MELLIPOP, INVADED BY STRANGERS & POLITICAL PROTESTERS

Ok, so I’ve got people coming around to the house today and tomorrow, which I truly detest. Not friends people, but workmen people and landlord people and all those types of unwelcome people who don’t bring wine or nibblies with them.

Despite my best intentions, I always end up schlepping around to greet them at the door with greasy hair, black tracky-pants and dog-chewed slippers and I know they think I’m a) a lazy dole bludger b) faking the disability pension or c) some dirty uni student who has never worked a day in her life.

Alternatively, the two who turned up today mentioned that they had already spoken to MY HUSBAND about doing the garden today. That’s the second time this has happened to me lately. I get my (recently connected) gas bill and they’ve taken the liberty of prefacing me as MRS Mellipop.

Now for the benefit of those who don’t know Mellipop personally, I am not part of the marital unit. Only those of you who do know Mellipop (and the Mr Mellipop in question) would know just how funny that was.

Though if Dickhead Howard gets in again on the weekend I just might consider it as a career option. Get married, squeeze out a few puppies, be a stay-at-home-feminine-mystique-mom and watch the money roll on in from all Howard’s Family Handouts (aka Howard’s Fuck You Singles I’m Going To Bleed You Dry policy). I’d make a bit more coin than this writing caper brings in, anyway. In John Howard’s Australia, if you ain’t a Procreater or a Pensioner you can go fuck yourself. If we weren’t good for the taxes he’d ship all us dirty Singles off to Nauru. Oh dear! Angry girl political rant slipped in there uninvited! I think I might ask her to stay for dinner.

So anyway, right this moment we have a couple of tradies in our backyard. This is the landlord’s second attempt to send someone around to take care of the garden. I sent the first guy away because he turned up unannounced at the door while I was at home on my own the other week, claiming to have been sent by the real estate agent and also claiming to have left a message on our answering machine.

My overly-suspicious Sydney-girl bullshit detector tweaked as I recalled all those urban myths about rapists posing as repairmen and gardeners as I dismissed the poor guy with some disdainful retort about us not even having an answering machine, delivered in my best “don’t think you can fuck with me I’m from the ‘hood” voice. So Ms Snooty (note: NOT Mrs) sends him packing with his rakes and his shovels, but without his dignity intact. Anyway, turns out he was actually sent by the real estate agent, both of whom had left messages on my partner’s voicemail…

Look, all I can say in my defence is that we’ve got an English Staffordshire Bull Terrier. A guard dog she is not. One of her best friends back in Sydney was the Konya Kebab delivery guy (best kebabs in Sydney – sorely missed). In fact, every stranger that turned up on our doorstep became an instant best friend. She gets beaten up by Jack Russell terriers. She’s scared of cats and lizards. Y’get what I’m saying?

So anyway, the second “intruder” of the day has just popped in. He’s from some rental company, here to pick up the bar fridge and TV we hired when we had just landed in WA without any possessions and soon realised that we’d kill each other without food and stimulation. The patronising sir in question has just given me a lecture on the correct way to handle a fridge that has been switched off. Which is, to leave the door open so that black mould does not form. See, I knew this already. I mean it’s really not my problem. I don’t get paid enough to deal with mould. Just take your fungal freakin’ fridge and get out of my house, ingrate! And no, we don’t want any more of your goddamn fridge magnets!

And tomorrow – worst of all – is a friendly pop-in from our landlords, who are over here from the UK and want to write their holiday off as a tax deduction. So I get to meet the people whose extravagant international lifestyle I am funding. Fabulous darling.