After two weeks of living in a tent, I’ve come to the rather obvious conclusion that it isn’t for me and so I’ve moved to the North East in search of a cheap house share where I can carry on working on my creative projects.
At one point, I managed to find a truly spectacular deal, a room in a seaside town for only £200 a month! However, there was a catch. I would have had to live with the landlord and for some reason I was getting a slightly aggressive vibe off him when we met.
Now this could just be me since I do have a tendency to catastrophise. However, getting a full-blown anxiety attack after our meeting was probably a sign that this might not work too well as a living arrangement.
I guess the turning point was what happened after he asked me where my family was originally from and I answered “The Czech Republic” to which his instant reply was “My boss is Czech and he’s a F***ING C**T !!” For some reason, I did find that response a little unsettling.
Of course, I’m not for a moment dismissing the difficulties that many people face when it comes to employee-manager relations. Who knows, maybe his boss really was a difficult person and he was merely expressing his frustration about that in a rare moment of unexpected anger.
Nevertheless I wasn’t reassured when moments later the conversation turned to women. After asking me if I had a girlfriend, I informed him that I was very much single and in the process of getting over someone to which his reply was “Women are F***ING WHORES, INNIT !?”
To be fair, he was probably trying to bond with me, which was kind of him. I was still doing my best to look at the situation in a positive way but at this point there was also a little voice in my head trying to calculate the exact number of dead bodies that might be buried under his kitchen floor.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but there was a certain forcefulness in his whole tone. It reminded me of moments in my childhood when I would have to smile and agree with what other teenagers were saying merely to avoid being hit by them. This was concerning given that we had only just met.
I guess living with a landlord might not be for me after all. I wouldn’t want to be quite so enmeshed with someone with that much power over me and I couldn’t help panicking a little more when he suddenly stared intensely into my eyes and said “We iz gonna be good friends, innit?”
