Sumi part one.

Well, it's been a good long while I said goodbye to my last official residence, which I namedAction Towers, and it's now a dim and distant memory. I have my own place now, in which I live alone and am having a very nice time decorating, arranging, rearranging and fussing over where each object d'art belongs to set it off to it's best advantage. Besides which I can do things like going to the loo with the door open so I can watch TV at the same time, it's all very liberating. Everything about the place is great, it's big, roomy, and the view out of my kitchen window looks like a touristy postcard shot of London, you can see The Houses of Parliament, Tower bridge, St. Pauls Cathedral and the Tower of London. I am very happy there. But there always has to be something to upset the balance and there is a fly in my ointment that I could well do without.

On the first day I moved there I was just settling down after unpacking and dealing with various workmen and officials when there was a knock on the front door. I opened it to find a small Asian lady standing there with a worried look on her face and eyes that were virtually out on stalks trying to look over my shoulder into the flat. She told me her name (although I have since nicknamed her Sumi for reasons that are too complicated to explain) and said that she lived in the flat immediately below mine, I thought how nice it was of someone to come and say hello to me on my first day. Her first question was a bit strange, not the sort of welcome I was expecting. She asked whether I had black people living with me, I said no, but this didn't cut much ice with her, she seemed to want to talk about it some more. "Are you sure?" unless I am subletting my airing cupboard this is very unlikely... "Yes, I'm sure". She said that the bloke who lived in the flat before me was maing her life a misery, banging on the floor, playing loud music, being inconsiderate and loud, keeping this woman's baby grand daughter awake when it was trying to nap. "Are you sure he's really gone?" How many more times? "Yes, he doesn't live here anymore and you have nothing to worry about". She then told me that i have a 'pretty face', 'nice hair' and that she liked my nose piercing. I said thank you and sent her on her way thinking it was unlikely that our paths would meet again.

It wasn't long before we met again, this time she had stepped things up a pace. When I opened the door to her she really did look like she might keel over and die right then and there on my doorstep, she was in a right old panic, what could possibly have happened? well, the accusations were more interesting this time, this man, who she lovingly calls 'that fucking blackie bastard' (nice bit of racism there coming from the Asian lady), has now launched a hate campaign against her, not content with just walking about loudly he has now started mimicking everything she does. "When I go to the kitchen, he goes to the kitchen, when I go to bed, he goes to bed, when I open the tap so does he". What has this got to do with me? Well, apparantly, according to her, he is my boyfriend and I am really there as a front for his strange stalking hobby. How do you convince a mad woman that you really are not hiding anybody? I wish I knew. I insisted that whatever she was hearing it was nothing to do with me and then I sent her on her way again, thinking that she really can't possibly come back again. But guess what?