Wednesday

Luke-the-landlord came round unexpectedly today. I was just hanging a "pair" of socks over the radiator, and happened to be looking out the window, and he waved at me. I squinted down at him, and waved back. He seemed to be expecting entry to the house, so I hurtled down the stairs and let him in, discovering afterwards who he was. Given that South Belfast has just had an armed robbery perhaps I should start wearing my glasses on a more regular basis (as opposed to when I don't know where I'm going).

Anyway, he asked me how the bank thing was going, which produced a diatribe on the UK banking system, and then we took a walk around the house. I gingerly pointed out the washing machine, but as he leapt in with "I don't know anything about them" before I could say what had happened, maybe he doesn't know you're not supposed to attack them with alcohol and Swiss Army knives... I also pointed out the leaking taps, tiny refrigerator, oversize child's bed in my room, missing curtains (Lara has taken one), broken board in the toilet... at which stage he started looking at his watch in a restive fashion. We did measure my bed though, and it's apparently not even 4'6", which explains why my sheets and duvet are dragging on the floor. I mentioned this, and he said that if they were new I could take them back. I replied along the lines of I was rather hoping that he was going to buy a bigger one, so we could put mine in the other room. This made sense to him, so now I need to find someone for the small room.

As he was leaving he said that if we were all going out of the house we should put the second lock on because the house has been broken into through the first lock. The middle one has a flippy cover thing over it which is a nuisance to use, and takes a huge brass key. (The bottom lock is tied up with Belfast's equivalent of number 8 wire and should never be put on.) When Lara came home we tried it with her keys - from the outside in the cold, when we could have done it from the inside, in the warmth. We may have been holding pint glasses of cab sauv - as soon as I get a bank card I'm buying a decent set of wine glasses...