Round Green saga

That’s it. Another house move.

We’re now in an area of Luton called Round Green. In socio-ethnographic terms (and there aren’t many terms to beat ‘socio-ethnographic’) we’ve moved from middle class Indian to working class British. I shall miss the 5-series BMW with the number plate ‘5 51NGH’ but some of the local pubs may make up for it.

A local pub, with a misleading name: it's actually brown and rectangular

The move itself was as painful as usual. We’re still surrounded by boxes to empty, pictures to hang, bits and pieces to sort. A real pain just six months after the last time.

So ‘why did you move?’ I hear you ask. And well you might.

Our landlady at the last place was full of charm, good sense and honest principle. She made it clear that she expected us to be long-term tenants. And yet before long she was having some nasty spats with Danielle, which was odd since in general I’m the one who falls out with people.

For instance, I find it difficult to hide the feeling that the person I’m dealing with is being a complete moron. I’ve got the scars to prove it, above all in the form of three sackings – all dressed up as redundancies, of course, but I’ve never been made redundant by a boss who sensed I had a high opinion of the job he was doing.

Not that I've had that opinion of many bosses, come to think of it.

Danielle’s much more emollient. She doesn't fall out with people. And yet – our landlady simply couldn’t get on with her. Things quickly degenerated to the point that she asked us to move out at the first break point in our lease, after six months.

The Round Green place is bigger and warmer than the last one, and it actually costs less. Its greatest advantage is that it’s on a quiet residential street rather than the main road to Bedford. On the downside, at the last place we could cross the road to parkland whereas here the nearest extensive bit of green land is a few minutes drive away.

But we had no choice, so we gritted our teeth and made the move, wondering all the time why we’d been forced into it. Until yesterday, that is. When we discovered a planning application from our former landlady to extend the place we’d left and convert it into two flats, the latest step in a project she’s been working on for a couple of years or more.

It was quite an eye-opener. Behind the early charm and willingness to be helpful, behind the next phase of increasingly bitter rows, behind the final stage of pushing us out, was a long-term hidden agenda that completely contradicted her spoken assurances.

It’s just as well I realise that a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Otherwise I might be inclined to indulge in a little cynicism about my fellow man. Or fellow woman in this instance.