the new people

So Dave has exchanged contracts - or at least, he got a letter informing him that he had. I had expected some kind of ceremony, perhaps something along the lines of an old-fashioned duel, with the participants pacing towards each other, contracts in their outstretched hands. Perhaps solicitors performed this ritual in their stead; it's hard to know.

Potential tenants have already been round to look over our place. I consider it my duty to put them off, so that Colin, unable to let it, is forced to let me stay for a nominal fee. In order to create the right unsettling atmosphere I answer the door in the nude, and offer them plum tomatoes from Sainsbury's. 'They're Taste The Difference', I say. You'd be surprised how sinister that phrase can be made to sound.

I have Resonance on loud, and - with luck - they're playing a symphony of industrial noise and synchronised vomiting. I tell the visitors that I recorded these sounds last night, from nextdoor.

Then - getting desperate - I try to rope in the fact that we ran out of milk that morning - 'It's not a good property for milk.' A brief word about our landlord ('He makes us do things!') and then they're out the door, never to return. Job, hopefully, done.