»23rd November 2006

Week Nine

So, what have I been up to this week? Actually, screw this week, last week was more interesting. Pull up a chair, sit down and I'll tell you. You might want to start drinking now.

Rent Me Still Suck!

In a shocking move last Tuesday, Rent Me, once again fucked things up! At around 10:30am, our flat was invaded by at least one shifty looking workman. I recieved a text message from Stew which read as follows:

"just wandered past your room and some guy was fitting a new bed o.O"

Upon reading this I immediately went into a Rent Me rage, and kicked over several nearby water coolers angry cop style, screamed at some nearby children who started crying and then shouted "REEEENNNT MEEEE!!!" as blue lightning ripped across the darkening sky. Seriously, it was awesome, you should have been there.

Sources differ, but here is an artists impression of what happened.

Anyway, after I'd calmed down during another awesome Kevin Lynch lecture, I headed off back to the flat with Mark to see what the fuck was going on. Now I'd mentioned to Rent Me in my letter that the beds needed replacing and you might remember back in August when the workman who first got me into the flat said they were going to replace the furniture. Well four months down the line from when it should have been done i.e. BEFORE our tennancy started, it looked as though we might actually be getting the new furniture which we were told would be in the flats back when we viewed the show flat back in May. This would have been a cause for celebration, but Rent Me, in their determination to continually piss me off even managed to fuck up what could have been their finest hour in not telling us some random guys would be taking out our beds at ten in the morning when had it not been busy tuesday, I would surely have been asleep.
We got back to the flat and indeed, our beds had all disappeared. There was a lot of shit under my bed like guitar cases and boxes and such which were now piled on the other side of my room on top of my computer. I was most displeased. It was noon and I was 15 hours in to what would become my 24 hour stint with no sleeping. My whole plan for the rest of the day had revolved around sleeping in the afternoon and now I had no bed. Most annoyed with Rent Me I did my usual thing of pacing around the kitchen ranting, I was especially pissed because I wouldn't be able to watch Scrubs and ABC1 all afternoon on my bed. Stew shortly re-appeared in the flat and was similarly dismayed when he found his bed had disappeared. He said he was off home, something I was prepared to do if a new bed didn't appear VERY SOON.
To try and off-set the fuckings I had been dealt by Rent Me I went into town with Stew who needed to go to Primark to get some new and- most importantly- clean clothes. I took the opportunity to go to Burger King, or Buggery King as I like to call it, yet again I was endlessly pleased by their bacon double cheeseburger and miscelaneous chicken product bite things. After Stew has disappeared into the train station I headed back to the flat. I was getting pretty concerned that I might not have a bed for quite a while, considering Rent Me's performance with the lock, it could be anything up to a month before this thing was sorted out. When I got back to the flat, I realised I'd gone out without my keys again, this of course I blamed on Rent Me, as the stress caused when they effectively broke into my flat and stole my bed caused forgetfulness, I was surely going through post-traumatic stress. I was getting ridiculously tired, and so headed off to the computer clusters at the library until Mark was free and I could pick up the keys from him. It was about 7:30pm when I got back to the flat, and as I'd found out from Mark earlier, new sofas had arrived AND it appeared we had new beds.

Four Months Late: One of the new seats and the new coffee table.

I was almost impressed, Rent Me had almost not made things a complete fuck up. The sofas looked quite nice and they hadn't replaced the fridge and freezer as they'd threatened, so there was no thawing food scattered across the kitchen. Of course we're talking about Rent Me, the new beds in our rooms weren't actually assembled and were still wrapped up, so I had to spend about half an hour struggling with endless polythene and fiddling with casters before I could finally stop fighting the waves of fatigue. If I wasn't so tired, I'd have been annoyed that Rent Me hadn't bothered to assemble the beds. I tried to fit my bedding. Something was wrong, nothing would fit! I didn't know what was going on, the beds certainly weren't doubles, as there was still some floor space left in my room, but my single bedding didn't fit. You guessed it, Rent Me only went and supplied us with three quarter size beds, halfway between a double and a single and notoriously difficult to find bedding for. Great, so now I'll have to cart my double bedding from last year over from Heckmondwike and it's going to be all slack and untidy. 25½ hours without sleep was more than enough for me, Rent Me had won this battle, but the war is not over yet.

Extar, over, out.

Mortal Kombat is a better film than most people are willing to admit.