Learning to Argue

I'm beginning to quite enjoy arguing you know. Before I moved into this house I can honestly say I'd never had an argument in my life. 'Disagreements' and short-lived sulks yes, but never a full-scale shouting and finger-pointing session.

This all changed a couple of weeks ago when my friend came to stay. My crazy witch housemate stormed into the room where we were sleeping at 8am on a Sunday morning, dramatically snapped on the light and started a full-scale barney in her pajamas.(If you've read anything else about this deranged woman you'll know that the actual details of the argument are likely to be non-sensical and inconsequential so I won't bother going into them). As my friend cowered next to me in the bed, I sat up and gave as good as I got, even trying out a bit of experimental finger jabbing to make my points. We had a good 20-minutes of this, then she finally realised that she'd been falsely accusing me of something the whole time and slunk off. Afterwards I really felt like we'd cleared the air- even if her accusations were crazy at least she'd got them out in the open instead of stomping round with a face on. Despite the fact that we don't particularly like eachother we reached a sort of uneasy peace afterwards that was a million times better than the ignoring eachother stage.

Yesterday night it was E's turn to argue with her. What started off as a conversation about cleaning the house turned into another raise-the-roof barney. To his credit, E is somewhat more talented in the art of arguing than I am and came out with some fantastic Eastenders-worthy lines such as "you're an evil witch" and "if you don't stop shouting I'll throw you off the balcony and you'll never be allowed back into this house". Sonia's responses were equally as impressive "who the hell do you think you are?" "I'm not scared of you or anyone else", "You should respect me, especially after I used to iron your shirts for you before you had a girlfiend. Your girlfriend doesn't even know how to iron". Thoroughly enjoyable stuff.

index finger for yes, middle finger for no

Learning to drive is never easy, as anyone who's tried to master the art will know. Therefore I was fully behind E when he decided to convert his Albanian lisence to an Italian one. It didn't seem too tricky a process- he just had to take the theory test and then be observed a bit driving. He studied hard, battling through the pages-long manual, following the text with his finger as he mouthed the words to himself (he left school at 14 and is a slow reader). He took the test the day after the accident on two hours sleep and unsurprisingly failed, although not by much. He re-booked and took it again a month later, and this time failed by one mark.

Here comes the moral dilema: being bored and frustrated by the process he then told me he was going to 'buy' his lisence. He proceeded to phone around various 'contacts' at the driving school agency to get some prices. I was, and still am being very purse-lipped and English about the whole thing, despite being simultaneously fascinated. "But how does it work?" I asked him. "Well, I give the guy a few hundred euros now, and then the rest on the day of the exam".

The day before the exam he went to meet the contact to discuss how it would be done, and it was explained that for every question read out the examiner would raise one finger slightly if the answer was 'yes' and another if it was 'no'. Yesterday he set off happlily to the test centre and handed over the rest of the cash- half for the contact at the driving centre and half for some senior guy who works for the state. I saw him later that day. "Well...?" He laughed; "I passed" and then "why are you still pulling those faces? Everyone does it".

I'm still not sure how I feel about this. If 'everybody does it' then perhaps the driver who broke my leg did it too. Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive and within a year or so will be pushing envelopes under tables left, right and centre too.

The Best Hotel in Town

Well, it's definitely been an eventful few days. I had two friends over to visit and they certainly made an impression on the household. Having heard legendary stories of housemate Sonia's jealousy of any females that enter within a 20-mile radius of her boyfriend I had a few apprehensions about two of my friends staying in the next room. However I reckoned that we wouldn't be in the house much anyway, and seeing as they couldn't speak Italian or Albanian, opportunities to steal Marco away would be fairly limited for them.

The first night was fine, they were already in bed when we got back. My friends began to accuse me of exaggerating (they were expecting her to be waiting up with a kitchen knife), when we heard the very distinct sound from the next room of a key being turned in a lock. Marco safely locked in the bedroom away from pyjama-clad English seductresses all went quiet again and we giggled ourselves to sleep.

The next day unfortunately we didn't fare so well. Making ourselves a furtive plate of pasta in the empty house, the couple returned home. Marco, being a normal, sociable kind of chap started practicing his English with us until a screech from the other room interrupted the fledgling English lesson: "Come here, NOW". Marco scuttled off and I shushed my friends in order to hear better and translate a one-way shouting match that went something like this: "why the f**k are you trying to talk English? I'm your girlfriend. I'm Romanian. Why don't you speak Romanian with me instead of trying to speak that s****y language" etc etc. A bit later Marco returned looking a bit embarassed and put on some music. Some music that unfortunately happened to be in English, and which unfortunately my foolish friend started nodding her head to. The witch was watching and listening and the screech came again- "change this music IMMEDIATELY". Why do you suddenly want to listen to English music? Put on some Romanian music you ignorant bastard." etc etc. I swear I'm not making it up, there really does exist a woman this crazy.

We hid out on the balcony for the rest of the night with our bottle of Amaretto and drunk enough of the stuff that it seemed really funny when later on one of the friends accidentally walked in on Marci in the loo. She legged it as the shouting started and we spent the next 10 minutes having silent, painful laughing fits.

The last couple of days we managed to stay for the most part out of their way, and whenever we saw her around she studiously ignored us all. In fact she's still ignoring me despite the fact that the wanton seductresses have departed the village. I sat E down for a 'talk' last night, insisting that we move house as soon as humanly possibly, explaining that while he escaped the house every day I was consigned to being near the crazy witch with only a pair of crutches for defence. However, as luck would have it my old job phoned me today asking me to cover a few hours. I went to see them and they gave me a timetable with a non leg-wearying few hours in the afternoon and evening, with the probability of getting more when I finish the holiday cover. This means both E and I will be working hours where we can essentially avoid ever seeing the witch, and therefore there's no urgent rush to move (the low rent we pay makes it worth putting up with the odd spell being cast on us).

Oh, did I mention I've got another friend coming to stay this weekend..? Hopefully I'll make it out alive to tell you what happens next week!