Longday Saturday

LAUNDRETTA, THE WOMAN WHO PLAYS POVERTY the evening after a £150 meal-plus-extras session with a man she met in the local whorehouse the other afternoon (I know all this because her boyfriend yealously attempted barricading her in her room this afternoon and she screamed the financial facts of her matters loud enough to persuade him to release her in anticipation of a different kind of "lick"). She had the cheek to enquire of me, wide eyes fluttering blankly, "who's breaking down the front door every night?" :: "Someone without a key," I replied drily. And her stream of verbal diarrhoea trickled uncleansed from her mouth down our staircase unchecked... Because, of course, the destruction of our front door lock has nothing to do with them... I don't call Matran the "Rat Man" for nothing, either. He's a piece of work. After sucking teeth at me on the way down the stairs, he paused at the bottom, before our lockless front door and demanded of my visitor, "Do you sell B?" (heroin). No, said visitor shook his head, walking by. When he queried me, I said Don't have anything to do with them. They lose dealers as easily as supermodels loose weight ...

TODAY I GOT A PHONE CALL INVITING ME OUT, saying, Help! We need help! Turned out to be a psycho neighbour problem and the crux of it is, far as I discern;-& they went with my discernment: a psychotic, paranoid nextdoor neighbour interfering, lying, complaining, threatening, pushing, voicing his own schizoid-addled fears articulately enough to appear to be a sane man driven by violent instinct. Rather than an insane man driven by his irrational rage that expert-aimed, well-chosen words impale you on your own terrors. The girlf (this was a couple) was utterly on the brink of falling off the known universe over this. He was about to hit his own rather more prosaic roof. I told them to inform the Housing Trust they are entitled not to suffer from somebody else's mental illness. They think I'm right. So I'm a genius. Wargames averted. Make peace, people. It always works ..!

If I do blow my own trumpet, if I do say so myself blahblah how humble was I last night telling yous all about my banal dinner?!? It was a thick tomato sauce to go on "fusilli 98" - whatever the pasta's called. Having no herbs, no spices but Maggi Liquid Seasoning I was pretty stuck. So I think Maggi helped me out ... plus a tin of finely chopped tomatoes, a slowcooker I wasn't even sure still worked and a block of Iceland Mature White Cheddar £1 for a quarter kilo. That's a pretty good deal for cheese in this country...
... "courgettes", by the way, mean zucchini to you North Americans. Case any of you'd got to thinking I'd dollopped in additions from far shores. No these came from fields about an hour's drive out of town. Nothing more exotic than baby marrows, by all accounts ...

End of a long, long day has just set on me. Nighttime rules; one by one night's creatures show face. Emerging from their woodrotten holes to take charge of their domain. I wonder what persons I shall encounter now.

Whatever happens, good or bad, so long as I live to tell the tale-::-you know I'll keep you posted!