I finally finished decorating and cleaning the basement room this week. The new mattress was delivered Friday and the bed dressed in all brand-new bedding. The finishing touches are all done – an attractive art poster in the stairwell, a peg rack for the lodger to hang coats and bags on, and a new bedside lamp. The room is all ready for occupation, so I edited and reactivated the ad Saturday morning. Now, we wait, and see what response we get.

When I was on the website I had a quick look through the list of people looking for rooms locally and it seemed to me that the list was shorter than usual – but this is only people who have registered with the website. A lot of people simply use it to search for rooms and they do not want potential landlords bombarding them with details of their rooms, so there could be many more people out there looking for a beautiful double room right in the heart of town.

Of those that were looking, one or two seemed promising, so I sent them the link to my ad. There were a couple of people who initially seemed okay, but on closer inspection were either smokers (hard no from me), had pets or children they wanted to bring along (also a no), or wanted more than I’m offering – private bathroom, balcony, own parking space – for £500 a month all in, good luck with that! But then this is what’s happened before, I’ve seen someone who looks okay, but they want the moon all wrapped up with a pretty bow on top, so I don’t bother contacting them and then they contact me anyway, so we’ll have to wait and see.

It made me think back to all those people who have trooped through my home looking to maybe live in it that I, for one reason or another, have said no to. Way back in the early days, a young man contacted me about the room because his sister had just moved back to the area and was looking for somewhere. We had a lovely chat on the phone, and he was so amiable and jolly that I almost offered his sister the room on the spot.

Almost, but not quite – luckily.

It was arranged they would come around at the weekend to view it but as soon as I opened the door to them, I knew it was a no. Despite him assuring me she wasn’t a smoker, she absolutely reeked of cigarettes! Why do people do this? The ad states quite clearly, no smokers, yet still they try. I think smokers genuinely have no clue how much they stink to non-smokers. Don’t try to deny it mate, I could smell you through the door.

Anyway, not only that but she was so old! And I don’t mean in years because she might have been younger than me in that respect, no, I mean in attitude and outlook. From the greying hair in a bun, down to the sensible shoes, the pursed disapproving mouth and the deep frown lines on her brow and around her mouth, I knew this was someone who would be no fun to share with. She looked around the place and nodded in approval.

Yes, she stated in a heavy German accent – apparently that’s where she’d been living for twenty years – This will suit me very nicely, I’ll take it!

As if it was her choice. I cleared my throat.

Umm, there is the small matter of the fact I quite clearly stated in the ad no smokers, your brother assured me you weren’t a smoker, and yet I can smell cigarettes on you. So…

She fixed me with a baleful glare.

I promise you, I will always smoke in the garden, so you will never smell cigarettes in the house.

No, I won’t, I thought, because you are never coming in again!

That’s another thing with smokers, they sometimes assume that although the ad states No Smokers, what it really means is No Smoking in the house. Nope. I mean NO SMOKERS, as in you! You smell. If you smoke then it permeates your clothes, your hair, your skin. Even if you never light up in the house, you’ll still make it stink with your own odour.

Also, if I’m not here, and it’s freezing cold and pouring with rain are you seriously going to go out into the garden to smoke? No, of course you’re not, you’re going to sneakily smoke in the room and hope I never find out. And that will make the room stink, will discolour the ceiling, and is also a fire risk. So, sorry guys, but no smokers, means you!

I wonder how many will try and sneak under the wire this time!

There’s also the no pets’ clause. As you know, I love animals, but I don’t particularly want other peoples pets in the house. Possibly a goldfish in a small bowl might be acceptable but other than that, no. Again, it states clearly in the ad no pets, but either people can’t read or assume that it must only apply to other people, because nobody in their right minds could possibly object to their little furry, feathered, scaled buddy.

There was the girl who wanted to bring a cageful of rats. No. The one who had a pet python – absolutely not! Any number of people who wanted to bring cats with them. It wouldn’t be fair on my poor little cat who is terrified of other felines, and also, I don’t know how clean and housetrained other people’s cats might be. Really don’t want to find the furniture shredded, hairballs everywhere, and cat wee on the carpet.

One of the funniest was the woman who telephoned me – back in the days when I had to advertise in the local paper and put my phone number down for method of contact. The conversation went something like this.

HER: I just wanted to check that there would always be someone in the house during the day?

ME:  Umm, not really, why?

HER: Well, I have to go to work, and my little dog will need letting out three times a day.

ME:  Your dog, but…

HER: Yes, it’s absolutely essential this is done otherwise he will pee in the house.

ME:  But the ad clearly states no pets.

HER: Yes, I know, but he’s a dog!

ME:  …….

HER: …….

ME:  I’m really sorry, but no pets, means, no pets. Goodbye.

And then there’s the no couples’ clause. It’s not a huge house. There is only one bathroom to be shared between us and the lodger. An extra person would put an unbearable strain on the facilities. Although I don’t mind the odd stayover of a regular partner or friend, I’m firm on the no couples living here permanently. Once or twice in the past, I’ve had lodgers who have been nice, respectful, and considerate people – until they got serious about someone – and then they changed into selfish, inconsiderate sods who couldn’t understand why I didn’t love this person as much as they did and not want them in my house ALL THE TIME.

I got sick of never being able to use the bathroom because the girlfriend was having yet another epic shower. Of her clothes always being in the washing machine. Of not being able to cook our dinner because the lodger is making a special candlelit meal for her honey bunny, oh, and if I could keep out of the way all evening that would be wonderful! Well, seeing as I do need to get to the bathroom and the kitchen, that’s not really possible.

No matter how nice the couple are, nor how friendly, the dynamics of the house shift when there’s a couple in residence, in that their needs and wants seem to outweigh the needs and wishes of the single person – me! Many is the time I’d find myself apologising for going through to use my own kitchen. Which is not really on. There is also the financial consideration – a couple use twice the utilities for the same rent as a single person is paying.

But still whenever I advertise the room, I am inundated with requests from couples. The best one I ever had occurred a few years ago when there was a surfeit of people looking for rooms, and not enough lodgings to go around, so I basically had my pick of lodgers. This couple saw my ad and sent me an e-mail. Now, you tell me why I didn’t want them.

Both Polish, both only 19, both unemployed, she was five months pregnant so in four months time there was going to be a new-born squeezed into a room intended for sole occupancy. Imagine that! A baby screaming the place down. The washing machine constantly in use. Nappies everywhere. The ripe smell of baby sick and poo. A kitchen cluttered with all the detritus that goes with a baby.

It gets better. At the time I was only charging £350 per month which was a fair and reasonable rate for everything you got with the room. But they didn’t consider this a fair amount, and told me so, in no uncertain terms. You are being a greedy capitalist, they informed me. We will pay you £190 a month and you should consider that plenty. £190 a month? For rent, rates, utilities, insurance, TV licence and unlimited broadband, plus all your cleaning products. What planet are you living on? Furious, I had enormous fun composing a blistering email, then deleted it and instead sent them one merely stating that the rent was £350, the room was for sole occupancy, I did not wish to have a baby living in my home, and if they could find somewhere to rent for only £190 a month, then please let me know where it is and I will move in there myself!

They did not reply, and I often wonder what happened to them.

Then there have been no end of creepy guys that made me very uncomfortable and I certainly didn’t want them anywhere near me, let alone my young daughter. A guy who had such bad body odour that my eyes were watering, and the house reeked of him for hours afterwards. Any number of young Asian men who stunk of stale curry – not how I want my house to smell. A very odd nurse who asked if she could have a fridge and hotplate in her room so she could cook and eat all her meals in it, so she could absolutely minimise the contact she had with us as she liked to be left alone. Oka-a-ay. Not planning on pushing my company on the lodger, but living in close quarters you need someone you can exchange pleasantries with when you bump into them in the kitchen, and as for cooking in the basement, umm, no!

There was a rather desperate middle-aged man who wanted the room so badly he bombarded me with texts and emails for a whole week, even sending me pictures of himself in various poses. Umm, please stop doing that or I will call the police!

There have been people who thought it was up to them whether they got the room or not. Afraid not, sunshine, this is our home and if we are made to feel uncomfortable by you, or we don’t believe we will get along with you, then I’ll run the ad for another week rather than settle for someone who simply isn’t right.

Am I being too fussy?

Well, I look at it this way. If we weren’t living in the house, if this was a rental property that wasn’t also our home, then other than a no smoking clause and higher damages deposit to cover any possible pet destruction, I wouldn’t be so picky about a lodger.

But this is our home. This is where we live and sleep. This is where my teenage daughter is left alone for hours on end. I must be able to trust the lodger. I have her safety at stake, and that of myself. We also have to like the person, share a few common interests, and have the same levels of cleanliness. At the end of the day, I am this person’s landlady. I am not their servant or their slave, and I’m certainly not their mum. It is not my job to pick up after them, clean up after them, or have to scrub the toilet after them, or pick their hairs out of the bath.

I’ve been taking in lodgers for sixteen years now, and although in the beginning I found it awkward discussing matters such as rent, cleaning schedules, and toilet habits, now I get it all said in interview. One lodger commented how impressed they were by my business-like, matter of fact approach. This is the rent. This is what you get for it. This is what I expect from you. These are the basic rules of the house. Be clean. Tidy up after yourself. Don’t take anyone else’s bathroom time. Make sure you secure the front door every time you come in or go out. No loud noise after midnight. Wake me up and I’ll kill you, and, if you’re a bloke put the bloody loo seat down. Because although you may not always feel like sitting down, we never feel like standing up!

I think it pays to get all these matters out in the open and stated clearly right from the word go, then if someone has any issues with the rules, they can look for somewhere else to live.

So, the room is ready, the advert has been tweaked and reactivated, so now we wait. I have stated in the ad that the room has been empty for over a month and during that time it has been thoroughly cleaned and redecorated. That the mattress, pillows, and duvet are all brand new, as is all the bedding. I think if I were looking to rent a room in someone else’s house during a global pandemic then I would be reassured by this. I am also going to insist that masks be worn during initial interviews and I have placed a bottle of hand sanitiser by the front door, because it pays to be careful.

Speaking of masks, rules have now changed, and I and my work colleagues have to wear our masks for the whole time we are at work unless we are in the toilet or are alone in the canteen. Although we had to wear them before, because we work in a large shop and our desks are over six foot apart, so long as we abided by social distancing we could take our masks off when there were no customers in the shop. Now, there is no respite at all apart from a scant twenty-minute lunch break. It’s horrible. I hate having to wear a mask all day. I do it because I have to, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Leaving the shop at night, that mask is ripped off as I’m walking out the door, yet it takes over an hour for the feeling of it to leave my face.

I wish we knew what was going to happen. I have a feeling we’ll be back into some sort of lockdown soon, and I’ve begun adding a few extra items onto each week’s shop – not stockpiling, just sensibly stocking up on essential goods.

The mad rush of sales seems to have died down at work, and I suspect it’s because everyone is uncertain of what the future might hold. If we go back into lockdown, will the furlough be as generous? Will there even be a furlough, or will we all be thrown under the bus? Will food prices go up again? We’re coming into winter so energy bills will be higher. Will businesses survive another lockdown, or will there be a depression with many losing their jobs? All these concerns I think are making people think twice about spending that holiday money sitting in their accounts. Better to keep it there – just in case.

This downturn in the economy is hitting close to home as well. Although the restaurant where Miss F works part-time has reopened and she has done the odd shift, usually they contact her at the last minute to tell her there simply haven’t been the bookings, so they don’t need her. She was the last to be hired, is on a zero hour’s contract, and lives the furthest away – so it’s always her they cancel first. Which is fair enough. Most of her colleagues are older and rely on their wages, whereas they know she still lives at home and is supported by me. Yes, she’s saving the money for driving lessons and university next year, and it’s nice to have her own income to buy what she wants. But she doesn’t need her wages to live on.

Both her evening shift on Friday and her lunchtime shift on Saturday were cancelled, but to be honest, we were a little relieved about this. It’s blowing a gale here and the country roads I have to take to reach the restaurant aren’t pleasant in this kind of weather.

My shifts have also all been changed this month, and after over a year of working Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, they have been mixed up all over the place. But at least that means I have today and Monday off, which is nice. As I’m now caught up with the basement and all my other household chores, I am going to try and dedicate both those days to some pretty intensive writing. As I explained last week, time is running out and if I wish to publish book eleven this year, I seriously need to get a wiggle on.

Anyway, that’s you up to date with the week’s events and I look forward to chatting with your again next Sunday. You never know, I may have a new lodger by then, so fingers crossed.

Take care.

Julia Blake

As you will have realised, I didn’t write a blog last week – what with it being launch week for The Book of Eve, and because of all the problems I had with Amazon glitching out for the whole of the launch weekend so that no one in America could find my book – I simply ran out of time and energy. I apologise for this.

This week, I will try to complete my story of all the lodgers I have had over the years. We had reached March 2013, Creepy Liver Guy had thankfully moved out and I had reactivated the add for the room, hoping for more choice this time.

The add went live on the Saturday morning, by the afternoon there were at least twenty applicants, some of which looked possible contenders. I began to make appointments and things were looking good. A few days later, I received a request to come and view the room from a young Canadian teacher. He even sent me a photo with his application – a very smiley guy wearing a bobble hat. I liked him already.

He came to view the room a couple of days later and the moment I opened the front door, I knew he was the one. You get a feel for it, an instinct that you are going to be able to co-exist with this person just fine. I showed him the room. Now, being a basement room, the ceiling is not the highest and he was a very tall young man, so as he was walking around the top of his bobble hat was brushing against it.

We went into the kitchen to chat, and he asked me what I thought of a certain character in Dr Who, and that was it really. He did ask if we had Sky. Now, at the time we didn’t, but I had been thinking about getting it, and as he was explaining it was because he was a huge Game of Thrones fan, I decided that I would see about getting it as soon as possible.

A week later, Mr B moved in. I remember it was a shocking day weather-wise, snow was belting down and all the in and out tracked grimy slush all over the carpet – but it couldn’t be helped.

Right from the word go, I got on incredibly well with Mr B. An awkward and gangly young man, he was shy and diffident, but our shared love of sci-fi, fantasy, and documentaries soon made us fast friends.

He was a Maths and English teacher over here for two years because there was a real lack of work for teachers in Canada at the time. He was polite and sweet, liked tea, and baked muffins and cakes, knitted me a coffee pot warmer, and was just a nice person to live with.

Most evenings he would watch TV with us. He introduced me to Game of Thrones, which I loved. I introduced him to the wonderful historian Lucy Worsley and we avidly watched everything she did on BBC4. We also enjoyed watching Only Connect – the hardest quiz on British TV – and would feel ridiculously smug if we managed to get a single question right.

And then of course, there was Dr Who. At the time we were passionate about that show in my house. We never missed an episode, and we watched old episodes whenever we could find them. In 2013, the show was at the peak of its popularity and as it was its fiftieth anniversary, the BBC pushed the boat out with many anniversary features, including a special film that was going to be shown at the cinema – so of course, we all went.

As Christmas approached, I discovered Mr B had never been to a Pantomime. In fact, had never even heard of that staunch British festive tradition. We bought tickets for the three of us to go and beforehand I tried to prepare him for what was in store.

ME:  Right, it’s a fun show for all the family usually based on a traditional fairy tale or story. This year it’s Aladdin, but it could be Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Dick Whittington, Mother Goose, anything like that.

HIM: Okay, I see.

ME:  Hold on, I’m easing you in gently here. There are lots of songs and lots of dancing. There may be explosions on stage, and sweets – or possibly slime – will be randomly hurled at the audience.

HIM: Right.

ME:  There will be a character who talks to the audience, and will usually ask them to warn him every time the monster/bear/beast of some kind comes onto the stage by shouting IT’S BEHIND YOU as loudly as they can. He will then creep slowly round and the monster will creep around him at the same time – thus necessitating frequent screaming of IT’S BEHIND YOU.

HIM: I see.

ME:  You probably don’t, but you will.

HIM: ??

ME:  There will be an over the top villain, and every time they appear on the stage, the audience has to boo and hiss as loudly as possible.

HIM: Boo and hiss?! At the actor?!

ME:  Trust me, he’ll be very upset if you don’t.

HIM: Oka-a-ay.

ME:  Halfway through the show, they will stop and call out the names of children in the audience who have birthdays. More sweets will be thrown, and happy birthday will be sung.

HIM: Ahh, that’s nice.

ME:  They usually get a pair of kids up on stage at some point to lead the audience in a sing off against each other – this is because some big set change is happening behind the curtain.

HIM: A sing off?

ME:  That’s when one half of the audience have to sing a song as loudly as possible. Then the other half have to sing, and they judge who sang the loudest.

HIM: Does everyone have to sing?

ME:  YES! (eye him beadily) EVERYONE must sing. It is the law!

HIM: (Gulps) Okay. Does the side that sings the loudest win anything?

ME:  Glory – and maybe more sweets thrown at them, or possibly slime. Although the kids on stage get given gift bags.

HIM: Okay.

ME:  Oh, and the principal boy – so in this case Aladdin, will be played by a woman.

HIM: Why?

ME:  He just is!

HIM: I see.

ME:  And there will always be an elderly female character – in Aladdin it will be Widow Twanky, his mother – but it could be Snow’s White’s elderly nurse, the cook in Dick Whittington, someone like that, in Cinderella there are two such characters, the Ugly Sisters. Anyway, this is a comedic character played by a man to comic effect. He will wear ridiculous clothes, including huge comedy breasts, garish make-up, big funny bloomers that will be flashed to the audience at every opportunity, and will make numerous saucy and inuendo laden jokes and comments. This is the Pantomime Dame and they are crucial to the show.

HIM: But why…?

ME:  Don’t ask. It’s traditional. So, that’s pantomime.

HIM: …..

ME:  …..

HIM: And this is what passes for entertainment in this country?

ME:  Trust me. You’ll love it.

And he did! Right from the clash of the first cymbal as the curtains drew back and dozens of brightly dressed characters pranced onto the stage and tried to convince us that we were in old Peking, right through to the triumphant wedding scene finale where Aladdin marries his Princess Jasmin, he loved every single funny moment of it.

He laughed, he clapped, he caught sweets, he joined in with the singing and produced a very impressive baritone voice from somewhere within his skinny frame, he yelled IT’S BEHIND YOU with the rest of us, and booed and hissed every time the evil wizard slithered on stage. It was a brilliant evening.

Any British readers will probably now be experiencing a moment of nostalgia for all the pantomimes they were taken to in the past. Traditionally held only at Christmas, I always used to take Miss F at the beginning of December. It kicked off the festive season nicely, and got me in the right mindset that yes, Christmas was coming. Sadly, with the current situation, pantomimes will not be happening this year.

To all my non-UK readers, if ever you are in Britain and you get the chance to go to a pantomime, go! The bigger productions in the larger cities are very swish and are usually packed with stars from TV. But the shows that are put on in the smaller towns and even villages are not without their charm. In fact, I’ve always found that in a smaller theatre it’s more intimate. The characters come down from the stage and mingle and interact with the audience much more than in a massive theatre seating thousands. Plus, in a smaller theatre, you’re more likely to catch some of those sweets I told you about!

Mr B lived with us for about eighteen months, and I grew very fond of him. In fact, we are still in touch on social media, sometimes chat through messenger, and the odd parcel and card occasionally wings its way over the Atlantic at Christmas time.

One very funny thing that happened during his stay though, involved Miss F. She was ten when he moved in and was at that age of no filter and blurting out whatever was in her head. Anyway, one evening we were sitting there watching TV together with Mr B, when out of nowhere, Miss F turns to me and asks.

MISS F: Mummy, what’s a wanker?

I nearly spat out my drink. I felt my eyes go huge as I stared at my innocent child.

ME:       Umm, where did you hear that word, darling?

MISS F: Oh, some of the boys at school were shouting it at each other in the playground. I’ve never heard of it before, so I wondered what it meant.

ME:        Umm, oka-a-ay.

Out of the corner of my eye I could just see Mr B’s knees, they were shaking and I’m sure I heard a snort of barely suppressed laughter coming from his corner. Carefully picking my words, I said.

ME:       I’ll explain it to you later, when you go up to bed.

So, we finished watching the programme and then I took her upstairs, tucked her up in bed, sat down and told her exactly what that word meant. She was silent for a while thinking about it, then she went bright red all over.

MISS F: I said that word in front of Mr B.

ME:      Yes, you did. (I cheerfully agreed) Maybe in future, instead of blurting things out in front of other people, you’ll ask me when we’re alone.

And from that day on, she always did!

We were very sad when Mr B left, but he was returning to Canada and that is the way of lodgers – just when you manage to housebreak one, they leave, and you have to start all over again. So, up went the add again, and this time we went with a sweet young girl called Miss E.

She was a wedding dress seamstress at a studio in town, she was polite and quiet and loved Disney. She went home to her parents every Friday and didn’t come back until Sunday evening. She was perfect. She stayed until mid-July and then suddenly, out of the blue, announced she was leaving. Her best friend was moving to the area and had asked her to share a flat with her, so that was it, she was off.

It did leave me in a bit of a quandary though. Because I had assumed she was staying for at least a year – as she had told me she was on many occasions – I had actually arranged for Miss F and I to go away on a very rare holiday mid-August believing that Miss E would be still living with us. She was a very sensible and trustworthy person and I had no qualms about leaving her in charge of the house and the cat whilst we were gone.

That was less than a month away – it didn’t seem long enough to find a new lodger and establish that same level of trust to go away and leave them for a week alone in our house. But there was nothing I could do about it, other than activate the add again and hope.

We ran it for a week. We had a few viewings. I didn’t click with any of them. We ran it for another week. This second crop of potential lodgers were even worse. I neither liked nor felt I could trust any of them.

In despair on the third Saturday, I activated the add again. Less than thirty minutes later, I had a reply. A very cheery and personable sounding lady sent me a message.

Love the sound of the room. Please can I come and have a look?

Of course, when?

Now?

Oh, okay!

Quickly, I dashed about and tidied up. The room had been viewing ready for two weeks now, so it was fine. My phone rang, she was walking up the road, which house were we? So, I went outside and saw a shock of bright red hair walking up the street pushing a bike and beaming from ear to ear. She waved vigorously when she saw me, as if she’d known me all my life, and the grin grew broader.

And so, Miss S came into our lives.

Slightly older than me, this was no scatterbrain teenager who would be incapable of following basic security and safety protocols whilst in charge of the house, and as we chatted, I knew I’d found the right one. Two days later she moved in. A week later we went on holiday.

She lived with us for nine months, during which time I was introduced to the weird and wonderful world of totally organic, free range, vegan cooking. Some of it looked great, some, not so great. A haphazard and messy cook, she would take over the kitchen with abandon and create great piles of washing up. She never did learn how to stack a dishwasher properly, and I was always going to unload it only to find upturned bowls floating with some sort of veggie broth.

Then there was the time she dropped a large bag of turmeric in the kitchen and for weeks we were finding bright yellow stains in unexpected places.

But, on the whole, she was one of our more successful lodgers and I was genuinely sorry when she met someone and within a couple of months was moving in with him. I really did wish her well, and wanted her to be happy, but there was something about this man that didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was something about the eyes, maybe it was the way he was with her, maybe it was some sort of instinct, who knows.

So, Miss S moved out and we were once again looking for a lodger. The add was activated, and an American in his thirties moved in. He had separated from his wife and needed a safe and peaceful space to gather his thoughts and sort out his life. I felt sorry for him, and he seemed okay, but within three days of moving in I knew I had made a dreadful mistake.

Used to being the alpha male in his own home, he simply couldn’t adjust to the fact that living in shared accommodation with only one bathroom between three of us meant that strict morning bathroom slots had to be established and adhered to. He would go into the bathroom whenever he damn well pleased and take as long as he wanted, with no thought to us waiting outside. He made us late for school and work three times, before I sat him down and tried to drum it into his head that he had to stick to the slot he’d requested, that he couldn’t take our slots and hog the bathroom for almost an hour every morning!

He was incredibly untidy in the bathroom and the kitchen. Bristles and toothpaste all around the sink for me to clean up. All his washing up simply left on the draining board for me to put in the dishwasher because he “hadn’t had time before he went to work”! Well, guess what buddy, neither do I!

He was incapable of closing cupboards and drawers. Now, I only have a small kitchen, so if someone has left all the cupboards and drawers wide open it’s not only untidy to look at, but it reduces space in the kitchen drastically. I would walk into the kitchen after he’d been there and start kicking them shut. It was intensely annoying.

He would stink out the bathroom every day, and frequently left nasties in the toilet which I had to take a stick to, in order to try and get rid of it! Heaven only knows what he was eating to produce things of that size and density!

It just wasn’t working. I like to think I can get on with most people, and years of taking in lodgers has taught me to tolerate most behaviour. But he and I clashed personality wise right from the get-go.

I remember when I was trying again to get it through his selfish skull that he simply couldn’t steal my bathroom slot in the morning, because it was making Miss F late for school and me late for work. He looked at me, and said…

“If you would only open your heart to Jesus and let him live in there. You would be a much calmer and happier person. You seem such a stressed and even violent person to me.”

Seriously, if I’d had a gun, I would have shot him!

Eventually, things got so bad he left me note asking that I conduct any future contact with him as written correspondence. So, I wrote him a letter politely giving him one month to get the hell out of my house. He was gone by the end of the week.

So, the add was activated again. Things weren’t so desperate this time. My long-term boss had retired and made me redundant, so I’d received a small redundancy pay-out. Not a massive amount, but enough so we could take our time finding a lodger and be choosey this time.

But life has a funny way of turning. Within two days we had a lovely young teacher come to view the room. Mr V was personable, funny, and clicked with both Miss F and I straight away. Just one problem. It was April when he came to view the room, but he wouldn’t need it until the middle of August just before the new school year began.

Miss F and I discussed it. We really liked him, so we decided that we’d rather wait for him. I could just about afford to go rent free for a few months. It would be tight, but worth it to get just the right lodger. So, it was arranged. Mr V signed a contract and paid a deposit to secure the room that he would forfeit if he reneged on the deal.

A week went by, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the room lying empty, not producing any rent for us. Then I wondered if a short term let would be possible. I went onto the website and searched. Yes, short term lets were not only possible, but apparently very desirable for some people.

I reworded the add and reactivated it as a short term let for three months. Four hours later we had a new lodger!

Mr K was a businessman who was relocating to the area as he was taking over the local branch of the company he worked for. He would be moving into his own property, but it was going to take about three months to sort things out. He didn’t really want to live in a hotel – too impersonal and too expensive. What I was offering was perfect.

And he was perfect. I have seriously never before had a lodger who had such a low carbon footprint in the house. He was hardly ever here. He rose early – before even I was up – showered and was gone. He ate all of his meals out, didn’t come home until late in the evening, and was gone all weekend visiting his family in Essex.

Occasionally, when he got home from work, I’d make us a cup of tea and we’d chat. He was a nice guy, just worked way too hard, and didn’t seem to have much of a personal life. But, because I hadn’t expected to receive any rent money for that period, what he paid was extra and covered the cost of landscaping my garden.

Mid-August came around all too quickly. Mr K moved out on the Sunday morning, I cleaned the room although it barely needed it, and Mr V moved in on the Monday. Right from the word go he became like a member of the family. He was funny and obliging. He cleaned up after himself. Liked the same films and shows that we did, and lived with us for almost two years, before, of course, he met the love of his life and moved out.

Now, remember Miss S? The turmeric spilling lady who had moved out to live with the guy I had concerns about. Turns out I was spot on. He revealed his true colours soon after they moved in together, and that relationship quickly soured and poor Miss S was forced into renting rooms in not very nice houses. Anyway, we had remained friends and she had often popped round for a coffee or even a glass of wine. The last time she had visited, she had told me how unhappy she was in her current lodgings, so when Mr V handed in his notice I sent her a message inviting her for coffee and a “chat”.

Coincidentally, we had booked to go on holiday again assuming that Mr V would still be there to look after the house and feed the cat. But he moved out three weeks before our holiday date, so I was stuck with the same problem of finding a trustworthy lodger in a short space of time.

Yep, you’ve guessed it. Mr V moved out and Miss S moved back in. It was only going to be for eight or so months, I knew that from the start. She was going travelling the following year and would be leaving the UK for good. But that was fine, it bought me eight months and meant we could go on holiday with an easy mind that someone we trusted was in our home.

Eight months later, as arranged, Miss S moved out and we reactivated the add. Now, it had been over three years since I’d last looked for a lodger, and this time hardly anyone applied for the room. Eventually, we took on a young Romanian man who seemed okay. He told me he worked evenings, but as I told you about in my last blog – that turned out to be a lie.

In many ways, Mr D was an unsatisfactory lodger – we barely ever saw him, and he certainly made no attempt to become part of the family. But he always paid his rent on time, and perhaps it was nice to be separate from the lodger for a change.

And now he is gone. I am left with a basement room that needs airing out and redecorating. He has ruined the mattress and I have a strong suspicion that the insurance company are not going to clean or replace it. When the agent came to inspect the mattress, he was shocked at the sheer amount of stains there were and asked if I was sure that a mattress protector had been used? Well, I said yes, because two mattress protectors are provided with the room, but whether Mr D used them all the time or not is a mystery. The agent asked what the stains were and how old they were, but of course, I couldn’t answer those questions either.

He then went away to write his report and I have to wait a week or so for them to let me know whether they will clean it, or whether a new mattress will be coming out of Mr D’s damages deposit. Luckily, I get excellent staff discount, so it won’t cost him as much as it normally would.

The smell and feel of damp have gone from the room – two weeks of having the window open at every opportunity and having a dehumidifier on has certainly done the trick. All that is left for me to do is a deep clean, give the whole room a coat of paint, and await the decision about the mattress. Then the add will be reactivated, and the whole cycle will start all over again.

I wonder who we’ll get next.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. Take care of yourselves and I’ll catch up with you all next Sunday.

Julia Blake

As you will have realised, I didn’t write a blog last week – what with it being launch week for The Book of Eve, and because of all the problems I had with Amazon glitching out for the whole of the launch weekend so that no one in America could find my book – I simply ran out of time and energy. I apologise for this.

This week, I will try to complete my story of all the lodgers I have had over the years. We had reached March 2013, Creepy Liver Guy had thankfully moved out and I had reactivated the add for the room, hoping for more choice this time.

The add went live on the Saturday morning, by the afternoon there were at least twenty applicants, some of which looked possible contenders. I began to make appointments and things were looking good. A few days later, I received a request to come and view the room from a young Canadian teacher. He even sent me a photo with his application – a very smiley guy wearing a bobble hat. I liked him already.

He came to view the room a couple of days later and the moment I opened the front door, I knew he was the one. You get a feel for it, an instinct that you are going to be able to co-exist with this person just fine. I showed him the room. Now, being a basement room, the ceiling is not the highest and he was a very tall young man, so as he was walking around the top of his bobble hat was brushing against it.

We went into the kitchen to chat, and he asked me what I thought of a certain character in Dr Who, and that was it really. He did ask if we had Sky. Now, at the time we didn’t, but I had been thinking about getting it, and as he was explaining it was because he was a huge Game of Thrones fan, I decided that I would see about getting it as soon as possible.

A week later, Mr B moved in. I remember it was a shocking day weather-wise, snow was belting down and all the in and out tracked grimy slush all over the carpet – but it couldn’t be helped.

Right from the word go, I got on incredibly well with Mr B. An awkward and gangly young man, he was shy and diffident, but our shared love of sci-fi, fantasy, and documentaries soon made us fast friends.

He was a Maths and English teacher over here for two years because there was a real lack of work for teachers in Canada at the time. He was polite and sweet, liked tea, and baked muffins and cakes, knitted me a coffee pot warmer, and was just a nice person to live with.

Most evenings he would watch TV with us. He introduced me to Game of Thrones, which I loved. I introduced him to the wonderful historian Lucy Worsley and we avidly watched everything she did on BBC4. We also enjoyed watching Only Connect – the hardest quiz on British TV – and would feel ridiculously smug if we managed to get a single question right.

And then of course, there was Dr Who. At the time we were passionate about that show in my house. We never missed an episode, and we watched old episodes whenever we could find them. In 2013, the show was at the peak of its popularity and as it was its fiftieth anniversary, the BBC pushed the boat out with many anniversary features, including a special film that was going to be shown at the cinema – so of course, we all went.

As Christmas approached, I discovered Mr B had never been to a Pantomime. In fact, had never even heard of that staunch British festive tradition. We bought tickets for the three of us to go and beforehand I tried to prepare him for what was in store.

ME:  Right, it’s a fun show for all the family usually based on a traditional fairy tale or story. This year it’s Aladdin, but it could be Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Dick Whittington, Mother Goose, anything like that.

HIM: Okay, I see.

ME:  Hold on, I’m easing you in gently here. There are lots of songs and lots of dancing. There may be explosions on stage, and sweets – or possibly slime – will be randomly hurled at the audience.

HIM: Right.

ME:  There will be a character who talks to the audience, and will usually ask them to warn him every time the monster/bear/beast of some kind comes onto the stage by shouting IT’S BEHIND YOU as loudly as they can. He will then creep slowly round and the monster will creep around him at the same time – thus necessitating frequent screaming of IT’S BEHIND YOU.

HIM: I see.

ME:  You probably don’t, but you will.

HIM: ??

ME:  There will be an over the top villain, and every time they appear on the stage, the audience has to boo and hiss as loudly as possible.

HIM: Boo and hiss?! At the actor?!

ME:  Trust me, he’ll be very upset if you don’t.

HIM: Oka-a-ay.

ME:  Halfway through the show, they will stop and call out the names of children in the audience who have birthdays. More sweets will be thrown, and happy birthday will be sung.

HIM: Ahh, that’s nice.

ME:  They usually get a pair of kids up on stage at some point to lead the audience in a sing off against each other – this is because some big set change is happening behind the curtain.

HIM: A sing off?

ME:  That’s when one half of the audience have to sing a song as loudly as possible. Then the other half have to sing, and they judge who sang the loudest.

HIM: Does everyone have to sing?

ME:  YES! (eye him beadily) EVERYONE must sing. It is the law!

HIM: (Gulps) Okay. Does the side that sings the loudest win anything?

ME:  Glory – and maybe more sweets thrown at them, or possibly slime. Although the kids on stage get given gift bags.

HIM: Okay.

ME:  Oh, and the principal boy – so in this case Aladdin, will be played by a woman.

HIM: Why?

ME:  He just is!

HIM: I see.

ME:  And there will always be an elderly female character – in Aladdin it will be Widow Twanky, his mother – but it could be Snow’s White’s elderly nurse, the cook in Dick Whittington, someone like that, in Cinderella there are two such characters, the Ugly Sisters. Anyway, this is a comedic character played by a man to comic effect. He will wear ridiculous clothes, including huge comedy breasts, garish make-up, big funny bloomers that will be flashed to the audience at every opportunity, and will make numerous saucy and inuendo laden jokes and comments. This is the Pantomime Dame and they are crucial to the show.

HIM: But why…?

ME:  Don’t ask. It’s traditional. So, that’s pantomime.

HIM: …..

ME:  …..

HIM: And this is what passes for entertainment in this country?

ME:  Trust me. You’ll love it.

And he did! Right from the clash of the first cymbal as the curtains drew back and dozens of brightly dressed characters pranced onto the stage and tried to convince us that we were in old Peking, right through to the triumphant wedding scene finale where Aladdin marries his Princess Jasmin, he loved every single funny moment of it.

He laughed, he clapped, he caught sweets, he joined in with the singing and produced a very impressive baritone voice from somewhere within his skinny frame, he yelled IT’S BEHIND YOU with the rest of us, and booed and hissed every time the evil wizard slithered on stage. It was a brilliant evening.

Any British readers will probably now be experiencing a moment of nostalgia for all the pantomimes they were taken to in the past. Traditionally held only at Christmas, I always used to take Miss F at the beginning of December. It kicked off the festive season nicely, and got me in the right mindset that yes, Christmas was coming. Sadly, with the current situation, pantomimes will not be happening this year.

To all my non-UK readers, if ever you are in Britain and you get the chance to go to a pantomime, go! The bigger productions in the larger cities are very swish and are usually packed with stars from TV. But the shows that are put on in the smaller towns and even villages are not without their charm. In fact, I’ve always found that in a smaller theatre it’s more intimate. The characters come down from the stage and mingle and interact with the audience much more than in a massive theatre seating thousands. Plus, in a smaller theatre, you’re more likely to catch some of those sweets I told you about!

Mr B lived with us for about eighteen months, and I grew very fond of him. In fact, we are still in touch on social media, sometimes chat through messenger, and the odd parcel and card occasionally wings its way over the Atlantic at Christmas time.

One very funny thing that happened during his stay though, involved Miss F. She was ten when he moved in and was at that age of no filter and blurting out whatever was in her head. Anyway, one evening we were sitting there watching TV together with Mr B, when out of nowhere, Miss F turns to me and asks.

MISS F: Mummy, what’s a wanker?

I nearly spat out my drink. I felt my eyes go huge as I stared at my innocent child.

ME:       Umm, where did you hear that word, darling?

MISS F: Oh, some of the boys at school were shouting it at each other in the playground. I’ve never heard of it before, so I wondered what it meant.

ME:        Umm, oka-a-ay.

Out of the corner of my eye I could just see Mr B’s knees, they were shaking and I’m sure I heard a snort of barely suppressed laughter coming from his corner. Carefully picking my words, I said.

ME:       I’ll explain it to you later, when you go up to bed.

So, we finished watching the programme and then I took her upstairs, tucked her up in bed, sat down and told her exactly what that word meant. She was silent for a while thinking about it, then she went bright red all over.

MISS F: I said that word in front of Mr B.

ME:      Yes, you did. (I cheerfully agreed) Maybe in future, instead of blurting things out in front of other people, you’ll ask me when we’re alone.

And from that day on, she always did!

We were very sad when Mr B left, but he was returning to Canada and that is the way of lodgers – just when you manage to housebreak one, they leave, and you have to start all over again. So, up went the add again, and this time we went with a sweet young girl called Miss E.

She was a wedding dress seamstress at a studio in town, she was polite and quiet and loved Disney. She went home to her parents every Friday and didn’t come back until Sunday evening. She was perfect. She stayed until mid-July and then suddenly, out of the blue, announced she was leaving. Her best friend was moving to the area and had asked her to share a flat with her, so that was it, she was off.

It did leave me in a bit of a quandary though. Because I had assumed she was staying for at least a year – as she had told me she was on many occasions – I had actually arranged for Miss F and I to go away on a very rare holiday mid-August believing that Miss E would be still living with us. She was a very sensible and trustworthy person and I had no qualms about leaving her in charge of the house and the cat whilst we were gone.

That was less than a month away – it didn’t seem long enough to find a new lodger and establish that same level of trust to go away and leave them for a week alone in our house. But there was nothing I could do about it, other than activate the add again and hope.

We ran it for a week. We had a few viewings. I didn’t click with any of them. We ran it for another week. This second crop of potential lodgers were even worse. I neither liked nor felt I could trust any of them.

In despair on the third Saturday, I activated the add again. Less than thirty minutes later, I had a reply. A very cheery and personable sounding lady sent me a message.

Love the sound of the room. Please can I come and have a look?

Of course, when?

Now?

Oh, okay!

Quickly, I dashed about and tidied up. The room had been viewing ready for two weeks now, so it was fine. My phone rang, she was walking up the road, which house were we? So, I went outside and saw a shock of bright red hair walking up the street pushing a bike and beaming from ear to ear. She waved vigorously when she saw me, as if she’d known me all my life, and the grin grew broader.

And so, Miss S came into our lives.

Slightly older than me, this was no scatterbrain teenager who would be incapable of following basic security and safety protocols whilst in charge of the house, and as we chatted, I knew I’d found the right one. Two days later she moved in. A week later we went on holiday.

She lived with us for nine months, during which time I was introduced to the weird and wonderful world of totally organic, free range, vegan cooking. Some of it looked great, some, not so great. A haphazard and messy cook, she would take over the kitchen with abandon and create great piles of washing up. She never did learn how to stack a dishwasher properly, and I was always going to unload it only to find upturned bowls floating with some sort of veggie broth.

Then there was the time she dropped a large bag of turmeric in the kitchen and for weeks we were finding bright yellow stains in unexpected places.

But, on the whole, she was one of our more successful lodgers and I was genuinely sorry when she met someone and within a couple of months was moving in with him. I really did wish her well, and wanted her to be happy, but there was something about this man that didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was something about the eyes, maybe it was the way he was with her, maybe it was some sort of instinct, who knows.

So, Miss S moved out and we were once again looking for a lodger. The add was activated, and an American in his thirties moved in. He had separated from his wife and needed a safe and peaceful space to gather his thoughts and sort out his life. I felt sorry for him, and he seemed okay, but within three days of moving in I knew I had made a dreadful mistake.

Used to being the alpha male in his own home, he simply couldn’t adjust to the fact that living in shared accommodation with only one bathroom between three of us meant that strict morning bathroom slots had to be established and adhered to. He would go into the bathroom whenever he damn well pleased and take as long as he wanted, with no thought to us waiting outside. He made us late for school and work three times, before I sat him down and tried to drum it into his head that he had to stick to the slot he’d requested, that he couldn’t take our slots and hog the bathroom for almost an hour every morning!

He was incredibly untidy in the bathroom and the kitchen. Bristles and toothpaste all around the sink for me to clean up. All his washing up simply left on the draining board for me to put in the dishwasher because he “hadn’t had time before he went to work”! Well, guess what buddy, neither do I!

He was incapable of closing cupboards and drawers. Now, I only have a small kitchen, so if someone has left all the cupboards and drawers wide open it’s not only untidy to look at, but it reduces space in the kitchen drastically. I would walk into the kitchen after he’d been there and start kicking them shut. It was intensely annoying.

He would stink out the bathroom every day, and frequently left nasties in the toilet which I had to take a stick to, in order to try and get rid of it! Heaven only knows what he was eating to produce things of that size and density!

It just wasn’t working. I like to think I can get on with most people, and years of taking in lodgers has taught me to tolerate most behaviour. But he and I clashed personality wise right from the get-go.

I remember when I was trying again to get it through his selfish skull that he simply couldn’t steal my bathroom slot in the morning, because it was making Miss F late for school and me late for work. He looked at me, and said…

“If you would only open your heart to Jesus and let him live in there. You would be a much calmer and happier person. You seem such a stressed and even violent person to me.”

Seriously, if I’d had a gun, I would have shot him!

Eventually, things got so bad he left me note asking that I conduct any future contact with him as written correspondence. So, I wrote him a letter politely giving him one month to get the hell out of my house. He was gone by the end of the week.

So, the add was activated again. Things weren’t so desperate this time. My long-term boss had retired and made me redundant, so I’d received a small redundancy pay-out. Not a massive amount, but enough so we could take our time finding a lodger and be choosey this time.

But life has a funny way of turning. Within two days we had a lovely young teacher come to view the room. Mr V was personable, funny, and clicked with both Miss F and I straight away. Just one problem. It was April when he came to view the room, but he wouldn’t need it until the middle of August just before the new school year began.

Miss F and I discussed it. We really liked him, so we decided that we’d rather wait for him. I could just about afford to go rent free for a few months. It would be tight, but worth it to get just the right lodger. So, it was arranged. Mr V signed a contract and paid a deposit to secure the room that he would forfeit if he reneged on the deal.

A week went by, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the room lying empty, not producing any rent for us. Then I wondered if a short term let would be possible. I went onto the website and searched. Yes, short term lets were not only possible, but apparently very desirable for some people.

I reworded the add and reactivated it as a short term let for three months. Four hours later we had a new lodger!

Mr K was a businessman who was relocating to the area as he was taking over the local branch of the company he worked for. He would be moving into his own property, but it was going to take about three months to sort things out. He didn’t really want to live in a hotel – too impersonal and too expensive. What I was offering was perfect.

And he was perfect. I have seriously never before had a lodger who had such a low carbon footprint in the house. He was hardly ever here. He rose early – before even I was up – showered and was gone. He ate all of his meals out, didn’t come home until late in the evening, and was gone all weekend visiting his family in Essex.

Occasionally, when he got home from work, I’d make us a cup of tea and we’d chat. He was a nice guy, just worked way too hard, and didn’t seem to have much of a personal life. But, because I hadn’t expected to receive any rent money for that period, what he paid was extra and covered the cost of landscaping my garden.

Mid-August came around all too quickly. Mr K moved out on the Sunday morning, I cleaned the room although it barely needed it, and Mr V moved in on the Monday. Right from the word go he became like a member of the family. He was funny and obliging. He cleaned up after himself. Liked the same films and shows that we did, and lived with us for almost two years, before, of course, he met the love of his life and moved out.

Now, remember Miss S? The turmeric spilling lady who had moved out to live with the guy I had concerns about. Turns out I was spot on. He revealed his true colours soon after they moved in together, and that relationship quickly soured and poor Miss S was forced into renting rooms in not very nice houses. Anyway, we had remained friends and she had often popped round for a coffee or even a glass of wine. The last time she had visited, she had told me how unhappy she was in her current lodgings, so when Mr V handed in his notice I sent her a message inviting her for coffee and a “chat”.

Coincidentally, we had booked to go on holiday again assuming that Mr V would still be there to look after the house and feed the cat. But he moved out three weeks before our holiday date, so I was stuck with the same problem of finding a trustworthy lodger in a short space of time.

Yep, you’ve guessed it. Mr V moved out and Miss S moved back in. It was only going to be for eight or so months, I knew that from the start. She was going travelling the following year and would be leaving the UK for good. But that was fine, it bought me eight months and meant we could go on holiday with an easy mind that someone we trusted was in our home.

Eight months later, as arranged, Miss S moved out and we reactivated the add. Now, it had been over three years since I’d last looked for a lodger, and this time hardly anyone applied for the room. Eventually, we took on a young Romanian man who seemed okay. He told me he worked evenings, but as I told you about in my last blog – that turned out to be a lie.

In many ways, Mr D was an unsatisfactory lodger – we barely ever saw him, and he certainly made no attempt to become part of the family. But he always paid his rent on time, and perhaps it was nice to be separate from the lodger for a change.

And now he is gone. I am left with a basement room that needs airing out and redecorating. He has ruined the mattress and I have a strong suspicion that the insurance company are not going to clean or replace it. When the agent came to inspect the mattress, he was shocked at the sheer amount of stains there were and asked if I was sure that a mattress protector had been used? Well, I said yes, because two mattress protectors are provided with the room, but whether Mr D used them all the time or not is a mystery. The agent asked what the stains were and how old they were, but of course, I couldn’t answer those questions either.

He then went away to write his report and I have to wait a week or so for them to let me know whether they will clean it, or whether a new mattress will be coming out of Mr D’s damages deposit. Luckily, I get excellent staff discount, so it won’t cost him as much as it normally would.

The smell and feel of damp have gone from the room – two weeks of having the window open at every opportunity and having a dehumidifier on has certainly done the trick. All that is left for me to do is a deep clean, give the whole room a coat of paint, and await the decision about the mattress. Then the add will be reactivated, and the whole cycle will start all over again.

I wonder who we’ll get next.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. Take care of yourselves and I’ll catch up with you all next Sunday.

Julia Blake

As you will have realised, I didn’t write a blog last week – what with it being launch week for The Book of Eve, and because of all the problems I had with Amazon glitching out for the whole of the launch weekend so that no one in America could find my book – I simply ran out of time and energy. I apologise for this.

This week, I will try to complete my story of all the lodgers I have had over the years. We had reached March 2013, Creepy Liver Guy had thankfully moved out and I had reactivated the add for the room, hoping for more choice this time.

The add went live on the Saturday morning, by the afternoon there were at least twenty applicants, some of which looked possible contenders. I began to make appointments and things were looking good. A few days later, I received a request to come and view the room from a young Canadian teacher. He even sent me a photo with his application – a very smiley guy wearing a bobble hat. I liked him already.

He came to view the room a couple of days later and the moment I opened the front door, I knew he was the one. You get a feel for it, an instinct that you are going to be able to co-exist with this person just fine. I showed him the room. Now, being a basement room, the ceiling is not the highest and he was a very tall young man, so as he was walking around the top of his bobble hat was brushing against it.

We went into the kitchen to chat, and he asked me what I thought of a certain character in Dr Who, and that was it really. He did ask if we had Sky. Now, at the time we didn’t, but I had been thinking about getting it, and as he was explaining it was because he was a huge Game of Thrones fan, I decided that I would see about getting it as soon as possible.

A week later, Mr B moved in. I remember it was a shocking day weather-wise, snow was belting down and all the in and out tracked grimy slush all over the carpet – but it couldn’t be helped.

Right from the word go, I got on incredibly well with Mr B. An awkward and gangly young man, he was shy and diffident, but our shared love of sci-fi, fantasy, and documentaries soon made us fast friends.

He was a Maths and English teacher over here for two years because there was a real lack of work for teachers in Canada at the time. He was polite and sweet, liked tea, and baked muffins and cakes, knitted me a coffee pot warmer, and was just a nice person to live with.

Most evenings he would watch TV with us. He introduced me to Game of Thrones, which I loved. I introduced him to the wonderful historian Lucy Worsley and we avidly watched everything she did on BBC4. We also enjoyed watching Only Connect – the hardest quiz on British TV – and would feel ridiculously smug if we managed to get a single question right.

And then of course, there was Dr Who. At the time we were passionate about that show in my house. We never missed an episode, and we watched old episodes whenever we could find them. In 2013, the show was at the peak of its popularity and as it was its fiftieth anniversary, the BBC pushed the boat out with many anniversary features, including a special film that was going to be shown at the cinema – so of course, we all went.

As Christmas approached, I discovered Mr B had never been to a Pantomime. In fact, had never even heard of that staunch British festive tradition. We bought tickets for the three of us to go and beforehand I tried to prepare him for what was in store.

ME:  Right, it’s a fun show for all the family usually based on a traditional fairy tale or story. This year it’s Aladdin, but it could be Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Dick Whittington, Mother Goose, anything like that.

HIM: Okay, I see.

ME:  Hold on, I’m easing you in gently here. There are lots of songs and lots of dancing. There may be explosions on stage, and sweets – or possibly slime – will be randomly hurled at the audience.

HIM: Right.

ME:  There will be a character who talks to the audience, and will usually ask them to warn him every time the monster/bear/beast of some kind comes onto the stage by shouting IT’S BEHIND YOU as loudly as they can. He will then creep slowly round and the monster will creep around him at the same time – thus necessitating frequent screaming of IT’S BEHIND YOU.

HIM: I see.

ME:  You probably don’t, but you will.

HIM: ??

ME:  There will be an over the top villain, and every time they appear on the stage, the audience has to boo and hiss as loudly as possible.

HIM: Boo and hiss?! At the actor?!

ME:  Trust me, he’ll be very upset if you don’t.

HIM: Oka-a-ay.

ME:  Halfway through the show, they will stop and call out the names of children in the audience who have birthdays. More sweets will be thrown, and happy birthday will be sung.

HIM: Ahh, that’s nice.

ME:  They usually get a pair of kids up on stage at some point to lead the audience in a sing off against each other – this is because some big set change is happening behind the curtain.

HIM: A sing off?

ME:  That’s when one half of the audience have to sing a song as loudly as possible. Then the other half have to sing, and they judge who sang the loudest.

HIM: Does everyone have to sing?

ME:  YES! (eye him beadily) EVERYONE must sing. It is the law!

HIM: (Gulps) Okay. Does the side that sings the loudest win anything?

ME:  Glory – and maybe more sweets thrown at them, or possibly slime. Although the kids on stage get given gift bags.

HIM: Okay.

ME:  Oh, and the principal boy – so in this case Aladdin, will be played by a woman.

HIM: Why?

ME:  He just is!

HIM: I see.

ME:  And there will always be an elderly female character – in Aladdin it will be Widow Twanky, his mother – but it could be Snow’s White’s elderly nurse, the cook in Dick Whittington, someone like that, in Cinderella there are two such characters, the Ugly Sisters. Anyway, this is a comedic character played by a man to comic effect. He will wear ridiculous clothes, including huge comedy breasts, garish make-up, big funny bloomers that will be flashed to the audience at every opportunity, and will make numerous saucy and inuendo laden jokes and comments. This is the Pantomime Dame and they are crucial to the show.

HIM: But why…?

ME:  Don’t ask. It’s traditional. So, that’s pantomime.

HIM: …..

ME:  …..

HIM: And this is what passes for entertainment in this country?

ME:  Trust me. You’ll love it.

And he did! Right from the clash of the first cymbal as the curtains drew back and dozens of brightly dressed characters pranced onto the stage and tried to convince us that we were in old Peking, right through to the triumphant wedding scene finale where Aladdin marries his Princess Jasmin, he loved every single funny moment of it.

He laughed, he clapped, he caught sweets, he joined in with the singing and produced a very impressive baritone voice from somewhere within his skinny frame, he yelled IT’S BEHIND YOU with the rest of us, and booed and hissed every time the evil wizard slithered on stage. It was a brilliant evening.

Any British readers will probably now be experiencing a moment of nostalgia for all the pantomimes they were taken to in the past. Traditionally held only at Christmas, I always used to take Miss F at the beginning of December. It kicked off the festive season nicely, and got me in the right mindset that yes, Christmas was coming. Sadly, with the current situation, pantomimes will not be happening this year.

To all my non-UK readers, if ever you are in Britain and you get the chance to go to a pantomime, go! The bigger productions in the larger cities are very swish and are usually packed with stars from TV. But the shows that are put on in the smaller towns and even villages are not without their charm. In fact, I’ve always found that in a smaller theatre it’s more intimate. The characters come down from the stage and mingle and interact with the audience much more than in a massive theatre seating thousands. Plus, in a smaller theatre, you’re more likely to catch some of those sweets I told you about!

Mr B lived with us for about eighteen months, and I grew very fond of him. In fact, we are still in touch on social media, sometimes chat through messenger, and the odd parcel and card occasionally wings its way over the Atlantic at Christmas time.

One very funny thing that happened during his stay though, involved Miss F. She was ten when he moved in and was at that age of no filter and blurting out whatever was in her head. Anyway, one evening we were sitting there watching TV together with Mr B, when out of nowhere, Miss F turns to me and asks.

MISS F: Mummy, what’s a wanker?

I nearly spat out my drink. I felt my eyes go huge as I stared at my innocent child.

ME:       Umm, where did you hear that word, darling?

MISS F: Oh, some of the boys at school were shouting it at each other in the playground. I’ve never heard of it before, so I wondered what it meant.

ME:        Umm, oka-a-ay.

Out of the corner of my eye I could just see Mr B’s knees, they were shaking and I’m sure I heard a snort of barely suppressed laughter coming from his corner. Carefully picking my words, I said.

ME:       I’ll explain it to you later, when you go up to bed.

So, we finished watching the programme and then I took her upstairs, tucked her up in bed, sat down and told her exactly what that word meant. She was silent for a while thinking about it, then she went bright red all over.

MISS F: I said that word in front of Mr B.

ME:      Yes, you did. (I cheerfully agreed) Maybe in future, instead of blurting things out in front of other people, you’ll ask me when we’re alone.

And from that day on, she always did!

We were very sad when Mr B left, but he was returning to Canada and that is the way of lodgers – just when you manage to housebreak one, they leave, and you have to start all over again. So, up went the add again, and this time we went with a sweet young girl called Miss E.

She was a wedding dress seamstress at a studio in town, she was polite and quiet and loved Disney. She went home to her parents every Friday and didn’t come back until Sunday evening. She was perfect. She stayed until mid-July and then suddenly, out of the blue, announced she was leaving. Her best friend was moving to the area and had asked her to share a flat with her, so that was it, she was off.

It did leave me in a bit of a quandary though. Because I had assumed she was staying for at least a year – as she had told me she was on many occasions – I had actually arranged for Miss F and I to go away on a very rare holiday mid-August believing that Miss E would be still living with us. She was a very sensible and trustworthy person and I had no qualms about leaving her in charge of the house and the cat whilst we were gone.

That was less than a month away – it didn’t seem long enough to find a new lodger and establish that same level of trust to go away and leave them for a week alone in our house. But there was nothing I could do about it, other than activate the add again and hope.

We ran it for a week. We had a few viewings. I didn’t click with any of them. We ran it for another week. This second crop of potential lodgers were even worse. I neither liked nor felt I could trust any of them.

In despair on the third Saturday, I activated the add again. Less than thirty minutes later, I had a reply. A very cheery and personable sounding lady sent me a message.

Love the sound of the room. Please can I come and have a look?

Of course, when?

Now?

Oh, okay!

Quickly, I dashed about and tidied up. The room had been viewing ready for two weeks now, so it was fine. My phone rang, she was walking up the road, which house were we? So, I went outside and saw a shock of bright red hair walking up the street pushing a bike and beaming from ear to ear. She waved vigorously when she saw me, as if she’d known me all my life, and the grin grew broader.

And so, Miss S came into our lives.

Slightly older than me, this was no scatterbrain teenager who would be incapable of following basic security and safety protocols whilst in charge of the house, and as we chatted, I knew I’d found the right one. Two days later she moved in. A week later we went on holiday.

She lived with us for nine months, during which time I was introduced to the weird and wonderful world of totally organic, free range, vegan cooking. Some of it looked great, some, not so great. A haphazard and messy cook, she would take over the kitchen with abandon and create great piles of washing up. She never did learn how to stack a dishwasher properly, and I was always going to unload it only to find upturned bowls floating with some sort of veggie broth.

Then there was the time she dropped a large bag of turmeric in the kitchen and for weeks we were finding bright yellow stains in unexpected places.

But, on the whole, she was one of our more successful lodgers and I was genuinely sorry when she met someone and within a couple of months was moving in with him. I really did wish her well, and wanted her to be happy, but there was something about this man that didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was something about the eyes, maybe it was the way he was with her, maybe it was some sort of instinct, who knows.

So, Miss S moved out and we were once again looking for a lodger. The add was activated, and an American in his thirties moved in. He had separated from his wife and needed a safe and peaceful space to gather his thoughts and sort out his life. I felt sorry for him, and he seemed okay, but within three days of moving in I knew I had made a dreadful mistake.

Used to being the alpha male in his own home, he simply couldn’t adjust to the fact that living in shared accommodation with only one bathroom between three of us meant that strict morning bathroom slots had to be established and adhered to. He would go into the bathroom whenever he damn well pleased and take as long as he wanted, with no thought to us waiting outside. He made us late for school and work three times, before I sat him down and tried to drum it into his head that he had to stick to the slot he’d requested, that he couldn’t take our slots and hog the bathroom for almost an hour every morning!

He was incredibly untidy in the bathroom and the kitchen. Bristles and toothpaste all around the sink for me to clean up. All his washing up simply left on the draining board for me to put in the dishwasher because he “hadn’t had time before he went to work”! Well, guess what buddy, neither do I!

He was incapable of closing cupboards and drawers. Now, I only have a small kitchen, so if someone has left all the cupboards and drawers wide open it’s not only untidy to look at, but it reduces space in the kitchen drastically. I would walk into the kitchen after he’d been there and start kicking them shut. It was intensely annoying.

He would stink out the bathroom every day, and frequently left nasties in the toilet which I had to take a stick to, in order to try and get rid of it! Heaven only knows what he was eating to produce things of that size and density!

It just wasn’t working. I like to think I can get on with most people, and years of taking in lodgers has taught me to tolerate most behaviour. But he and I clashed personality wise right from the get-go.

I remember when I was trying again to get it through his selfish skull that he simply couldn’t steal my bathroom slot in the morning, because it was making Miss F late for school and me late for work. He looked at me, and said…

“If you would only open your heart to Jesus and let him live in there. You would be a much calmer and happier person. You seem such a stressed and even violent person to me.”

Seriously, if I’d had a gun, I would have shot him!

Eventually, things got so bad he left me note asking that I conduct any future contact with him as written correspondence. So, I wrote him a letter politely giving him one month to get the hell out of my house. He was gone by the end of the week.

So, the add was activated again. Things weren’t so desperate this time. My long-term boss had retired and made me redundant, so I’d received a small redundancy pay-out. Not a massive amount, but enough so we could take our time finding a lodger and be choosey this time.

But life has a funny way of turning. Within two days we had a lovely young teacher come to view the room. Mr V was personable, funny, and clicked with both Miss F and I straight away. Just one problem. It was April when he came to view the room, but he wouldn’t need it until the middle of August just before the new school year began.

Miss F and I discussed it. We really liked him, so we decided that we’d rather wait for him. I could just about afford to go rent free for a few months. It would be tight, but worth it to get just the right lodger. So, it was arranged. Mr V signed a contract and paid a deposit to secure the room that he would forfeit if he reneged on the deal.

A week went by, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the room lying empty, not producing any rent for us. Then I wondered if a short term let would be possible. I went onto the website and searched. Yes, short term lets were not only possible, but apparently very desirable for some people.

I reworded the add and reactivated it as a short term let for three months. Four hours later we had a new lodger!

Mr K was a businessman who was relocating to the area as he was taking over the local branch of the company he worked for. He would be moving into his own property, but it was going to take about three months to sort things out. He didn’t really want to live in a hotel – too impersonal and too expensive. What I was offering was perfect.

And he was perfect. I have seriously never before had a lodger who had such a low carbon footprint in the house. He was hardly ever here. He rose early – before even I was up – showered and was gone. He ate all of his meals out, didn’t come home until late in the evening, and was gone all weekend visiting his family in Essex.

Occasionally, when he got home from work, I’d make us a cup of tea and we’d chat. He was a nice guy, just worked way too hard, and didn’t seem to have much of a personal life. But, because I hadn’t expected to receive any rent money for that period, what he paid was extra and covered the cost of landscaping my garden.

Mid-August came around all too quickly. Mr K moved out on the Sunday morning, I cleaned the room although it barely needed it, and Mr V moved in on the Monday. Right from the word go he became like a member of the family. He was funny and obliging. He cleaned up after himself. Liked the same films and shows that we did, and lived with us for almost two years, before, of course, he met the love of his life and moved out.

Now, remember Miss S? The turmeric spilling lady who had moved out to live with the guy I had concerns about. Turns out I was spot on. He revealed his true colours soon after they moved in together, and that relationship quickly soured and poor Miss S was forced into renting rooms in not very nice houses. Anyway, we had remained friends and she had often popped round for a coffee or even a glass of wine. The last time she had visited, she had told me how unhappy she was in her current lodgings, so when Mr V handed in his notice I sent her a message inviting her for coffee and a “chat”.

Coincidentally, we had booked to go on holiday again assuming that Mr V would still be there to look after the house and feed the cat. But he moved out three weeks before our holiday date, so I was stuck with the same problem of finding a trustworthy lodger in a short space of time.

Yep, you’ve guessed it. Mr V moved out and Miss S moved back in. It was only going to be for eight or so months, I knew that from the start. She was going travelling the following year and would be leaving the UK for good. But that was fine, it bought me eight months and meant we could go on holiday with an easy mind that someone we trusted was in our home.

Eight months later, as arranged, Miss S moved out and we reactivated the add. Now, it had been over three years since I’d last looked for a lodger, and this time hardly anyone applied for the room. Eventually, we took on a young Romanian man who seemed okay. He told me he worked evenings, but as I told you about in my last blog – that turned out to be a lie.

In many ways, Mr D was an unsatisfactory lodger – we barely ever saw him, and he certainly made no attempt to become part of the family. But he always paid his rent on time, and perhaps it was nice to be separate from the lodger for a change.

And now he is gone. I am left with a basement room that needs airing out and redecorating. He has ruined the mattress and I have a strong suspicion that the insurance company are not going to clean or replace it. When the agent came to inspect the mattress, he was shocked at the sheer amount of stains there were and asked if I was sure that a mattress protector had been used? Well, I said yes, because two mattress protectors are provided with the room, but whether Mr D used them all the time or not is a mystery. The agent asked what the stains were and how old they were, but of course, I couldn’t answer those questions either.

He then went away to write his report and I have to wait a week or so for them to let me know whether they will clean it, or whether a new mattress will be coming out of Mr D’s damages deposit. Luckily, I get excellent staff discount, so it won’t cost him as much as it normally would.

The smell and feel of damp have gone from the room – two weeks of having the window open at every opportunity and having a dehumidifier on has certainly done the trick. All that is left for me to do is a deep clean, give the whole room a coat of paint, and await the decision about the mattress. Then the add will be reactivated, and the whole cycle will start all over again.

I wonder who we’ll get next.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. Take care of yourselves and I’ll catch up with you all next Sunday.

Julia Blake

The news about finding a new lodger goes from bad to worse. As you know, when my last lodger moved out and I stripped off the bedding I discovered brown stains all over a relatively new mattress which had certainly been in pristine condition when he moved in. He returned the next day to give the room a quick clean, return my key and parking permit, and do what I call a “final walkthrough”. This is when I and the lodger go through every cupboard and drawer in the room, we also check they’ve taken everything that is theirs from the kitchen and bathroom. It’s also a good time to see if everything in the room is as it was when they moved in.

I showed him the stains. At first, he denied it could possibly have been him. Okay, so who else has been sleeping down here with you? Answer, no one. Then he tried to tell me the mattress had looked like that when he moved in. Umm, I don’t think so. The mattress is obviously one thing I examine thoroughly between lodgers and it certainly wasn’t like that when the previous lodger moved out – otherwise I would have had this conversation with them and sorting it out would have come out of their damages deposit not yours.

Eventually, he admitted that maybe he had fallen asleep clutching a takeaway cup of Coke, and maybe dropped it. That sounds more like it. I honestly don’t know how he thought he was going to get away with it. Did he think that I don’t strip the bed and remake it between lodgers? Obviously, I was going to notice massive circular brown stains on a previously pristine white mattress.

Anyway, he has been told that luckily, I took out insurance on the mattress and luckily, I am eligible to claim, so that is what I have done. They can’t come out until the 9^th of September to clean it though, so he will just have to wait until after then to get the deposit back because there may be costs involved, or they may say it’s beyond rescuing in which case the cost of a new mattress will be coming out of it.

Being a basement room there is always the potential of a damp problem, but this has never been an issue until now. When a new lodger moves in I do tell them they must open up the window occasionally to air the room through, and under no circumstances must they attempt to dry clothes in their room or hang wet towels down there.

This lodger was told the same thing. But certain lies were told to me during the interview which made it difficult for him to obey the edict about opening the window. It turned out he was a night worker. Now, I’ve always avoided night workers as I don’t want to be woken up at all hours of the night when they’re getting home from a nightshift and slamming the front door which is right below my bedroom. I also don’t want to have to tiptoe around the house all day trying to keep quiet because they are asleep.

Every person who comes to view the room is asked about their working hours. This lodger was also asked and assured me he was an evening worker, that he would be home no later than 10:30pm each evening. Okay, I thought, fair enough. So, he moved in. Now either he immediately changed his working hours, or he defined an evening as ending at 2:30am, because right from the word go, he was working nights.

In the beginning he would wake me up every night getting home at that time and slamming doors. Until the night I stormed downstairs, heavy eyed, and livid at being woken up yet again because he was incapable of closing the door quietly – and gave him an impromptu lesson on door shutting. But of course, because he was asleep most of the day, and didn’t get up until he was literally about to leave the house for work – he was never able to get the window open.

He also never used the rack on the back of the bathroom door to dry his towels on. Instead he would take it back down to his room and throw it onto the armchair to dry. Now, hanging up wet towels to dry in ANY room is never a good idea, but in a basement room that was also not being aired at all? Definitely, not a good idea.

So, he moved out. I went down into the room for the first time in sixteen months and immediately realised there was a damp problem. Is it just because of the issues listed above so airing it and a good clean will sort it out? Or is it a more serious issue? I’ve bought a dehumidifier and whenever the window isn’t open that is whirring away collecting moisture. I also have a promise from a builder friend to come round with a damp meter and give his professional opinion. But between this and waiting for the mattress to be cleaned, it means I can’t advertise for a new lodger yet.

Last week I began to tell you all about lodgers I have had in the past and we ended with the lovely Miss C moving out to fulfil her dream of going to the London School of Fashion. Having her live with us had been enormous fun and made me realise how great it is having a young person living in the house. I activated the ad again and was almost immediately inundated with applicants. Eventually, I settled on a tall young lad called Mr J. He was funny and polite and the manager of a local high street fashion shop. He played guitar – but only during sociable hours – was passionate about cooking and enjoyed the odd film or two. He stayed about nine months, before a friend asked him to flat share with him and then he moved out.

I advertised again, and a week or so later another young man, Mr N, moved in. Initially, he was great. A website designer he was quite useful to have around, although I did have to change my broadband package to unlimited, after he racked up a £30 excess use bill the first month he was here. He was a bit of a nerd and was terrified of spiders and the number of times I had to go down there to rescue him from a “simply enormous one” – it was tiny – was unbelievable. He was also a complete hypochondriac, which could be really funny.

I remember once me and Miss F were sitting in the dining room when the door to the bathroom burst open and Mr N charged through the kitchen and into the dining room wearing nothing but a towel and a face full of shaving foam. We looked at him in alarm, and I noticed there was a tiny speck of blood on his chin where he’d clearly nicked himself with the razor.

“Julia!” he gasped. “Phone an ambulance immediately!”

“It’s only a tiny scratch,” I replied.

“No! I’m having an asthma attack!”

Quickly, I phoned for an ambulance whilst he collapsed in a chair, trying to keep his towel in place and I sent Miss F to get a damp flannel so he could wipe the foam from his face. The ambulance came, took his blood pressure, calmed him down, and asked him some questions. Mr N then proceeded to spout off all his vital statistics as in normal blood pressure, heartrate, cholesterol levels, BMI, exact height and weight, and various other facts and figures about himself that I think most of us would struggle to even guess at.

“That’s amazing,” one of the paramedics said. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“Oh, I’m a hypochondriac,” he freely admitted, and wondered why we all fell about laughing.

So, for about six months, Mr N was great. Then he found a girlfriend. No, he didn’t just find a girlfriend, he found the love of his life. Jeez. How annoying, careless, and downright rude did he become after that?

I have a rule about boyfriends/girlfriends in that I don’t mind the odd stayover, once or twice a week is fine, but I don’t want them moving in. It’s a room in a small house, with only one bathroom. I neither want, nor have the facilities to cope with couples living here. At first, he obeyed this rule, and I really liked his girlfriend, she was very sweet. I think one of the best evenings I ever had lodger wise was when Mr N and I cooked a big meal between us because his girlfriend was coming over, and Miss C was coming back to see us for the weekend, then we were all going out together, along with a friend of mine who knew Miss C well from the old days when she had lodged with me.

The five of us had just sat down to eat when there was a knock at the door. I went to open it and it was Mr J, the lodger prior to Mr N. He’d been passing and thought he’d look in. So of course, he was invited to stay for dinner, and we all squeezed around the table and had a wonderful meal. Afterwards when Miss C, my friend, and I were clearing the table, the boys brought up Mr N’s guitars – he was a guitar player too, although not as proficient as Mr J – and they began an impromptu session which was wonderful. Then we all went out together and it was a brilliant evening. A group of six people with ages ranging from 20 to 43, all getting on very well together.

It all went downhill after that. Mr N’s girlfriend began to stay over more frequently. Eventually she was here ALL THE TIME! If I wanted to have a shower, I couldn’t, because she was in it. If I wanted to use the washing machine, her clothes were in it. If I wanted to cook dinner for Miss F and I, I couldn’t, because she had taken over the entire kitchen and was cooking a special meal for her and Mr N. She was just always there!

She would drive over from work Tuesday evening and would be here until Sunday evening. It was all too much. Not only did I feel my home was no longer my own, but my utilities and water bills were escalating due to having a fourth person in the house. She also disrupted our morning routine by hogging the bathroom and had made Miss F late for school and me late for work on more than one occasion. So, I had a little chat with Mr N, and we agreed that boundaries needed to be set and we compromised on three nights a week maximum.

For a couple of weeks, it all seemed to work. Then came a weekend when we didn’t see much of him. His girlfriend had been over Tuesday evening to Friday morning and had, I presumed returned to her own home. Other than hearing him rustling around in the kitchen, we saw nothing of Mr N until Sunday afternoon when I was washing the kitchen floor and he came up to put some clothes in the washing machine, but my stuff was already in there. I told him it wouldn’t be much longer and would call him as soon as the machine was free.

Ten minutes later I stuck my head around the corner of the basement door that he’d left open to call down the stairs that the machine was free, and discovered his girlfriend standing at the bottom of the stairs. Shocked, I asked how long she had been there, and she sheepishly admitted that he’d smuggled her back in Friday evening and she’d been there ever since.

It made me feel odd, and annoyed, that someone had been in my home all that time and I hadn’t been aware of it. I felt lied to, and quite frankly, I’d had enough. I asked his girlfriend if she could understand why I felt that way, and how would her father feel if she’d hidden Mr N in his home without informing her father he was there. Oh, I’d never do that to my dad, she told me. I respect him too much.

Oka-a-ay. That just about said it all. I decided not to make a scene in front of his girlfriend, but that I needed to have another chat with Mr N, and maybe tactfully suggest that they find a flat together. We chatted. The decision that he needed to move out was mutual. A month later they found the perfect little love nest which they bought everything new for. I shuddered at the thought of the monthly repayments they were saddling themselves with, but it wasn’t my problem, so I kept quiet. They moved in together. Less than two months later I saw on Facebook that they’d separated, rather acrimoniously, and that he was once again single and lodging somewhere in town. Ho hum. That tends to be the way it goes, I’m afraid.

I advertised again. This time, to my surprise, hardly anyone answered the ad, and I began to worry that I wouldn’t find anyone. Then a man came to view who seemed okay. I offered him the room, and Mr D moved in. Within a few days I realised I’d made a terrible mistake. What had seemed like the best deadpan humour ever at interview, turned out to be absolutely no sense of humour at all. He was dull, staid, opinionated, and downright odd, especially in his eating habits. In fact, I have never seen anyone eat the way he did. He ate a lot, well, he was a big guy so that in itself wasn’t strange. It was what he ate that was peculiar. I’ll give you an example.

One night, I saw him prepare his dinner. It comprised of a whole packet of savoury noodles meant for three people on a large plate. A whole ready-made shepherd’s pie on top. Then a tin of cold baked beans on top of that. Then a tin of cold mushy peas. And to finish it all off, mint sauce squirted all over it. And that was one of his more normal meals.

He would go to the shop and literally empty the “reduced to clear section” and eat whatever he’d managed to get. I remember once he bought a pack of lamb’s livers going really cheap. He put them into a bowl, covered it with clingfilm, and nuked them in the microwave. I didn’t even know you could cook liver like that! The liver turned grey and stank the kitchen out. He then sat down at the table, took off the clingfilm and proceeded to eat the whole pack. And that was his dinner. A large pack of liver cooked in the microwave.

One day I came home from work, opened my fridge to put away some shopping, and found the shelves were awash with blood!! He’d been given a load of offal free – and no, I don’t want to think about that either – so he’d brought it home and slung it into the fridge. It wasn’t wrapped, or even on plates, he just thrown livers, kidneys, hearts, and tripe loose in there! Blood was dripping through the shelves onto my food!

Beyond angry, I hammered on his door and ordered him up to explain himself. Why had he contaminated not only my fridge but most of my food as well. But he totally failed to understand what my problem was. It’s just food he said. It wouldn’t hurt me.

Umm, hello? Listeria, E-coli, botulism, salmonella! Yes, I would love to have a hefty dose of food poisoning this weekend. He then went out and left me to deal with it! Muttering angrily the whole time, I spent a couple of hours double bagging all his disgusting internal organs – in my head disposing of his own internal organs as well – cleaning and sterilising the fridge and picking through which of my food could be salvaged – not a lot. I then went to the shop and replaced everything that had been ruined. I copied the receipt and added to it another £50 for my time, inconvenience and cleaning materials, and when he returned informed him that this amount would be coming out of his damages deposit. He just sneered at me and said, “Oh we’ll see about that.”

It was at this point I realised he was possibly a psychopath.

He was a carer for elderly and vulnerable people, although there’s no way I would ever have left any elderly relative of mine in his care. One day I came home to discover a big cake sitting on the worksurface. Again, it was ON the worksurface, not on a plate or a board or anything silly like that, no, just on the actual worksurface, with a big piece cut out and crumbs everywhere. Sighing, I fetched a plate and tidied up. It was a lovely sponge cake with jam and buttercream filling, and clearly was homemade.

When he appeared, I told him I had sorted out the cake for him and how lovely it looked and had someone made it for him.

“No, I got it from the elderly lady I looked after this morning.”

“Oh, how sweet. She made you a cake as a thank you for looking after her?”

“No, one of her family made her the cake. I just took it.”

“What? You took her cake?”

“Yes.”

“Did she say you could take her cake?”

“No, but she’s so batty she won’t remember if she ate it or not.”

“So, you stole her cake?”

“It’s not really stealing. She would have forgotten to eat it so it would have gone to waste.”

“That’s totally not the point! You stole food from an elderly and vulnerable person who was in your care! I would imagine the agency and her family wouldn’t be too pleased about it!”

He snarled at me and stamped away, taking the cake with him. I felt very uncomfortable about the whole thing and wondered if I should tell someone about it. I considered his actions not only illegal but also highly unethical. I also wondered if he was taking stuff from me because he thought I might be too batty to notice.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised this guy had to go. I didn’t want him in my home anymore. To be completely honest, he frightened me. There was something about his eyes that sent chills down my spine.

The next morning, he came and tapped on my lounge door and told me that he was relocating with his job so would be moving out before the end of the month. He was sorry for any inconvenience, but the commute would be a bit much, so he felt it made sense to find lodgings closer to his new place of work.

Of course, I agreed, it made perfect sense. He had paid up to the end of the month, so any time he wished to go before then was fine. Please could he ensure he tidied the room back to a state fit for viewing as I would be reactivating the ad immediately and obviously would be taking potential new lodgers into it. He agreed, and the moment he left I went onto the website and listed the room as available again.

A couple of days passed, and I had a long list of appointments of people wishing to view the room. I made sure I did him the courtesy of informing him of this and reminding him that the room must be clean and tidy, and any personal items he did not wish seen put away. Again, he agreed, so next morning – ten minutes before the first person was due – I thought I’d just pop down and ensure all was in order. I didn’t think it could be so bad as he’d been living in it less than two months and unlike many lodgers, he actually washed the bedding every week. Miss F came too as she was curious.

What we found beggared belief! Sacks of potatoes and onions lined up against the wall. Big pallets of long-life milk stacked up to waist height. Bags and bags of tins everywhere! Stocks of toilet rolls. Now bear in mind this was 2013! If I’d found those things this year, I wouldn’t have turned a hair, but back then…?

Quickly, we grabbed the sacks of food and managed to manhandle them upstairs and out into the shed. The bags of tins we shoved under the bed, and the packets of toilet rolls we stored in my bedroom just to get them out of the way.

There is plenty of storage for the lodger’s food in the kitchen, so there was no need to store food in his bedroom. Also, the sheer volume of food was staggering. He was just one man! It would have taken him years to eat his way through all of that – even the way he ate. Was there an apocalypse coming that I’d failed to get the memo about? I couldn’t show the room in that state, and we’d just finished relocating all his supplies when the doorbell rang.

When he came home, I informed him what I had done, and told him that until he moved out and took all of it with him – his nuclear holocaust rations would be staying where they were. He was livid and began screaming at me that I had no right to touch his belongings. I just calmly raised a brow and told him that in the contract he signed it stated that upon handing in notice, the room had to be returned to the state it was in when he first viewed it, and that I reserved the right to do it myself if the lodger failed to comply.

He stomped around the kitchen in a fury for the rest of the evening, so I disappeared into my lounge and left him to it. Later, I heard him shouting on his phone in the basement under me, about how I had violated his privacy and he should look into suing me. Yeah, good luck with that one, mate.

His next trick was he informed me that as he would probably be moving out before the end of the rental period he’d paid for, that I would be refunding him the rent he’d paid. Oh, you bloody well think so, do you? One, it doesn’t work that way. If a lodger has paid to live in my house up until a certain date, then they are entitled to live there until midnight on that date. Baring certain circumstances I cannot ask them to leave any earlier. But if they choose to move out earlier that is on them and no rent will be returned. This is standard practice and is clearly stated in the contract all lodgers sign before moving in. Anyway, I was in no frame of mind to do him any favours by this point.

He was not happy with this and kept demanding to know if I was going to refund him the money or not. When I told him not and reminded him that neither was he getting all of his damages deposit back due to the offal in fridge incident, he became very belligerent. He started shouting at me and generally behaving in a threatening manner.

Now, he was a big chap, at least 6’4” and solidly built. I am barely over 5’ and obviously much smaller than him, but I have a Jack Russell tendency when threatened to forget how small I am. He yelled in my face, so I pulled myself up to my full height, glared at him, and told him how dare he threaten me in my own home, and that maybe I should call the police to come and have a little “chat” with him. He paused to think about that, then launched his final weapon in his argument.

“If you don’t refund me that rent and pay me back my full deposit, I will… I will…”

“You’ll do what?” I snarled.

“Move out even earlier!” He snapped and disappeared into his room slamming the door for full effect.

“Fine! Don’t let the door catch you on the arse on your way out.”

He moved out the next day – apparently to stay at a friend’s house. Astonished he actually had friends, I watched him go, got my key and parking permit back, and have never been so relieved to have a lodger leave. Would he actually have harmed me? I don’t know. But I do know I have never had a lodger make me feel so uncomfortable in my own home. As Miss F said after he’d left – “I didn’t like him, mum. He had serial killer eyes.” And I had to agree with her.

This blog has once again reached epic proportions and I’m still only up to 2013. I think the departure of creepy liver guy is a good place to stop and I can continue the story next week. In the meantime, I’m working four days over the weekend as it’s a bank holiday in the UK and most people are enjoying a long weekend off, unless you work in retail of course.

In bookish news, finally, after nearly six long years, The Book of Eve is ready for republication and I’m looking at a launch day of next Wednesday. If you have a moment, why not check out my Instagram or Facebook pages where pictures of the gorgeous new cover and lots of wonderful promo stuff will be posted daily, and on Wednesday the book will be available to buy from an Amazon site near you.

So, stay safe, stay happy, and I’ll catch up with you all next week.

Julia Blake