Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Cheaper than Merthyr Tydfil!



Tuesday 20 January 2015

0 degrees

Up and down town early to sort out insurance on rental unit.  Transpires that our town office is closed Monday and Tuesday of each week.  Great.  Waited outside rental unit.  Very cold. Text arrived to say that the lady guest was having trouble 'coming round';  Wondered if man had given in a completely natural urge to knock her out.  Apparently not.  Could I come back in half an hour.  Of course, I have sod all else to do.

Go into the lovely coffee shop and have to insist that I do not want to join in the Tuesday morning cultural exchange group.  People who speak bad French converse with people who speak bad English.  One of my sellers is there and is delighted and promptly uses me as breathing dictionary.  I don't know the word for bed springs.  It is ressort.  So I learn something too.  A French lady is running through a list of English words which came up in last week's conversation, and which she is having trouble pronouncing.   Heaven, hell, urges, commitment, self worth.  Feel I should have been here last week as this one they are discussing wonky springs and bad nights' sleep.

Ten thirty comes around I go to the front door of rental unit building.  No one there.  I go up the 42 stairs and knock on the door.  No reply.  I go back down the 42 stairs and ring them. Man picks up phone and says they are in the flat and he thought he had just heard someone knocking.  I go back up 42 stairs and man is ready and woman is still farting about.  She farts about until 10.50.  I am fuming.  She finally emerges and says hello! brightly and doesnt apologise.  I so deplore bad manners.  

Get them out and into the car and we have to go and see the second house first because we are now running so late.   Man takes pictures of everything.  Woman talks incessantly and trips over steps, carpets, mats, table legs and walls.  We leave and then go to the next house which is their favourite.

They absolutely love this.  The woman, who is parsimonious to put it mildly, is thrilled with the price.  You couldn't buy at that price - even in Merthyr! She exclaims.  She asks if the 1920's wooden floors are real and mistakes a wooden infil in a bedroom fireplace for a rug. I need coffee or I am going to start shrieking.  Go back to lovely coffee shop and the class have gone and woman goes to the loo and the man and I enjoy the silence.  The woman comes back and attempts to find a postcard for a price she is willing to pay.  I take the opportunity to talk the man through the buying process.  

We leave the café and I point out the local restaurants.  They decide to go back and have a ham sandwich with the lovely bleached white bread she had found in the supermarket yesterday.  Called, disparagingly, industrial bread by the locals.

I go back and eat a banana and a pear and head for the dentist.  My dentist is so beautiful and has the most wonderful teeth.  The prognosis is not good - my crown is very fragile and can't be repaired.and I have an infection above a fortunately devitalised tooth on the other side.  900 euro quote.  Thank heavens for 30% state contribution plus top up health insurance.  Have a McChicken sandwich as feel quite faint.

Back home.  The man rings twice to say he is lost and can't find the flat.   Our town only has four main streets.  Are they fuck wits enquires OH?  I tell him about quote from dentist and he suggests I get dentures.  I don't think he was joking either.

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