Not Your Average Tent Pole.

In a scene reminiscent of Zimbabwe 2004, I have once again found myself subject to living in close proximity to what can only be described as a squatter camp. In so many more delightful ways than just your basic ‘smoke rising amidst the chickens’ vibe (aaargh, chickens, *shivers*). But fear not, there is still smoke. Plenty of it. And, as the saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Serious fire. In a Bloodhound Gang denying their requirement for water kinda way. (Eeesh so much angst this morning lady)

The squatter camp sprang up suddenly about a week ago with the arrival of a ‘lady’ who was here from Joburg to stay for the proverbial ‘couple of days’ with my dear sweet housemate. Upon arrival, madam flounced through the door, peroxided to the hilt, far too orange to be taken seriously, and reeking of make-up in a relatively scary Pretoria-Chic kind of way. Immediately, as one naturally does when confronted with such an overwhelming dose of fake, I realised something was amiss.

Night after night, morning after morning, I endured the stench of stale cigarettes clinging to the walls of our rather airless little flat as she insisted on smoking inside, and I was as charmed as all hell to traipse into the kitchen each morning to find the cereal bowls had been used as ashtrays. Charmed I tell you! If *I*, self confessed princess, can grab an umbrella, brave the urban foxes and trek out into the pouring rain to drag on a Marlboro in the wee hours, then so can bloody she!

It was late the other evening, when I happened across a scrap of material lying halfway between the washing machine and the dryer, that a whole wallet full of copper dropped in my mind. On closer inspection, it wasn’t in fact a little clothing label which had dropped from one of my Dior shirts as I had initially expected, but rather a teeny tiny little thong. The size of an actual Brazilian on dental floss. Only, it was blue. And not as fuzzy. Picking it up with a pair of tweezers, my eyes out on stalks, I flung it back into the washing machine from whence it came, just as I heard the door open. She had just arrived home from a job interview she told me. At 11pm. An eyebrow raised (on the inside of course), I politely enquired what line of work she was in, bracing myself for what was to come. I’m a stripper came the answer, as if she was telling me she was a shelf packer or a chartered accountant.

A real life squatter indeed.