Our Old House, Part Two!

This is the house I meant to post yesterday, although it didn't look like this when we lived there.  They've taken down the fence, restored the veranda and that's a new awning too.  And we definitely didn't have a name in disco lights up there on the roof:

The House on La Trobe Terrace!

But isn't it a darling.  It looks tiny from the front but there's another floor below because this house too is on a hill.  And it too had a terrific view out the back of the city, the hills and the river but such tiny windows you could barely see any of it.  Such a waste! And I must tell you I was most annoyed to see the people who now own it haven't rectified that problem!

But it was a charming house and we enjoyed those almost-three years we spent living there. Had some lovely features and I'm glad to say they kept those:

The archways!

The carved wooden air-vent insets.

The stained-glass windows.

As you can see, it's now a fabric shop and renovated since our time, although not nearly well enough. Back then, it was owned by the Gardners from Fiji and I was longing to make it all it could be, and even though I suggested they pay for the materials for the changes I wanted to make - restoring the veranda, bigger back windows, a deck, larger studio downstairs - and we offered to do much of the work ourselves, they wouldn't hear of it.

Although I doubt if they ever did hear of it because I didn't trust our rental agent to do anything she promised to do. Not for a nano-second!

Oh Lordy!  Our rental agent!  She was this Legendary Creature who I still, almost 30 years later, hear stories about, and none of them nice either! 

Her name was Forni - so naturally we called her Kate, although not to her face - and she came from Iceland and I hope not representative of all Icelanders because she was the most vile, obnoxious, conniving, underhanded creature on the planet, only so funny and so charming that, even while you wanted to strangle her with your bare hands, you couldn't stop laughing.

I could tell you so many stories about her, but instead I'll just tell you one:  she reported us to the Local Council for not taking care of the gardens of the empty rental properties she was paid to administer ... but none of it was our property!  It absolutely had nothing to do with us but we got endless threatening letters from the Council to mow those lawns! 

That went on for over a year, those threatening letters, and every time I'd have them stopped with threatening letters of my own, a few weeks later they'd start again, so I'd wave those letters in her face and shout "You stop doing this to us.  This is not our business!"  

She'd just shrug insouciantly and say "Why should I hire someone? Your husband is young and strong.  He should mow my lawns!"  

"It isn't his job to mow your lawns.  You are paid good money to hire someone to do it for you."

"Why should I waste my money?  Your husband is young and strong.  He should mow my lawns."

So it went on, week after week, month after month, until, Lordy, you'd be so angry and so ready to kill her but suddenly, because of her charm, you'd find it hilarious!

And whenever you caught her out in a lie, or cheating you, she'd throw back her head and laugh.  And that laugh was so infectious that, instead of punching her in the nose, you'd start to laugh too.  Truly, she would get away with murder!

But let me tell you one more story about her!  YES!!! Forni-Kate's comeuppance!   

What happened was the Gardners from Fiji, who we'd known most of our lives, told Kate to give us fair warning that they planned to sell the house, but Kate, with some idea of emergency-renting another of her empty properties to us, never let us know ... so the first we heard of it was when she unlocked our front door - which she always did - never knocked - to show complete strangers around our house.  We were justifiably very angry and, when she handed us a two-week notice to quit the property, stood there glaring at her and saying mean things like "You're slime, Forni." 

However, she ignored us and was praising the house to the skies to the stranger, then said "And see how the floorboards are so solid."  and stamped her foot on the ground ... and the floorboards immediately gave way and she went crashing through.

Yayyyy!

Hey, we'd been telling her about those floorboards for three years but she never listened; always said "It's not so bad. Cover the hole with a rug!" so that's what we'd done.  And it was that rug which stopped her from crashing down a full fifteen feet to the ground below, but she was stuck in the hole and couldn't get out ... so we simply left her there as we showed the strangers, who now had no intention of buying, out the front door!

We did intend to leave her there for the rest of her natural life but then we all began to laugh! 

So that's the story of Our House on La Trobe Terrace! 

However, I can't tell you any stories about Arthur the Ghost!  The nice lady who now owns the house was asking if we'd ever seen him, and I was almost embarrassed to admit that, in the three years we lived there, we never saw hide-nor-hair of any ghost!  

Forni was ghoul enough for anybody!