Defeating Forni!

Talking about Forni, our former rental agent in Brisbane, the other day got me thinking about those days and laughing hard, but then, over dinner the other night, I asked Hubby if he remembered her ... and it was instantly all anger and rage: "You all found her funny!" he snapped. "I didn't.  Never! I thought she was the worst piece of low-life scum ever to come into my life and that's really saying something because I've known a LOT of low-life scum."

Yeah, he has the right to still be angry.  30 years later, we are still being dunned to pay the phone bill for all those calls to Iceland made on our phone after we moved out!  Thousands of dollars worth of calls!  Serious thousands and so, yes, she continues to be an annoyance long after we finally defeated her so ... I guess that means she did win after all!

Actually, that phone bill is one of the many occasions that makes me so thrilled I'm Irish.  The removal van was outside, all packed, and we'd already handed Forni back the keys, and I was making one final sweep through the empty house to see if we'd forgotten anything, when I suddenly got "bansheed".

This happens whenever something is wrong in my world, and on this occasion I got a distinct sense it had something to do with the phone!  I'd asked a week earlier that it be disconnected by that morning but I picked it up and ... brrrrr! My hair inexplicably stood on end, so, with Forni, Keith and Molly outside shouting "Hurry up!  We're waiting!",  I rang the phone company and asked what had gone wrong, only to be told they couldn't get anyone out there for three days.  (It actually ended up being a week.)

That's when I blew my top and told them, in very definite terms "You put this on record. Type this onto our file NOW. WE ARE NOT PAYING FOR ANY PHONE CALLS MADE AFTER THIS ONE!!! You were meant to have disconnected this phone this morning, so any subsequent calls YOU WEAR THE COST!!!"

And it's that single call, which thankfully they did make a matter of record, that makes it possible for us to NOT pay that bank-account-emptying astronomically high phone bill, no matter how often we get dunned!  Yeah, it's great being Irish!

But that's not the Forni story I was going to tell you. It's this one:

I've already told you how she handed us a two-week notice to quit the premises. What I didn't mention is that she told us, after we pulled her out of the hole, not to worry because she had a lovely house just around the corner that she could rent to us for the same amount.

Naturally we didn't trust her for a nano-second so asked to see the house ... so she drove us around the corner and she was right. It was indeed a lovely house.  It was still occupied so we couldn't go inside, but it really seemed a fair exchange so we quietly packed up the house on La Trobe Terrace without a worry in the world.

Then came moving day.  In our car that morning, we followed Forni and the removal van around the corner ... only to find the house still occupied.  "That's not your house!" Forni said, throwing her head back and laughing in a way that was no longer charming and infectious, "That one down there is!"

Behind the house was a deep gully, all-dank, dark and mosquito-ridden, and along a slippery mud path down a serious slope, was a corrugated iron shack!  "That's where you'll be living.  Bahahahahha!"

Oh yeah!  Keith's right!  The worst low-life scum EVER!

And that's when she uttered her final hilarious line "You have no where else to live.  You have no choice.  That's your new home! Bahahahahahah!"

"There are always choices, you piece of slime!" we told her.

"No there isn't!  You'll see!"

Molly rang a friend who she knew was looking for a new flatmate and asked if she could move in, got given the room and so immediately deserted us!  That left just Keith and me and a removal van, which thankfully we had for the whole day.

Newspapers!  OTHER rental agencies! Driving around!  Frantic! Trying to find anywhere at all to live!  But rental agents all over could smell our desperation - or maybe Forni had us blacklisted - and so they either refused to help us or were showing us utter crap for astronomical prices!

By then it was late afternoon and both of us had part time jobs and had to go to work, so the removalist kindly said he'd hang on to our stuff overnight and thus we gave up the hunt and went off to work, both desperately worried sick!

But then the miracles started!  I walked into work to discover Barbara talking about her long-time neighbours and how they were moving into a new house and so were wanting to find tenants for the old one.  Three bedrooms. A huge old house in The Grange; a lovely area. Big garden.  Instantly I was on to it, got the number, rang them and it was all wonderful.  And sure, since we knew Barbara, they'd be glad to have us move in.  Bated breath, I asked what the rent was!  Only a quarter of what we'd been paying to the Gardners from Fiji.  Unbelievable, astonishing luck, yes?

But then came the downside.  They were having work done on their new place so weren't moving out for six weeks.  I took it anyway, sight unseen, and rang Keith at work to tell him and that's when he gave me his news; the other half of the miracle:  the lovely Sri Lankan lady he worked with, Bridie, had just thrown the tenants out of her rental property and the damage they'd done to the place was so bad she had to bring in a demolition team ... but which couldn't demolish the house for six weeks ... AND she would willingly lend it to us rent-free until then!

YES!!!! 

Beloved of the gods, yes?  Although, let me tell you, that rent-free deal, although wonderful and gratefully and tearfully received, wasn't quite the honey-golden miracle it appeared to be.  However THAT is another story.

This one?  Let's just say it ended with a very rude and joyous phone call to Forni telling her exactly where she could stick it and that if we ever saw her again ... to expect a punch in the nose!

Bloody Icelanders!  Honestly!  I've only ever met one other and, even though he was the sweetest little boy,  I definitely didn't trust him either, not for a nano-second, just to be on the safe side!

And they aren't all descended from Vikings, I'll have you know.  They all tell you this, but I looked it up - mainly to throw it in Forni's face back when she used it as a weapon - and I have to tell you that the Vikings only lived there for five generations before they moved back to Norway ... leaving their Icelandic estates in the hands of their most-embarrassing, deformed and imbecilic children and their slaves!