I should probably tell Ross he's moved into this blog

Mat finally moved out. There was some doubt as to whether this would actually happen, partly due to his fear of being murdered at some point by Amanda. Not for any reason, just for being himself really, but obviously that is quite a provocation. Anyway, dead or alive, he's more or less out of here. Ross came round on Thursday for the keys, offering us an ‘elegant coffee table’ for the lounge and saying that he had ‘an army of midgets’ to help him move in on Saturday. An elegant coffee table and an army of midgets! Things were looking up.

The army of midgets did not in fact materialise (though possibly they are too small to be seen with the naked eye) but the coffee table did, and it sits here in front of me now, its glass surface reflecting the net curtains, a pile of Mat’s business cards lying atop it in case any entrepreneurs wander past. Ross came in carrying a variety of hats, plants, and swords, and spent much of his first day creating a wardrobe in his room, not an easy process by the sound of it. Hearing loud banging noises issuing from behind the closed door of his old room, Mat was reminded of the film Pacific Heights, in which Michael Keaton plays a deranged tenant-from-hell, and of course Dave and I have been mocked for not interviewing our prospective housemate very thoroughly; or indeed, at all. But how would that help? He's not going to say: ‘I’m a professional psychopath and my hobbies include cutting people up into small pieces and eating their boiled entrails.’ Is he?

Of course there is bound to be the odd culture clash. He is from Bulphan, a village that only exists for a few evenings each year (or so the rumours in nearby Ingrave went during my childhood). In the office last night a soft toy in reptile form lay sprawled on his computer: ‘It’s a monitor lizard’, he explained. I was about to say that it more closely resembled a salamander when the joke hit home.