Strangers on a blog

My dear blog reader, have I told you how good you look today, how funny you are, how intelligent? What a sheer pleasure it is to see you today. Today of all days, today being the day when I may need to ask a teensy weensy favour…

But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s turn the clock back to 6.30pm last night when I got home from work. There I was quite innocently wandering into the kitchen to cook my dinner and I thought I would drink some squash while it was cooking. But, as much as I looked I couldn’t find the squash bottle anywhere (and still can’t for that matter). At which point a voice came from above that the bottle was in a cupboard somewhere and there were people coming round to view the house at 7pm. Just to clarify, it was my landlady calling down from her bedroom, not God.

So I put my dinner on quickly and thought I’d better look at my room and give it a quick tidy. So I wandered upstairs and opened my bedroom door to be presented with a room that was substantially tidier than when I had left for work this morning. At this point my landlady appeared and said that she’d given my room a quick tidy and a hoover and a dust. When I removed my jaw from the floor, I said a somewhat weak “Erm… right…” whilst my brain is screaming at me “She’s been in your room! She’s moved your stuff! She’s looked through your things!”

My jaw dropped again when I realised she had:

• Removed the rug (which does actually belong to me) from my room. Apparently they make rooms look smaller. It’s a small room! It doesn’t just look small, it is small!

• Moved a card my mum had sent me that was on the bookcase by my bed and stuck a pin through it on my notice board. I was actually quite upset that she had kind of defaced the card. What difference does one card make?

• Moved some paperwork which included some stuff that was personal. Not anything embarrassing, but personal nonetheless.

• Hidden my (empty) bin.

• Put my Easter eggs in the cupboard under my bed. I realise I shouldn’t still have Easter eggs, but I do. So she looked under my bed, where I could have been storing all sorts of things and put the eggs under there. Where actually I keep my dirty clothes. Nice... It’s ok, I won’t offer you any of the eggs when I do eat them.

• Went into my bathroom and hid all my shampoo and soap and other bathroom stuff, including the spare toilet paper. Somehow, I don’t think they would have been surprised to see toilet paper, but maybe that is just me? And… and… removed my towels and put in one of her own instead. I have no idea what was unacceptable about my towels but they too did not pass muster.

Fortunately I was going out last night because I was not in the mood to be at home with my landlady. The thing is that the estate agent has a key anyway so they can let themselves in whenever they want, so am I going to have to hide my towels every day?

Anyway dear reader, I can hear you asking where you come in to all of this. Well… have you ever seen the film or read the book ‘Strangers on a Train’? Basically, two strangers meet on a train (you’d guessed that, hadn’t you?) and they strike up a deal that they will each kill someone for the other person and because there is no connection between them no-one would ever suspect them of the crime. I think one of them wants his wife killed and the other his father. So each of them agrees and then one of them carries out his side of the bargain and the other one tries to back out of it. The point is that most of my readers don’t actually know me in person and, well, I was kind of wondering if you might be able to help me out in this spot of bother by, er, bumping off my landlady? I seem to be very blood thirsty lately, but the provocation has been great. How would anyone ever connect us, surely it’s the perfect murder? So, I’m hoping that you will take pity on me by bumping off my landlady, hiding her body somewhere and maybe help me come up with a way to pretend she is still alive so that I can continue to live in the house. I don’t think that is too much to ask.

The slight downside to this plan is that if we are to follow the story properly then I should be offering to do something for you in return, but I would remind you that I am very squeamish and cannot stand blood or gore. But if you wanted me to do something in return then I’ll see what I can do – however it can’t involve me having to expend any energy or do anything that requires a skill because I am kind of lacking in both areas.

So feel free to send a brown envelope containing your ‘price’ for assisting me in my hour of need to my e-mail address and we’ll see if we can strike a deal.