Three amusing things

[radegund]

1. On a recent trip down the Long Mile Road we saw a sign that confirmed a long-cherished suspicion of mine. It occurred about four times, printed on plastic and tied to lampposts with string. It read "The Landlord Shop", with an arrow pointing to the left. So it's really true! There is a special shop where landlords can go to find the perfect chipboard tables, saggy sofas, poorly sprung mattresses and inelegant formica worktops with which to furnish their smelly dives. I knew it!

2. The same trip revealed the following, spotted in Homecarestylebase or whatever it's called:



That, in case the print isn't sufficiently clear from my camera-phone picture, is an Aspirational Chrome Tooth Brush Tumbler. Isn't it just inspiring?

3. On another note entirely, a few weeks ago we drove past my old school, as we always do on our way to my parents' house, and I saw that they'd put up a big banner on the railings: "Coláiste Íosagáin", it read (for that is the school's name - it translates as "Baby Jesus College"), in jaunty black and (I think) green letters. A couple of days later, driving back from my parents' after dark, I glanced over as we passed the school and noticed that the (?)green letters weren't visible under the streetlights. As the colours alternated letter by letter, the sign now began with the bold, black, foot-high legend CLIT. And that was the last I saw of it: by the following Sunday it had gone. I'd like to think that this was a subversive attempt to promote unashamed sexual pleasure in young women, but unless the school's ethos has changed out of all recognition since I was there ... well, no.

Comments

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Huh, our landlords bought their stuff at auction. :) (And thankfully none of it's bad; it just tends to be...orange.)

[radegund.livejournal.com]

I'm sure lots of landlords do - in fact, I assumed that most did. But I'd been joking for years that there was a special shop that sold the sort of furniture you only see in cheap rented accommodation, and so I was very tickled to find that I'd been right all along!

Or ... no. Or ... hm. You don't think I CALLED IT INTO BEING with my jests, do you?

[biascut.livejournal.com]

No, we live around the corner from The Landlord Shop as well.

I wish we could go there and buy a new landlord.*

* 54 hours without heating or hot water and counting.

[ailbhe]

The Christmas before Radz or I had babies, I was 5 months pregnant, and mum's heating failed 24 hours before we got to her house. She ended up turning two of her hired hands away because they took so long to get there that she'd called someone else. I'd forgotten that.

What does the CAB say about you calling someone yourself and taking it out of the rent?

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Someone from the agency did actually come out last night and re-pressure the system so that we could switch it back on. And now I'm off work waiting for a British Gas engineer, expecting that he's going to confirm what the agency's plumber said, which is that the whole heating circuit needs examining and the boiler itself needs replacing. WARMTH, BLESSED WARMTH!

Haven't spoken to the CAB yet, because I don't really know how to contact them out of hours. What I do want to remember to do is not lose the rage even now we do have heat again, because the bloody agency have got away with this for Far Too Long!

[kasku.livejournal.com]

Oh GOD. I have a picture on my phone from Homebase which is of one of their professionally printed very large static store posters, which reads: "Plastic kitchenware available in sheek matching colours."

Oh ARGH!!

[ailbhe]

I am having weird toe-clenching moments of ex-proofreader-delight here. That's amazing.

[kasku.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was amazing! I just sort of gawped at it for a couple of minutes in sheer disbelief.

[leedy.livejournal.com]

SHEEK! Oh, that's amazing.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

SHEEK!

Oh, that's delightful!

[ailbhe]

I knew all that blue carpet had to come from somewhere. The landlord shop, I always thought, had two sections: Poor People's Landlords and Rich People's Landlords, not to be confused with "incredibly wealthy people who get to choose their own furniture" etc. Poor people get what their grandmothers discarded at the end of the 70s, mysteriously badly fitted into rooms it was never intended for, and rich people get, well, it used to be magnolia, beech-effect veneer, and blue.