Hometalk

Last night I accompanied Peggy Bundy, who has been squatting at my folks’ place the last few months, on a digs recce. A mate of hers’ former manager has a room available in his flat. Three minutes from Jumeirah beach, infinitely accessible, en-suite thunderbucket.

Invariably these occasions either feel like a) job interviews or b) blind dates. Stressful. Peggy needed a wingbitch. I was her Added Confidence.

When we hot-footed out of there 90 minutes later, who would’ve thought we’d both be grinning like ama-Lotto winning ticket holders. Housemates Merv and Mandy* are a damn hoot. Merv has done considerable time in I-raq, has a Caribbean tan and washes Mandy’s G-strings for her. Mandy is pissed off with Dubai, has a Welsh boyfriend whose accent she can’t stand, and is never home (except to collect her clean underwear). It’s a winning formula.

You can learn a lot about someone over a glass of Australian box blend.

On the way home Peg and I concurred that we felt no ill-feeling towards either Merv or Mandy. In fact we digged them. The house is P.I.M.P. too. So today she’s going to confirm that yes, she would like to ship in there.

Success.

Sometimes life throws us in with randoms. I say, variety is the spice of life. Decent living arrangements are hard to come by in Dubai, what with ridiculously rocketing rent. Not only is the package watertight (the insanely reasonable monthly fee covers bills, maid, gardener, stylish interior, great garden with rolling lawn by Dubai standards) … I foresee Peggy’s new place as a solid braai venue, a haven where I will book in on weekends to escape my folks. We can hang like bats and lie in our PJs all damn day without an ounce of guilt. We arrange cocktail parties featuring flame-throwers, dwarf-jugglers and bowls players with reckless abandon.

Regarding the age difference (OK, M & M are well into their 30’s) … we factored it in. We decided we are both pretty much over coming home to a digs of 20-year old louts where inevitably there are colonies of mould forming on the is a load of wet laundry still in the washing machine. We’re over shared environments in which your leftover pizza would have been smashed by some midnight prowler, the fridge contains a sole mayonnaise bottle and one egg, and socks, cigarettes, dried Two-Minute Noodles and half-empty beer cans cover all available surfaces. Environments in which there is no toilet paper. At any time.

We did that for six-odd years, got the T-shirt and it was great. Now, moving on.

*Bridge-burning protection. Names protected in case we become good mates in the future.