The little house of horrors

I received an e mail from my tenants to say they were moving out, so I hot footed it back to the UK to have a look at my little house, to say I gnashed my teeth and pulled my hair would be an understatement. I don’t want to embarrass Mr Jamie Kimpton and Miss Sarah Hudson so I will give them both an alias, so lets use the names Mucker 1 and Mucker 2

The Muckers

As I walked through my little house, my emotions changed from sadness to anger and finally to utter disbelief. let me fast forward to my bedroom. Originally it was decorated in white and magnolia, and had some nice solid wood bedroom furniture.

The wardrobe, taken from the video I made prior to them moving in.

My boring but sensible wall.

Now I know not everybody likes magnolia paint and wooden furniture, but can you imagine my horror when I found my bedroom had been transmogrified into a scene from the jungle book!

 

Apparently jungle decor is all the rage and is that my white chest of drawers from the other bedroom???  (Speech bubbles added by me)

My lovely wardrobe is missing and all that is left is one mirrored door. I think the muckers forgot to take it, when they took the rest of the wardrobe and my fridge.

The incident of the missing wardrobe

While I was trying to work out if I had somehow been transported into a parallel universe, a thought did occur to me…. Was Jamie, oops Mucker one, an animal in the bedroom?

Did he need the jungle decor to help him along a little bit?  I decided to do a little research on the internet and I came across the following picture of Jamie

 

 

Is he an animal in bed or is the gag to keep him quiet. Photo courtesy of http://www.websta.me/n/yngzeb

In the next post we will look at To Clean or not to Clean

 

The beginning

I had a dream of living in Italy and enjoying the sunshine whilst drinking glasses of wine. All I needed to do was convince my wife and sell my house. Surprisingly enough it was easier to convince my wife that la bella vita was feasible, selling the house was another matter altogether.

My wife flew to Italy to start work and to find a house to rent. I remained in the UK and started to paint the house in Magnolia, I ripped up the carpet in the kitchen and laid wood effect tiles and did all the things the television shows suggested. My house was now ready to sell.

The house was now ready

 

While I was sat in my freshly painted magnolia living room, holding onto my cup of tea (The coffee table had been removed to make the room look larger) I learned that people were queuing up to withdraw their money from Northern Rock. It was scandalous, how could a British bank fail and more importantly, how could I sell my house if the banks stopped providing mortgages. I received a phone call from my wife who was sat in a little house in Italy, she wanted to know if she should come home.

There were longer queues than at a woolworths sweety counter

As my dream of living in Italy started to collapse I suddenly had a great, Nah! a fantastic idea! We will rent the house I told her, lots of people need houses, when the market picks up we can put it up for sale. I try not to regret decisions I have made but……

 

The first tenant arrived with her bond, she loved the house and said she would stay for at least 5 years, this worried me a little because I was hoping the banks might sort themselves out and we might be able to sell the house in 2 years time. Her only concern with the house was the number of steps. We had stairs going down to the basement, stairs going up to the bedroom and even more stairs going up to the attic bedroom.  I did understand her concern, she was a little overweight.

The stairs were a problem

We agreed on no smoking in the house and no pets. She gave me £ 750.00 bond and one months rent, we shook hands and I caught the next flight to Italy.

For three months her rent arrived on time, I sat in Italy drinking cups of cappuccino, learning the language and relaxing, and then I received the e mail.

Hi it is John here, you might have a little problem. Do you remember Mark who lives next door to your house? Well his girlfriend woke up in the middle of the night and saw what she thought was a rat running across her bedroom floor. It took Mark two hours to calm her down, her screams even woke us up. 

Mark cornered the animal behind the wardrobe and it turned out to be the pet hamster that had escaped from your tenant house. I think you need to give Mark a ring, at the moment his girlfriend is sleeping at her mothers.

Hope you are enjoying the sunshine

John

I am not a Rat !!!

 

I thought John had had written the e mail after smoking some strange tobacco, after all my tenants agreement stated. NO PETS

I sent a quick e mail to John

Hi John, Are you sure the hamster belonged to my tenant? She is not allowed to have pets in the house?

All the best

Stressed Me

 

John replied

Yes it is definitely hers, she helped mark to catch it and anyway, if she isn’t allowed to have pets, why has she got a cockatoo in the lounge?

 

No pets not even cockatoos

It was at this point I decided to book a ticket to the UK.