There seems to be lots of mysterious activity in this House of Bedsits of late.
After the manically painting Polish man of late August / early September had finished his work (who I nearly knocked of his ladder coming out of my room one night), the next thing that occurred was the installation of the Creepy Green Lights.
I assume that this was to circumvent the problems caused by the timer switches, which always seemed to pulunge you into darkness when you were halfways up or down a flight of stairs. I imagine that the continual leaving-on-of-the-toilet-lights-at-night may also have been an influencing factor also. Though this quite annoyed me at first, I discovered that creeping along in a darkened landing in the small hours, still half asleep and fumbling for your own door was not an advisable or enjoyable reality.
The Creepy Green Lights are kept on all of the time. During the day you don't notice them. If the landing lights are on you don't notice them. If you leave the bedsit in the middle of the night you do. You are immediately plunged into a world of dim-green nightmare. Everything looks like it belongs to the interior of a nastily haunted house. Woe betide anyone who actually runs into anyone else when using the Creepy Green Lights as navigation, for then, previously normal people adopt the features of some childhood-nightmare come to life.
Or, with the Creepy Green Lights on, you can pretend that you are in some futuristic but decaying space-craft, creeping about endless corridors, hunting down malevolent extra-terrestrial forces.
What the Creepy Green Lights don't do is actually illuminate anything. Visibility is no better, really, than when everything was total darkness, except now you have the conviction that the house is in fact nastily haunted.
Other bedsit mysteries have made themselves apparent recently too, namely my landlord's strange obvsession with my furniture. 'Is the futon yours?' he asked me back in August when I last saw him. I told him that it came with the room. 'I do not remember it' he puzzled 'would you like a proper bed?'. I said I was fine with the futon because I did not want to give my landlord any trouble after him being quite okay with waiting two months for the rent whilst I was waiting for Housing Benefit over the summer. 'Is the sofa tours?'. I agreed with him on this point. I found the sofa on a fogbound night back in March. Shortly before seeing the Swans on Wednesday night I heard from him too. After having a yearly inspection, he discovered that my ceiling was in a 'very bad state' and was going to hire someone, possibly the manically-painting Polish man, to re-paint it. I talked to the landlord today too, organising when the painter was going to come around. 'I have never had a ceiling look like that before. It is a mystery'. A mystery indeed, this curious brown stain in the corner of my room. It grew over a couple of days and then stopped. Some water leakage possibly. I do not know. 'Is the furon yours?' he asked again. 'No, no, it came with the room,' I reassured him again. 'That is strange. Perhaps somebody left it'. There was a silence. 'Would you like a bed instead? It will take up much less room.' I said I would very much like a bed, which seemed to please my kindly landlord.
The last mystery of the bedsit is a note I found pushed under my door a couple of days ago. 'If you have my clothes airer please bring it back upstairs as I need to use it!! No:14'. I imagine that this same note was pushed under all the doors in this house of bedsits as I also found a couple of these notes where the post usually sits in the hallway.
The note brings up a number of questions. Why was the said airer not kept in the bedsit itself (well I can see why the bedsits, or my bedsit anyway, is very small) and where was it kept? I have not seen any airers on the ground, first or second floors of this building. Why does the mysterious no:14 think that people from the ground, first and second floors would creep up to the higher floors in search of airers that would happen to be left randomly about?
The number in no:14 refers, presumably to the bedsit number. There are 3 bedsits per floor, and I am on the second floor, so if my calculations are right, then there would be 3 bedsits on the floor above me (10,11 and 12) which would mean that no:14 would be on an ever higher floor, possibly an attic level, shared with no 13 and maybe even a no 15.
What would it be like on these mysterious upper floors? Why have I not thought about them before, just looked at the door that leads up the third floor and thought nothing of it? What might be up there?
Perhaps the greatest mystery to the note is that he or she does not give her name, but refers to themselves as the number of the flat they live in. I imagine going up there and knocking on their door; 'hello no:14, I am no:7, I have come about the mystery of the airer'.
I would not be able to offer any solution to the mystery though, but really, I am afraid that if there is any sighting -let alone conversation- between anyone who lives in this house of bedsits, the universe may well very end.
If everyone else thinks the same, I think the airer may well be lost forever.
Sorry no: 14.