LODGINGS Part II

Besides trying to elicit breakfast from the succession of reluctant Mrs Couldn’t-Be-More-Helpfuls who seem to be our landladies, Bloggiana and I spend our five days in lodgings going back and forth to court. Each day, fortified by Value yogurts, Camp coffee and the dream (largely unfulfilled) of boiled eggs, we march forth to meet Bloggiana’s fate. Her divorce has proved tricky and this turns out to be a hearing among hearings, a K2 of hearings, a Big Mac of hearings, an Obama versus Clinton of hearings.

Bloggiana looks pale each time we reach the court. I try to cheer her up by nicknaming her opponent (and erstwhile life-partner) Mister Bris. Or more familiarly Mister Hugh Bris. Bloggiana looks at me but she’s not for laughing. In the foyer, we meet her legal team and take refuge in a room which has no windows and is painted the colour of peach loo roll. The air conditioning does not work but it does rattle. There is a clutch of notices on the notice board, a lot of them pertaining to market research feedback.

“You asked for: more comfortable seating in the seating area.
We provided: alas, we were unable to provide more comfortable seating in the seating area but we were able to place a coffee machine in the lobby.”

The general ambience seems soaked with the illogic, the bluster, the pain, the madness of humankind and all we long to do is open a window. And get back to our lodgings.

The five days of Bloggiana’s hearing blend into one. There is a judge whom we christen Justice Makepeace. There is a sizeable female clerk who in uniform looks like a character from a Wagnerian horror film but disconcertingly turns out to be a pussycat with a night-time penchant for glittery jeans. There are families who turn up to tear each other apart and there are others who are there to prevent the authorities from tearing them apart. You can spot the legal people because they are the ones with the suitcases on wheels. There are several Mister Hugh Brises and you can spot them because they are the ones without legal people.

And after all that, the hearing is inconclusive. Justice Makepeace has found the whole thing a trial and he decides to defer his judgment until some later date. Bloggiana and I and the legal people go out and drown our sorrows in a vat full of table wine. Everyone feels older and not much wiser and the only thing that is sure is that the legal people will be paid.

One last time, we go back to the court building to fetch our belongings. It is now that Bloggiana spots another notice. The notice is headed Self-Help Packs. And underneath the legend is the instruction Please help yourself. Bloggiana and I look at one another and shrug our weary shoulders. It just about sums up the whole experience. We march back to The Sobbing Buccaneer and take leave of our lodgings. Mrs Couldn't-Be-More-Helpful watches us go, her bottle-white hair against the fuchsia coloured anaglipta wallpaper of the SB customer lounge resembling something akin to a halo.