Arsenic Brownies

Imagine if you will a haggis skin filled with cold porridge. The sort of body that seeps over the edge of chair as if alive like Jabba the Hutt. Imagine a woman liverish in skin tone who sits in the entrance of an apartment block wearing a two hundred year old puke coloured cardigan, and who never moves from that spot unless of course you have rung the bell to be let in when she will be nowhere to be found. Such a woman exists and her name is Grottia (not her real name) and on top of being physically repugnant she is the least helpful person you could ever encounter in your entire life. Ask her a question and she will sniff the air like you have just let one rip before cock blocking the question with "That's not really a question in my remit." "You'll have to deliver that question in writing," or more usually "I don't know."

I am referring to a woman who mans the entrance hall where I own a condo. Today I phoned her up and asked her why I had received an electricity bill for a condo I own in the block which is not occupied - since they are meant to pay the heating bills or rather I pay it through a massive condo fee. And she said, "Oh it is your responsibility to pay any electric bills apart from heating." "But there is no electricity being used so why am I getting a bill!" I wanted to scream.

Anyway the long and short of this post is. Don't ever and I mean ever buy a condo. I had no idea what a condo was having suckled at the socialist teat of Council Housing in London. I lived mostly in Council Flats, then I bought one for a laughably small sum and even later when I rented private flats they were shabby old piles of mold like in Rising Damp:

So imagine my surprise to find that when you buy a condo you actually have to pay a laughably big condo fee for absolutely nothing. Soon after I bought the condo they told me I couldn't rent it out. Or rather Grottia laughed manically when I enquired about the possibility. "You'll never rent that there condo, not in my lifetime you won't or I'll cast a nasty spell on you so I will," she said, I believe, or words to that effect.

Obviously I did go undercover and rent it out to two students who did psychological experiments on senile rats but they turned out to be basket cases who smuggled in a cat even though I told them they couldn't have animals in there due to 'condo regulations'. Before they left I found they had painted the apartment (very badly) in Fred West Dark Red and the Darkest Green Outside of Hell. After that fiasco I decided not to try renting it out again because it was once bitten twice shy apart from being technically illegal.

So then I tried to sell it but the market is flat right now. Luckily I bought it dirt cheap but it makes me so angry that I am paying a condo fee for an empty apartment. Which just proves I am not a business woman because otherwise I would just not get worked up about it because eventually the market will rise and I will sell it. Believe me it has taken all the self control I have to not give Grottia a Christmas gift of Arsenic Brownies or possibly Fruit Cake Made with Fresh Mouse Turds.

Everyone who owns a condo in the block is trying to sell it but can't because the market is flat and yet aren't allowed to rent and they are all hopping mad trying to sue the Condo board etc. And then another funny thing was when the Condo people got angry because no one wanted to contribute to the 'Christmas fund for Grottia and the other other halfwits who so lovingly contribute their time to serving the great condo community. So far of 200 units only 33 people have given money and we really don't understand why.' They are just lucky that I was well pissed on Egg Nog when I received that letter or I might have done something I would have lived to regret to Grottia's cardigan with my new Swiss Army Knife Crimbo gift.

So please, whatever you do, remember:
1. Never Buy a Condo
2. Never rent to Psych PhD students who do experiments on senile rats

What rules of life have you learnt THE HARD WAY?