Eliza

1. For six years, War raged on between us.

2. I would never live up to her gardening standards, she knew it and despised me for it.
In spring, in summer, I would try to hide from her, cower, sneak back in at the mere flicker of net curtains - in order to avoid her heavily accented monologues about her garden and its roses, about my pile of mud and its weeds. She made me feel like a horticultural deliquent.

3. She liked her giant old lady knickers to dry out in the West London breeze; sometimes, in-between washing loads, we would get to see the sun setting on the horizon.

4. And now, people of Blogland! it is with some sadness that I must report the following: Eliza is no more. A professionally grim faced policeman knocked on our door, late at night, that week it was so cold in London, you remember? and no we didn't have any contact details for her family.

5. Eliza's giant knickers will not grace our living room view ever again. Elvis and Sid, her vicious cat, will never kick our very own Pancho's ass ever again. There will be no more heavily accented monologues about my incompetence.

6. I'm sad, because I'm projecting. Perhaps, like Eliza, one day I won't die alone in a country that isn't mine, and the police won't find any contact details.

7. Read Tieg Larsson's 'The girl with the dragon tattoo'. Really.