The Other Meeester M
A week ago I posted a little photo of Meeester and I outside our first ever shared home. A few of my local readers even recognised the street.
There are a thousand stories I could tell about our time there but for now I want to concentrate on one aspect of the place; our neighbour, the Other Meeester M.
Yes, believe it or not, the man across the hall from us shared exactly the same first and last name as Meeester. And it was a nightmare.
The Other Meester was Homunculus of a man of indeterminate age living on the fringes of society. He had one tooth that was apparent, an almost visible haze of age old body odour and a penchant for invading personal space.
His flat smelled of dog shit even though he did not own a dog.
Although I never ever went inside the flat I also knew he didn’t have an inside toilet, as he would use the one on the stairs left over from the times that the now dead tenants of the building used back in the day.
One person that should have been dead but wasn’t, was his mother who still lived with him. I only ever saw her once or twice when she was wheeled out to an ambulance taking her to some old folks’ home for respite care. She did look like a corpse but comparing her to Norman Bates’s shrivelled Mummie Mummy would be lazy writing. Suffice to say, she must’ve been in her late nineties at least.
Given that the flat was a tiny one bedroomed flat that only had enough space for a single bed in the bedroom (if our bedroom was anything to go by), questions arose as to just what the sleeping arrangements were Chez Other Meeester and his zombie mother. One could only guess… and then shiver.
The worst thing about the Other Meeester was his attempts to inveigle himself into our daily life. He was clearly a lonely man, and at first you couldn’t help but feel his pain as he tried to chat to you in the hallway. But chatting to him was a mistake, as it only encouraged him to be more of a nuisance and any sympathy you might have had didn’t last long. In no time at all it appeared that every time we opened the front door, there he would be a nanosecond later in front of you, as if by chance.
Soon we became adept at bracing ourselves for our exit out of the flat in record time, getting from flat door to out on the street in a time that Roger Bannister could only dream of. Our friends would be warned to knock on our front window rather than ringing the buzzer and alerting him to the presence of fresh meat.
After a couple of months of avoiding bumping into him, the Other Meeester began to notice that we weren’t going to be his best mates after all, and he turned a little nasty. He began to misuse his identity as the Other Meeester M to accept parcels and letters that didn’t belong to him. The Real Meeester M worried that one day, he would find himself with a completely stolen identity, banished to the fringes of society himself whilst the Other Meeester lived the life that was rightfully his.
The Other Meeester M also started to complain about any noise. Any noise at all. Previously happy to hear the sound of our front door being opened, signifying a chance at much longed for company, he began to complain that we made too much door noise. Previously trying to invite himself in if he heard any music or visitors’ chatter, he would arrive and complain as soon as the radio was turned on, or we had any guests. Our life wasn’t our own. It also belonged to the Other Meeester M.
We couldn’t win because whether our buddy or our nemesis, there he would be; one inch away from your face, stinking of fire-damaged charity shops, rotting carcasses and dog shit with his foam edged toothless mouth dangerously close to spitting distance from your clamped-shut, bacteria-avoiding mouth and nostrils. I think even my pores would seize up in case of infection when he approached me.
Years after we moved out, the spectre of the Other Meeester M haunted us once more as during a mortgage application and credit check, the Other Meeester M’s dubious credit history threatened to stall the purchase of our current house. What a mess and what a challenge to prove that My Meeester M was not the Other Meeester M.
The Seven Ages of Bed
On the occasion of the purchase and delivery of our biggest and most expensive bed to date (see above) I give you the seven ages of bed: Misssy and Meester style.
The Age of the Porch Bed
When I first met the lovely, golden haired rock God that has become Meeester M, he lived in a porch. I lived with my parents, having skulked penniless back from an ill-advised sojourn in the Basque Country teaching English. So the only place to be “alone” was on the sofa that Meeester called bed, in a porch, with a wasps’ nest.
Along with about 500 pet wasps we would also be joined by:
1. Gerald, the 400-year-old cat. A more joyless creature you have never met. He was a Rottweiler of a cat. Never purred; was too macho for purring. Didn’t like cat food as he preferred to crunch the skulls of baby bunnies at the bottom of the sofa you were sleeping on in the middle of the night.
2. Ian and Catherine, the Christian couple who would turn up and watch telly with us, stopping us from having sex. Well, if they couldn’t, then neither could we. Fair’s fair.
3. “Fuck Off Davy”, the young lad from next door who would turn up to ask Meester to tune his bass guitar as soon as Ian and Catherine had left, and we were thinking about “retiring”. He was called “Fuck off Davy” for obvious reasons. If the poor lad only knew. If you’re reading this davy, I’m sorry.
Oh who am I kidding? Fuck off, Davy.
4. Donald who would pop in on a Sunday morning to get Meester to help him sing to the Woodlands Hospital Kids.
Donnie would invariably not know the difference between long haired sleeping Meeester and long haired sleeping Misssy and would arrive in bikers’ leather and visor-shut helmet and sneak up closely on sleeping Misssy (for it always seemed to be me) and scare the bejesus out of her.
5. Lovely Tony who was our best man. Tony doesn’t ever remember ever asking Meeester to live in his porch, but let him stay there for 2 years.
There are actually two epochs in the Age of the Porch Bed; they are the Sofa Epoch and the Single Bed Epoch. Tony realised that Meeester was going nowhere and got him a real bed. In his best man’s speech one he told our friends and family that when he moved the sofa to install the bed, he found 127 empty crisp packets that Meeester had stuffed down the side. I’ve just glanced over at Meester and he has an empty bag next to him right now….he better not stuff it behind the sofa.
The Age of the Single Bed
I managed to move out of home and rented a flat. Meeester followed, leaving La Vida Loca d’el Porchio behind him.
The bedroom was only big enough for a single bed. Upstairs we had delightful neighbours called “The Shaggers”.
The guy must have worked on the rigs, as there would be silence for a fortnight. Then once a fortnight of beautiful sleep was over, the seal noises would begin. All bloody night, every bloody night. At first it was funny. After weeks of incessant shouting, screaming, yelping, howling, barking and shrieking, it became a nightmare. I remember being so sleep depraved that I burst into tears at work because someone told me to “Chill out” about it.
Around that time Richard and Judy had a phone in about noisy neighbours and some poor cow phoned in about the same problem and fuckwit Richard laughed and got the same response.
Noisy shagging neighbours are not funny. How do you complain? Well, you just can’t; simple as that.
For months we never saw, only heard, The Shaggers. Then we met them on the stairs. She was about 16 stone, wild ginger hair and Christopher Biggins red rimmed glasses. He was a wee bald, skinny, moustachioed guy. The image of them at it was too much. We had to move out.
The Age of the Second Hand Double Bed
Meeester and Misssy move into bought flat. Spend all their money on buying flat and forget they have no furniture. Misssy’s parents give them the very bed they bought when they first moved into together.
Meeester and Misssy then go on to conceive Indy in the very bed that Missy was conceived in. There’s either something magical about that, or something freaky. I can’t decide.
The Age of the New Double Bed
Two weeks before Indy graces the world with his wonderful presence, a gigantic spring the size of Zebedee boings through the mattress cover on Misssy’s side and threatens to skewer both her and unborn Indy. New bed is bought with money for Indy’s University Education.
When Misssy’s waters break in the middle of night both parents-to-be are more anxious about ruining the new mattress than the impending miracle (horror) of childbirth and the start of their lives as parents (end of their lives in the pub).
The Age of the Superdooper king-size Monstero of a Bed
And thus begins the age of the Superking Sized Monster that I bought from M and S. It was delivered last week. It is so massive that Meeester and Misssy no longer need to touch or even see each other whilst in bed. Perfect!
In fact, we could have done with this a lot sooner to accommodate the two sneaky Petes (Indy and Misssy) that routinely burrow in between us in the dead of night and force us to cling to either side of the bed for fear of falling out completely.
The Future Age of Martini Bed?
Meeester says that twin beds, Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke style, are only a matter of time…..
******For any pedants out there: I know there’s only six ages here, but the seventh is too depressing and seven sounded better*******
