vendredi 23.03.07 Rent day
Our rent is due today. This time round I’ve foreseen the potential problems involved with our money matters. I took out half the rent yesterday as I suspected that the ATM would seize up if I tried to take it all out at once. In fact the amount I withdrew last night was the result of five attempts at three different ATMs. Temperamental technology is the bane of my life. Today is no different as it’s only on my third attempt that those final eight crisp fifties are spat out.
Arlette is as money hungry as ever when I present the envelope to her. She puts her Scrabble tournament on hold while she scurries off to find the calendar in the hope of marking me in for another month of money. I explain that even if I stay here by myself I would not be prepared to pay the rent of two people. Miss Busy-Body-Business has another option. William our neighbour has gone to live with his girlfriend so his flat could be freed up for me. It’s a nice place but at €450 per month it’s too pricey and too close for comfort to the créole crazies. Give us two weeks I tell her. We should have our bearings by then. There’s also the little matter of moving out. She stresses that our posters and other paraphernalia will have to be removed but aside from that she doesn’t have the grace to let us away with moving out at the end of April. Since we arrived on the 23rd September we’re to leave on the 23rd April; if we want to see out the month that’ll be another €200.
There are more money matters to investigate. The post person has brought me two letters. The big brown envelope holds a bill of some sort from Brussels; I lived in Brussels two years ago. Supposedly Nic and I both owe the Belgium government €235.93 for excessive air consumption or obsessive window shopping. It can wait.
The other letter is from Fergal; a packet of Revels brightens up the otherwise routine ramblings of my boyfriend. I read his news from home as I’m standing at the bus-stop waiting for the No.22 to bring me from the tranquillity of the hills to the mayhem of Friday morning traffic jams in the metropolis. 7,00 rolls around and still there’s no bus. No lifts are offered either and I don’t get a chance to thumb a lift. Suddenly the sound of a mounting monsoon makes me lift my head from my letter. I can see the dismal deluge creeping over the houses in the valley behind me and in an instant I’m fumbling for my umbrella. It’s up just in time but despite my top half being bone dry the severe shower, combined with the driving wind, leaves me soaked from the knees down. The rain is gone within a few minutes but there’s no way I can sit on a bus for an hour like this let alone stand in the classroom with wet clothes until lunchtime. I return home to change and fire out texts to my respective teachers alerting them of my absence and expressing my excuses. I tell them my ankle is injured. It may be a lame excuse and it may be not very timely but it’s true. I try to ring the school secretary but, as predicted, there’s nobody in. Charles is still shuffling about the veranda on my return. He tells me I should have run to the telephone cabin. If I had I would still be soaked. And I’d definitely be hopping home after a dash like that. As it happens two of my teachers are being inspected today so I would only have been hanging around like a hopping, sopping statue for the morning anyway.
I hang out my soaked threads and my washing which stayed overnight in the machine before heading to bed again. Nicola wakes me at midday. A couple of minutes later I’ve thrown on some clothes and we literally hop on to the bus – we both have had limps of late. For some reason the local lads are back to their lecherous annoying selves. About eight get on at once and they start trying to make small chat with us. At least they’re practising their English. Right? We debate, in Irish, whether to tell them to bug off but we decide against it as our créole outbursts would probably offend more civilised passengers than these louts. Once we’re off the bus the catcalls and hisses continue. Old men, young lads, homeless guys and the odd transvestite try to catch our attention. Thankfully there’s nobody near us when I take out the rent money. I may actually have paid them to leg-it.
McDo seems like the simplest lunch option. Usually I leave most of my drink but I even finish Nicola’s too. It’s either dehydration or drenching on the liquid front today. To prove my point, when I bump into Jean-Pierre and get an invitation to pop up to the Terminal Café I decline. Well, I do pop up but I don’t drink – anything. I just chat to Jean-Pierre and Mad Maud for a minute before excusing myself and heading to the internet café. At the bus-stop there are more crazy people on parade. A youth sways up the road pestering people for cigarettes before running after a guy with a red bucket in his hand. Bucket Boy darts down a side street as the Swaggering Smoker resumes his search for tobacco sticks. By this stage Nicola has joined me and is now stubbing out her barely singed fag. She takes the No.19 to a private pupil’s house while I head home with some more grinning ghetto guys. A man with a bum-bag sits beside me. Out of the corner of my eye I can see him looking at me. He proceeds to tell me that he saw me in the telephone cabin one day. Oh really? I’m thinking of moving in there actually. In fact I should have sprinted over there this morning but my ailing ankle prevented me from frequenting my favourite hill-top haunt. The pervy passenger doesn’t give me as much lip as predicted. I should mention that he was speaking English. If he only wants to practise it’s fine by me. We don’t exchange names – or numbers, even though he asks me straight out what my number is.
At home I exchange rent money for fruit and the Belgium bill. Charles asks me if I went to school and if I recovered from my douche écossaise this morning. Arlette gets her money and gets out the calendar. It’s a vicious circle…
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