entitled to (unless I stick a camp stove in the corner, above a bucket, in which case I can get £100 more).

Checking the proper section and it's single rooms in places (where?) famous from the news, with storage over the bed, where to open the window you'd have to have half-stand and half-kneel on the bed because there's only room for one leg down there, oh, and the edge of the door frame is in shot, possibly to help block those dark fractal patterns on the wall. And this too is over the housing-rate border.

All of which probably is in response to having some guy, while swearing at me and threatening to hit me at the market yesterday (don't ya just love the general public?), call me a "little rich kid".

And then my mother, while talking about making use of the free travelcard that comes with the tickets to beach volleyball, on the subject of over-travelled-tiredness-induced waning attention, happened to mention that falling asleep was possible because they're not all women playing. And then she remembered.

Yep, today was the day my mother forgot.

I would have protested that it's about the gamesmanship and I'm not like that, but there is the whole watching rugby not football because of the thighs thing and I was at the time envisaging Top Gun-esque scenes.

The betting that they play music over the PA? And that that music is Loggins? I'm going for totes.

After chasing rainbows sunsets one of life's little joys: playing with the boys.

Anyhoo,

Passing schoolboy on the topic of my jumper, unbidden: That makes you look gay.

I didn't have time to point out that if he'd been a minute earlier he would have just seen me kissing a man, which I think is more likely than knitted material to make me look gay. I mean, as indicators go homosexual PDAs probably beat clothing from Gap (I thought it was Uniqlo, but that's the moth-eaten one. Now unnecessarily trying to divine respective gaiety quotients [are we counting staff?] and unsurprisingly failing).

Anyhoo,

I wander'd thinking silent memories
a thousand beautiful mirror s cloud ed

This thought brought to you by the available words of Londondan's fridge poetry. I went to watch a film at his and somehow failed to do so, instead helpfully pointing that Corfu is not in the Cyclades and it's not even in the Aegean (there was holiday bookage going on [and probably still ongoing] and an errant database entry. Well, Something Ioannis and Ioannis Something are quite similar in the way that Ottery St Mary is to St Mary Mead).

Anyhoo,