Thursday 1 March 2007

Visitors from Sydville

Anna the Activist spent last night at Hôtel Harlot after a hard day of saving the world, board meeting style. The accommodations at Hôtel Harlot are still primitive, on account of my delayed acquisition of spare beds, but we managed to find a foam mattress stuffed above my wardrobe, a sheet or two, and this morning Anna politely claimed to have slept well. I think what she meant was, "as opposed to John Howard, and his league of inveterate misanthropes, whose sleep, by rights, should be troubled by the beating wings of a thousand sleep-sucking remorses, but quite frankly I'd have been more comfortable if you'd chopped this foam mattress into small flakes and fed it to me for breakfast".

Or perhaps, in fact, she slept well. You never know with these Sydney gals. They make 'em tough up there.

Anna the Activist spearheads a mass influx of temporary visitors to Hôtel Harlot: modernists, Australian-Literatologists, and poets. I am planning a rolling menu of typical Melburnean cuisine ("Peach Melbourne", "Crown Casino Lentil Casserole", and "Yarra Valley sun-dried beer nuts glazed with jus de Carlton Lager"), with which I hope to lure them into permanent migration.

Amongst my various visitors, it turns out, have come the freeloading fleas of doom. Ctenocephalides felis was dining on my lower leg this morning. I didn't mention to Anna that she'd been sharing a room with him, although her democratising proclivities may have forbad objection. Me, I'm not so sold on the sorority of woman and flea, and I object. Vehemently. I object so much that come saturday morning, I and my various parasites are going to go buy ourselves a decent vacuum cleaner.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Which reminds me, Max misses you, he pissed in Erin's hat yesterday. Could he visit?

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

OH! My heart almost broke reading this, Emmy-Lou. Max misses me so much he weed in Erin's hat!? I'd better pull my socks up and send him a postcard. (And yes, he can visit any time he likes; just give me a couple of days warning so I can kitty-litter my hats.)

Anonymous said...

It truly was a delightfully comfortable mattress, Alexis and (as far as I'm aware) I was not bitten by fleas or other parasites.

Melbourne is partularly fine city and it's rather sad that its cosmopolitan lifestyle and cheaper rents seem to be strong pull factors for cool Sydneysiders to emigrate.

That said, pending the securing of suitable employment (my criteria in this respect are pretty basic: a job that pays enough to put a roof over my head and food in my belly plus the occassional tram journey) I may be moving down South. Further impetus for this decision was prompted by a phone call I received 30 mins ago informing me that my landlord is throwing me out onto the street because he thinks it's wise to sell his property in a declining market. Being a landlord he probably doesn't give a toss that I now have to look for a new home in a spectacularly over-inflated rental market, not to mention my poor new flatmate who moved in not less than four weeks ago...

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Good grief, Schmanna! I'm so sorry to hear this. A fine illustration of the property-is-theft principle. I hope you and the Libster find somewhere better posthaste, with minimal angst, and preferably in Melbourne. Eek, I say. And dammit. And a pox be on the property market.

Torshy said...

But why Erin's hat? Surely it would make more sense to piss in the belongings of the Lexi replacement? I really think he is going a bit senile...

But I have to admit some jealousy, I'm sure he doesn't wee about me anymore :(

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

I will send Max a note forthwith, and advise him of his mistake. If he is going senile, it's the cuddliest, snuggliest, loveliest senility in the whole world. You know he adores your socks off, Hanna. He'd wee all the way to Germany if he knew the way.