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The Landlady

I am the sort of person who likes to get on with things – no dilly-dallying or fannying about on the fence for me. Almost without realising it, I usually manage to end up in control of most situations – apart from those involving The Boyfriend, who is very much in possession of a mind of his own and will therefore not be controlled by me, or anyone else for that matter. But I digress. The current situation I seem to have ended up in control of, is the acquisition of the freehold of the flat in Hastings belonging to Katy and I.

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The Landlady

I have just returned from a weekend in Denmark with The Boyfriend. Unfortunately, the day before we left, I went down with a stinking cold,which was really quite annoying as I hadn’t had one for four years. The Boyfriend, of course, in true man-flu fashion chose to have his cold last May on our trip to Greece, where he spent a great deal of time in bed, only managing to get up in order to watch an Arsenal/Chelsea match. Although I was determined not to let my cold ruin our trip, I thought my eardrums were going to explode as we came in to land. The Boyfriend suffers from extreme ear pressure when landing on airplanes, regardless of whether he has a cold or not, so we were both stone deaf when we arrived at Kastrup, which didn’t help with the confusing ticket-buying procedure that we had to negotiate in order to get into the city centre.

Things improved dramatically on arrival at our apartment, which looked just like an Ikea room-set and had everything one could wish for in a holiday let. The Boyfriend was delighted to find ample cooking facilities and I have never seen a man so overjoyed to discover a full set of cooking pots and a brand new frying pan, which still bore a price tag confirming its virgin status. Determined to christen the new frying pan, The Boyfriend immediately set off to the nearest Netto to stock up on provisions. By the time I’d unpacked my very small bag, the fridge was already stocked up and His Lordship was busy making salami and cheese toasties.

“By the time I’d unpacked my very small bag, the fridge was already stocked up and His Lordship was busy making salami and cheese toasties”

By our second day, we still hadn’t eaten out and, although we were determined to do so that very night, we got terribly waylaid by huge amounts of Tuborg lager (a blast from the past, for those of us who remember the 1970s) and ended up not eating anything at all. Much the worse for wear – Tuborg and Night Nurse are a cathartic, but not ideal combination – we went to bed at some ungodly hour and just managed to wake up in time to go back to the pub and watch the Arsenal/Man U game with a load of Danish blokes. Not my idea of the perfect holiday activity, I can tell you. Especially not when the Tuborg was £5 per pint and then they do that terrible thing of not filling it right to the top of the glass and leaving a huge frothy head on it. Because we were a little the worse for wear, we decided not to eat out that night either and The Boyfriend paid another visit to Netto and knocked up some chicken breasts in peppercorn sauce with sauté potatoes and green vegetables.

The following morning – our last day – I felt much better and decided to go for a jog in the nearby park. It was a clear, frosty day and no one was around because it was 8am on a Sunday morning. I was just admiring the autumnal colours of the trees, when a stern-looking young lady stepped out in front of me and said something firmly in Danish. I thought she’d said that running was forbidden, but told her I was English and didn’t understand. She then repeated in English that running was forbidden in the park, but I was allowed to walk. Kind of negates the whole point of going for a run, and I found it very strange, and told her so. It reminded me of a time when, out running on a beach in Essaouira, Morocco, I was chased by a furious policeman on a camel. Don’t you just love foreign regulations?

All washed up

For the past seven years, I have been lucky enough to possess a dishwasher. Well, not the same dishwasher in that whole period obviously, because they are built to last only about two years before they go horribly wrong, flood the kitchen and cost an entire month’s salary to repair. That is, of course, if the solid gold-plated part (possibly encrusted with the finest diamonds and emeralds) is available in Europe at that particular moment, which it never is.

Strangely enough, I seem to go through dishwashers at roughly the same rate as I go through husbands, boyfriends, etc. Stranger still, both current Boyfriend and dishwasher have withstood the most erratic period of my life so far with few complaints. The current dishwasher makes very strange noises – something like a cement-mixer with jellybeans inside it, but still manages to complete a cycle without flooding the kitchen, or filling it with smoke. This is in spite of the fact that, for the entire past year it has been used by people who were incapable of emptying the kitchen bin, or flushing a toilet. I suspect that they were using it to clean only two mugs at a time and therefore, the dishwasher enjoyed something of a holiday during their occupancy.

“My children might not have A-levels, or be bilingual, but they know how to wash up”

I currently have two temporary lodgers, who are leaving next week. They are both 18-year-old boys, thoroughly charming and bilingual, but seemingly incapable of either using the dishwasher or washing dishes in the traditional manner to a satisfactory level. If they do actually manage to wash any cups or glasses, they leave them to drain the ‘right’ way up, so that the water still sits in them. My children might not have Alevels, or be bilingual (or even be capable of speaking proper English) but they know how to wash up.

It’s no wonder The Boyfriend can’t even look in my fridge without almost having a seizure. He is permanently on a kind of Nazi cuisine duty. As a chef who works at least 16 hours per day, one would imagine that he’d be sick of the sight of food on his days off. One would be entirely wrong. Last week, he had three days off. On the first day, he made a game pie with root vegetable mash. This was in spite of the fact that, the night before, he and I had drunk ridiculous amounts of alcohol and as a result failed to get up until 3pm.

On the second day, I popped round on my way back from yoga, to discover him gleefully hacking three baby chickens to pieces. Breasts and legs were being carefully assigned to separate Tupperware containers, while the precious carcasses had their own special container for stockmaking purposes. Meanwhile, his flatmate – also a chef – lay on the sofa in disbelief, unwilling to have anything to do with food on his day off. On the third day, I had to go to Hastings to get mine and Katy’s flat valued. The Boyfriend phoned at around 4pm – but not to see how, or indeed where I was – but to find out whether I’d washed his chef’s whites. I could hear something spluttering away in the background. It was confit duck, which was to be eaten before he went to play football.

I’m sure most 5-a-side teams aren’t nearly as posh. Which is probably why they always win…

The Dead Sea Diaries

I have just returned, intact, from a whistle-stop tour of Jordan, which is an amazing and diverse country. I almost need a week off to recover, such was the pace of our travels.

On departure day, after a two-hour delay and a couple of large gins at Heathrow Airport, my friend Anne and I finally arrived at Amman Airport at 3am local time and were relieved to discover that the air was much cooler than it had been on the plane. After tackling a very odd queueing system in order to purchase a Jordanian visa, we were sped down to our hotel on the Dead Sea, which was about 70km away. En route, our taxi driver gave us half a bottle of water and urged us to watch what happened to it. We wondered whether we should mix it with the bottle of Bombay Sapphire we’d just purchased in duty free, but were so excited by the sight of a lit-up Jerusalem that we forgot all about it.

Down and down we sped, our ears popping wildly. Just 20 minutes later, our driver reminded us about the water and, upon further examination we discovered that the entire bottle had been sucked inwards. This was, apparently, because we were now 400 metres below sea level as the Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth. By now we were quite excited, although in the pitch darkness we couldn’t actually see the Dead Sea at all, just the lights of Israel twinkling on the far shore.

“We managed to survive on the nuts, olives and watermelon handed out by the infinity pools”

After far too few hours sleep for my liking, we awoke to the vast, breathtaking blue expanse outside our window. The sea itself is an intense blue and is surrounded by white shores (due to the salt residue) and beige mountains. The Rough Guide description of a ‘stinking, desolate lake’ was not far off. In fact, if it had not been for the seven (yes, seven) infinity pools spread out over terraces all the way down to the shore, I would have thought I’d landed next to a gravel pit on the moon. The hotel was huge and very difficult to negotiate via a complex lift system. It was almost lunchtime by the time we made it down to breakfast. The lobby area of the hotel was big enough to host the FA cup final and, because it was a brand new hotel, was spookily empty, to the point where I almost expected Jack Nicholson to lurch out of one of the many lifts with an axe in his hand.

It soon dawned on me that this was the most luxurious hotel I’d ever stayed in – and it was a fraction of the cost of similar hotels in the UK, or anywhere else, for that matter. What is more, our room rate included a free spa treatment, free breakfast (cue us stuffing smoked salmon in our handbags) and, most exciting of all, a complimentary mini-bar. We didn’t buy a meal in the entire two days we stayed, as we managed to survive on the free nuts, olives and watermelon handed out beside each of the infinity pools. I know, it’s a hard life.

But the best thing about this part of our trip was the Dead Sea and we regressed to kindergarten levels as we submerged ourselves in this bizarre lake. Even in one foot of water, it is impossible not to float on the surface like a cork and in places where it is 400ft deep, one cannot sink below the chest. It is also 32 degrees celsius, which is the temperature of a very warm bath. By noon, while trying to perfect a Brigitte Bardot-style exit from the water, we decided that we never wanted to go home. And we hadn’t even really been to Jordan yet…