My landlady, the bint

If you're a friend of mine on Facebook then I imagine the most you could possibly have picked up about my landlady is that she's got a photo of herself below a hologram of Jesus in the living room, and has a fridge magnet of a scantily clad lady in Amsterdam's red light district next to a picture of Jesus with the caption "JESUS, I trust you!":

She isn't one of those rabidly devout religious folk you sometimes meet who talk about Jesus and try to convert you. The only time she talked about religion with me wasn't actually really about religion at all. In fact, I didn't really understand the story, but it went something like this:

Landlady was in France. One of her nephews lives in Italy. I don't know why Landlady was in France rather than Itality, but she had a flight from an airport in France to Rome. Landlady was meant to meet a friend of a friend who was going to take her to the airport, but she didn't. (I don't know why.) Landlady was therefore in France with no way of getting to the airport. Landlady doesn't speak French. Landlady eventually got to the airport after confusing taxi drivers and various locals and shopkeeps, but the flight was cancelled, with the next one only available two days later.

There was then a bit of the story that I glazed over at, or perhaps it just didn't really make sense: Landlady was at the airport, or a train station, or a bus stop. (I'm reasonably sure it was one of the three.) Landlady approached a well-dressed man and asked him if he spoke English. He said he spoke a little bit. At some point Landlady found out that he was a priest from the Vatican. He might have told her this, and no, I don't know how he would have proved it, but this is what she told me.

The priest helped Landlady get to Rome. I really don't know what the sequence of events was. I don't think she could possibly have flown if there was no scheduled flight, but equally I don't remember her saying she got a train. Let's just assume it was some kind of Vatican Voodoo. Regardless, she was in Rome. And the next bit of the story I remember is "and then I saw the Pope!"

This is part of my broader problem with Landlady: she doesn't talk to you, she talks at you, and that means that you don't engage with anything she says, making it really hard to keep track of a conversation. But she doesn't engage with anything I say either. A few days ago, I asked her how to turn the oven on because it was turned off at the mains and I couldn't work out where that was.* She asked me what it was I wanted to cook; it was just a frozen pizza. She decided I should use her pizza maker, and then took the pizza and did it herself. But this was a pizza maker, and I didn't want to make a pizza. I had one. She had taken it from me. The pizza maker is basically a hot plate, so the dough got hot and the top was still frozen. Cue the uncomfortable conversation of "I think your pizza's done!"; "It isn't - it's still frozen on top..."; "oh... are you sure?"

How could I not be sure about that?

So I put it in for longer and sat and listened to something or other she was talking about - most of her stories about her recent trip to Europe were about the different hotels she stayed in - and when it was eventually ready and I was actually eating, she started asking me questions. For fuck's sake, Landlady, now? 

I still don't know how to turn the oven on.

I am generally pretty annoyed with Landlady because I feel like she mislead me when we spoke before I moved in. I asked if you got a lot of spiders and creepy-crawlies here, to which she said no, not here. A few days after I moved in she says the suburb attracts cockroaches. She said before I moved in that she kept herself to herself and spent most of her time upstairs. My experience is that if I'm in the kitchen she will stop watching TV and come and talk at me for the entire time I'm there.

"Are you having soup?"
"Yeah."
"It smells nice."
"Yeah, it's goo-"
"Is it from a tin?"
"Yeah."
"Oh well. It still smells nice! It smells nice. Sit in the other seat!"
"I'm okay here, it-"
"The cricket's on, you can watch the cricket!"
"I've never watched crick-"
"Don't you like cricket? You can see the cricket."
"I wouldn't understand it."
"You don't like cricket?"
"I don't like cricket."
[Landlady sits and watches me eat soup (which smells nice, even though it's from a tin) while explaining cricket]

I WANT TO EAT SOUP IN SILENCE

Her latest trick is hiding all the cutlery. I genuinely have no idea where she's put it. What was formerly the cutlery drawer has nothing in it. The cynic in me wonders if it's a ploy to make me talk to her, because I'll have to ask where it all is eventually.

The thing that is most infuriating about living with Landlady is her complete lack of understanding of jobs. Landlady ran her own restaurant here for a number of decades, so I don't imagine her experience of getting a job is much like mine. I have been spending every day sending out applications for jobs that employers don't even bother replying to, such is the disinterest in hiring people on my visa. Landlady suggests I become a bank teller. That is a terrible suggestion. "You should look at working in a bank. Who knows, you might be able to get work as a teller or something. You should sign up to an agency. They might be able to get you work in a bank."

My visa doesn't let me work for one employer for more than six months. Why would a bank ever hire me? Why would they want to train tellers when they know they'd get nothing out of their investment? Of course, I don't say that to Landlady. I say, "maybe... I'm just looking for anything I can get at the moment."

"You should go to restaurants around here. You should get a job, earn some pocket money while you're here." This is infuriating, because I genuinely don't know what else she thinks I would be doing. Of course I need a job. I have told her that I am trying to find work. It's all I do. And it's not for "pocket money" - it's to cover all my costs of living, you know, like employed people have to.

In fact, I had a trial shift today working in a kitchen of a small cafe. They were the only people to respond to me out of the billion** applications I sent out, and while I didn't aspire to get paid for washing dishes for a third time in my life, it's work. It is a massive twenty minute bus ride away though, so Landlady's response was "oh - you should try and get a job locally - it would save you the costs of travel. Why don't you work in a café here?"

Why DON'T I work in a café a minute's walk away? It seems so obvious now! I should have just gotten a job there. My mistake.

I hate Landlady.
 
*I'm pretty sure you wouldn't know either - the light switch for the kitchen isn't even in the kitchen. What stupid kind of house is this?
**approximate figure