For Late Adopters

Late adopters of Kate in the Countryside have observed that - for the uninitiated - such an acronym-dense landscape can sometimes be tricky to navigate. 

It is for them, and for those whose knowledge of Kate in the Countryside is not as exhaustive as they might hope, that the crib sheet below came to pass. Diligent members of the readership would be advised to print out what follows and keep it in a handy place for reference. Perhaps an opportunity to familiarise oneself with laminating machine? 

Laminated items do keep better.
Just a suggestion

Kate in the Countryside began a year ago after the demise of my Carefree University Life at Cambridge. Returning from a month at the Edinburgh Festival, I found myself unemployed in The Countryside living with MD (Mother Dearest - of whom more later). The curious folk I found there proved an excellent source of solace and fascination. So the blog was born. When someone generously gave me a job months later, the blog travelled with me to London, where I found that the oddballs of Oundle were no stranger than those of Pimlico who now populate these pages.

KITC: Acronym of the name of This Blog. Also represents Kate the character at moments of dramatic importance.

Kate in the Countryside: name of This Blog. A misnomer (as is often observed) since I am no longer domiciled in The Countryside. Knowledge for the in-crowd, that. Like Magdalene being pronounced Maudlin. 

Pimlico: where Kate in the Countryside now lives with flatmate and co-star, BOF.

BOF: Belligerently Optimistic Flatmate. Formerly Belligerently Optimistic Future-Flatmate. This sobriquet refers to a sad time a year ago when we were both yet to be homed. But BOF's unflagging - if occasionally a little manic - optimism eventually secured us The Pad. A place with no graffitied doors and good-looking neighbours thrown in.

Pretty Neighbour (PN): Apple of BOF's eye. Attempts to seduce her / convince her to come over have as yet gone unrewarded. Though we did meet her once. Recently waking up to the fact that she may not be interested in boys. Bit galling, hence KITC's silence on the subject in recent months.

Spinning: one of London's gifts to the blog. I find myself being shouted and sworn at on a bike in a small room at the local gym with more regularity than I imagined possible. Run by...

The Shouter: Australian Spinning Trainer Man. He shouts. Suspect he may be in league with PG, who first introduced me to the local Pimlico hang outs and Spinning class.

PG: Pimlico Guru. Collaborator in Spinning sessions. Resident of Pimlico. Advisor in all things local. Word on the grapevine is that she may be leaving the gym. Updates impending.

Tactful Friend (TF): Non-Pimlico resident and regular facilitator of Nights Out. I have recently realised that such evenings always lead to encounters with London's Gits, for which this blog is very grateful.

Dogface: My dog. Interestingly, this is his real name.

Mother Dearest (MD): Mother of KITC. Teacher. Resident of Oundle. Recent adopter of Twitter. Follow her in real life (@msoundle) for the full metafictional KITC experience.

DM: Daddy Mason. Not to be confused with MD, DM lives in the Bahamas where he keeps swimming pigs. This may or may not be true.

Mysterious L: Most significant external contributor to KITC. True identity a mystery. Some say she exists only within the confines of the KITC world. 

Celebration in the Pad (Pretty Neighbour Part 2)

This episode sees Kate and BOF ensconced in the flat of Pretty Neighbour (PN), having established that Dan (‘the competition’) is not of boyfriend persuasion, and that he has moved out. We have learned Other Neighbour's name (Daisy) but PN's remains elusive.

Prepare yourself for a display of miraculous cunning.

Suddenly, PN's front door opens. 'Daisy's home,' PN explains. ‘Daisy! Hey! Kate and BOF came over because their water's not working next door! And look [running tap] - nothing here either!'

'Oh no! I was going to have a bath. Thanks so much for letting us know guys,' Daisy says, little suspecting our ulterior motive. (Probably.) ‘Good day hun? [to PN].'

['Hun'? Oh great. What good was that to us? (Unless 'Hun' is her name - in which case very good. But it seemed unlikely.)]

We chatted in their kitchen for ten minutes, outstaying our welcome, telling endless stories that included one another's names in the hope that we would spark something similar from them. Yet still nothing.

Fearful prospect: a Residents Meeting

It was getting to the point when I thought we’d actually have to go to one of those residents meetings to resolve the Nameless Flatmate Issue, when I had a brainwave.

‘Hey, do you want to see our Pad? Now we’ve had the tour here I mean.'

PN (ever enthusiastic): 'Yeah! that'd be great.'

We traipsed next door to find Bofles and Max a little neglected, discussing water mains like old folk.

'Bofles, Max - meet our neighbours!'

'Hi, I'm Daisy.'

'Tallulah.'

I will leave you to imagine the feelings of delight and achievement this moment produced. Not only did PN’s name imply exactly the sort of fragile drama school type that BOF so loves, but Tallulah's introduction also meant we wouldn’t have to brave a residents meeting. It was as much as we could do to keep our highfiving imagined.

And there was better to come. Soon we were all discussing the building’s problem with damp and 'our local' like characters from Eastenders.

The parting triumph was BOF's alone. ‘Guys, I'm so sorry we couldn't offer you tea,' he remarked gallantly. 'Perhaps another day, when the water's back on? Perhaps next weekend?'

'A deal,' Tallulah and Daisy agreed. 'Also if you know of anyone looking for a place to live - we've got a spare room now Dan’s left.'

‘Max is!’ I volunteered excitedly, thinking it might be a little transparent to suggest BOF.

'Er' (Max)

'OK, great well speak to you soon.'

And they left.

You know that scene in Notting Hill when Hugh Grant the hopeless-bookshop-owner leaves his friends' house with Julia Roberts the film star character and his friends all celebrate? It was like that.

Bofles looked on perplexed and Max, fearful of being pimped out to two women he didn't know (no matter how pretty), fled.

Pretty Neighbour Returns (Part 1)

A mere trifling tea stash

You'd have thought that a week containing a ferry ride, driving lessons and a visit from the briefly-employed brother of BOF, Bofles, would be the highlight of Kate in the Countryside for months to come. No longer.

It was about half past ten the other night when we discovered, on seeking tea, that - though we had nearly fourteen different kinds of tea - we were lacking in tap water. There was none. It dribbled noncommittally from the cold tap before expiring.

Google tells me this is mould.
I've seen worse

Other than Bofles, Max, a BOF school-friend, was round for supper. Max has recently returned from India so we had invited him over to inspect our palatial dwelling. A combination of circumstances meant that Max had been greeted by a lack of loo roll, some gently moulding flowers in the sitting room and an overflowing bin in the middle of the kitchen floor. It was something like domestic cleanliness Cluedo. 


Though I think Max initially believed our claims that we were entertaining him like this to make sure the culture shock wasn't too great, by the time the water ran out he was clearly wishing himself back in Bengal. 

Decisive action was needed. BOF and I looked blankly at each other while Bofles nipped between bathroom and kitchen, trying taps and exclaiming his amazement when the result from each was the same. 

'You know what you guys should do,' Max offered helpfully, 'you should go and see if they've got water next door.'

BOF and I looked at each other, excitement replacing angst.

Regular readers of Kate in the Countryside may remember our feeble attempts to learn Pretty Neighbour's name when we first moved in months ago and, more importantly, the attempts to forge romance between Pretty Neighbour and BOF. Here, at last, was both the pretext and the moment. 


We were out of the Pad in seconds [stopping only to check BOF's hair]. 

Tentatively we knocked. No answer. Bit louder. No answer. Then 'One minute!' from within - the cheery tones recognisable even through the door. BOF looked as though he would flee. But then she was there! Pretty Neighbour herself.

Silence. 

'Er.'

(This was harder than expected. We hadn't even got to the point where BOF used this nocturnal visit as a springboard into a date.)

'Hi. There's no water coming out of our taps. We came to see if you had any! You can have some sugar in exchange!' We joked feebly.

'Oh no, poor you! Let's check. Do come in - Daisy's out tonight. [Yes!] And Dan's moved out.'

'Oh yes we wondered why we hadn't seen him about for a while,' we lied. [Thinking, 'Dan? A thwarted love interest?'] 'So where's he living now?'

'Well, Dan's moved in with his boyfriend.'

Dan, so long feared Pretty Neighbour's boyfriend, was emphatically cut from the picture. One obstacle down. All that  remained was to learn her name. And to commit her to that date.

To be continued....

The Village of London

I suspect that my enthusiasm for befriending our whole building may be symptomatic of my rural upbringing - a feeble attempt to impose the friendliness of village life on a community of hard-nosed Londoners - but I persist with the belligerent optimism that more usually characterises BOF.

BOF, by contrast (a Londoner), doesn't like it when I smile indiscriminately at mad drunken old ladies in the off-license next door: 'She looked pretty harmless, I know, but did you see the size of her walking stick?'. But he has been making friends with the off-license proprietor himself.

A heavy night at the Pad

Mr Shop is clearly a man of fine taste, displaying extravagant brands of ribbon pasta alongside his bargain baked beans. A non-drinking, softly spoken Muslim gentleman, he appears to have decided that BOF is a bit of a lad, such that every time we pop down to pick up pasta, Mr S wows us with fictionalised tales of his weekends spent getting 'battered'. BOF, keen to fulfil the lad role, supplies long-recycled drunken anecdotes from his past, before retreating upstairs for a cup of tea and early bed.

And since we still don't have Pretty Neighbour's name, when we arrived back upstairs at the pad yesterday to find a 'Sorry we missed you' parcel slip on the floor, we were excited indeed. The slip, you see, said our parcel had been left with 'our neighbour'. No name on this either – but what possibilities.

Hair coiffed, we stepped politely into the hall predicting instant date success (BOF: ‘How about "that’s so kind of you, could I take you for dinner?"’). A bedraggled man ambled out of our other neighbouring door, and eyed us cheerfully.

'Ah, I've got a parcel for you!' he beamed, dashing off to get it.

Drat.

We recovered with a quick jaunt to the pub (not our 'local' alas, a seedy hostel always occupied by the same three patrons), only to find yet more local good-will. A man was carrying his bike through the bar. When we offered help, he offered us the bike – it had been living in the pub and he was getting rid of it.

I really wanted the bike. I played it cool, of course – pleased both by the find and the opportunity to prove London's villagey friendliness to BOF. I offered the bike man money, which he wouldn’t take, and pedalled it home excitedly, making extensive bike-based plans for the following day.

Next day, I scurried down our stairs to work, stopping to check on my wheels on the way out. My pub bike was gone.

Not the countryside, after all.

Balconies, Dogs and Dates

Other than the unfortunate arrival of our chum Bonny on Monday, BOF and I have been strenuously trying to make friends with the rest of our building. DIY Man Downstairs has been stinking out the staircase this weekend with industrial quantities of turps. The whole place smells like pear drops, and visitors to the Pad are looking pretty high by the time they get to our top floor doorway.


'the terrace'?


We've also received word that the extravagant characters in the flat directly beneath us are planning 'balcony improvements' over the next few weeks. But our building is balcony-free. Surely they have no balcony to improve? We are baffled. And jealous. However, we cope by fully opening our kitchen window, and calling that 'the terrace'.

Next door lives a dog called Growler. With no visit from Dogface imminent, despite a visit from MD planned for tomorrow, I have been befriending him. Poor chap, his stomach brushes the floor as he speeds up the stairs on tiny little legs. Occasionally he loses impetus before reaching the top floor, so scuttles back down again, confused.

His owner ('Pretty Neighbour'), a snazzy-looking girl, has been befriending us. She too skips up the stairs. She sings as she dashes in and out of next door. She greets us enthusiastically at every opportunity: 'Hello Kate! Hello BOF! How's it going? Beautiful morning isn't it? Yeah?'

One problem. We don't know her name. And we don't know how to learn it. It's been two months now - bit late to start introducing ourselves, especially when she, unlike us, seems to have an excellent memory for names.

BOF has contrived a plan involving getting her to go on a date with him. But we can't work out if this would help. If anything, it might make things worse. Also, it's possible that she's going out with one of the other chaps who lives next door. Which could make things awkward.

Coming up the stairs yesterday, we see Pretty Neighbour's flat door open, and she pokes her head out.

'Oh hello,' we say.

She withdraws abruptly: 'Oh god sorry that's embarrassing - I haven't got any clothes on! Sorry sorry! How silly of me.' She laughs and shuts the door again.

We retreat into the Pad and make for the terrace.

'I think I'm in there,' confides BOF.

'Right.'

'Third time that's happened this week.'