The case of the missing banana

Sometimes I’m convinced that certain people were put on this planet with the sole purpose of raising my blood pressure. Of course, being a landlady, I bring a lot of it on myself, so it was no surprise that, when a new tenant moved in, I fully expected to require hospitalisation for the dreaded “blood boil” disease.

My suspicions were immediately aroused when, on his first night in the house, I was treated to the entire back catalogue of Natalie Imbruglia (i.e. “Torn” on repeat) until after midnight. I let it go, remembering he’d said he didn’t get up until 9.30, so I had the promise of a lie-in.

At 7am I was woken by the warblings of Robbie Williams.

I was more than relieved when he left the house at 7.30, as I was mere seconds away from ripping his door off its hinges, plucking him from his bed and chucking him out the window.

When I finally got up (many hours later), I took the opportunity to engage in some calming and captivating activity: I decided to put my new kitchen table and chair set together (Argos’s finest). With a drill in one hand and a bunch of screws in the other, I was making progress.

Then he came home.

He hovered over me, insisting that I let him take over. He persisted. I resisted. He stopped just short of saying that such things were a man’s job. I stopped just short of beating him to death with a chair leg. He must have sensed the hatred seething from every fibre of my being because, after several painful minutes, he finally left.

And so it went for several days, me hating him, him seeming to go out of his way to annoy me. He continued to ask ridiculous questions, claiming he didn’t know the “rules of the apartment”. OK, rule one: don’t call it an apartment, it’s a house! And you don’t head off for the day and leave the front and back doors open. It’s not the “rules of the apartment” you haven’t grasped, mate, it’s the rules of common sense and human decency.

If only they published an “Idiot’s Guide To Life: How To Avoid Pissing People Off And Being Stoned To Death As A Result”...

After several days, having pseudo-settled into an exasperating existence, I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that one of my bananas had disappeared from the fridge. Not being one to jump to conclusions, I texted him and demanded the immediate return or replacement of my beloved banana. He admitted to his fruity filching and assured me he would replace it.

The next day, I cautiously returned to the fridge to investigate. There was no banana. There was also now no bread.

He moved out last week.