A new person has moved in to our house.
That's right! Now I live with Landlady, Alcoholic Flatmate, and Pastry Lady. Pastry Lady is from North Carolina, speaks in a monotone drawl, and works in a local bakery. The day after she moved in I heard her singing Locked Out Of Heaven by Bruno Mars loudly with her door open. She is in her fifties.
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I have become very good at avoiding the rest of the house. I know that makes me sound like a terrible flatmate, and in all honesty I probably am. I imagine it comes off as rude and antisocial. So it was to my surprise that one day last week after I got back from work, Landlady knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to join the three of them for a meal. The three of them had planned to do it and there was no way I could really come up with an excuse not to, seeing as I would be in the house and my room is the closest to the kitchen. Maybe it would be fun!
Alcoholic Flatmate roasted a leg of lamb for the meal. Landlady and Pastry Lady roasted some vegetables. That was it. It wasn't the feast I had half-expected from a landlady who used to run a restaurant, but I wasn't put out. I had come to expect that Landlady operates on a plane separate from anyone else.
The lamb was not cooked through. I'm not sure why, but it cooked on one side and not the other. Landlady carved what she could of the cooked meat, except she said she had never carved meat before and so it all fell off in these odd little slivers. She then couldn't get through one bit and said it must have been bone, even though it couldn't physiologically have been bone in that bit of the leg - it transpired the next day that it was just tough fat. (Again, this woman used to run her own restaurant.)
Alcoholic Flatmate seemed reluctant to eat any of the lamb, and I had assumed initially it was because it hadn't been cooked through properly - although the bits we were served were fine. I was incorrect. It transpired that when he came back from Indonesia a couple of months ago, he had planned to be vegetarian. "But I've eaten lamb now!" he muttered irritably. The lamb that he had cooked for a house meal.
Landlady said that Alcoholic Flatmate liked meat but didn't like vegetables. This was a bizarre thing to say because he was eating the vegetables and not the meat. Indeed, Alcoholic Flatmate said "no, I like vegetables". Landlady said "you should eat more vegetables. And drink water. Isn't that right, CHRIS?" before pointedly staring at me with a grin on her face.
This was a pointed attack from Landlady on Alcoholic Flatmate because of that whole alcoholism thing he's got going on. Landlady doesn't drink at all - still dizzy the morning after if she has one glass, apparently, which I imagine is a bare-faced lie - and has confronted Alcoholic Flatmate about his alcohol problems. I only know that because she has told me she's done it, though. This is the first time I've been treated to a confrontation in person.
And I'm infuriated because she has dragged me into it. She has made it obvious that she has spoken to me about her problems with Alcoholic Flatmate, and expects me to back her up - despite the fact that we are having this meal in part because Alcoholic Flatmate barely even knows me. We can count the number of times we've seen each other on one hand. For me to be brought into that serious an issue which is really nothing to do with me is completely out of line. To laugh about it is cruel, and weird.
Alcoholic Flatmate didn't really like Landlady's tone. He tried to change the subject. We spoke about spiders, and how he had been bitten by a huntsman when he was younger because he was playing with it, and how he's been bitten by redbacks but he's never died so they can't be that dangerous and people have nothing to fear. Pastry Lady - who, yes, is there, having had to sit through Landlady pressing mine and Alcoholic Flatmate's buttons, not saying a word - told a story of when she saw a blue-ringed octopus at a friend's. (They are octopuses that are - obviously - incredibly dangerous because they are found in Australia.) "I don't know what possessed me to do it but I poked it with a stick," she said. "It did this wriggly thing and I saw its blue rings. Scary, but so cool!"
This didn't tickle Alcoholic Flatmate. "It only did that because you provoked it," he muttered. "I know," said Pastry Lady. "You shouldn't do that," he said.
Silence.
I turned to Pastry Lady. We spoke about the US and how humid it is and how I've been to North Carolina and alligators and and and. Maybe Landlady was jealous that she wasn't involved, because she interjected with "DO YOU LIKE BUTTER?"
"Yeah, I like butter," said Pastry Lady. "I'm a pastry chef."
"Do you put butter on sandwiches?" asked Landlady.
Pastry Lady explained that at her bakery, they don't put butter on sandwiches if they have mayo or relish.
"I tried a sandwich with peanut butter and jam on it," Landlady explained. "Peanut butter and jam sandwiches, they call them."
I stifled a laugh. Alcoholic Flatmate said "Yes. They are common. I had them as a kid."
Silence.
"So where is the bottle of wine we were going to have with this meal?" Alcoholic Flatmate asked.
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? I scream internally. Then it occurs to me that a functioning alcoholic doesn't necessarily remember everything that's happened in a conversation he is currently having. Maybe I should point out that Alcoholic Flatmate smells strongly of spirits and I can see his arm shaking whenever he reaches for something.
"No. You drink water," Landlady says.
"Alright, MUM," Alcoholic Flatmate retorts.
Pastry Lady and I start talking about Vegemite because this is Australia and we are foreigners.
"Where is the broom? I need to sweep up the bowl I broke earlier," Alcoholic Flatmate asks.
Landlady won't let him sweep it up and says she'll do it in the morning. This is something she does to me too - not letting me do something myself because she can do it. She likes to baby people. It's frustrating enough for me, never mind a fifty-year-old man.
Pastry Lady and I are talking about Uluru by this point. Alcoholic Flatmate has a story about Uluru!
"Yeah, when I was younger, me and a few mates went there. Had a few beers. One mate had a helicopter. So we were having beers, pilot included, yeah, and we flew up, yeah, landed on Ayers Rock, saw some people climbing up, we were just like, hey mate!" he laughed.
I contorted my mouth not into a smile, but at least into a shape it wasn't before, so he knew I had reacted. I objected pretty strongly to a) the drunk flying of a helicopter and b) landing it on something I knew was sacred to Aborigines and laughing about getting pissed there.
Silence! Ha ha ha.
"Does anyone want to play Bananagrams?" asked Pastry Lady.
"I'll play it after we go to the pub. Let's go to the pub!" said Alcoholic Flatmate.
Thankfully, Pastry Lady shot it down. "I have to get up early tomorrow," she explained. I did too.
We chatted about early mornings until Landlady cut us off with "THIS WAS A NICE MEAL".
Silence! Woops. Ha ha.
I slipped out of the room when Alcoholic Flatmate started arguing with Landlady about how she shouldn't insist on doing all the dishes.
I'm leaving Australia tomorrow!
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