Working Girl

After a rather extended Christmas break and a bout of blogger’s block, I’m back, albeit a bit reluctantly. The problem is that my cunning plan to alert the publishing world to my writing prowess via my blog doesn’t seem to be working.

According to my tracking statistics, I have garnered a total following of just over 100 visitors since starting the Bad Farmer’s Wife in September (2009), which – don’t get me wrong – I am very grateful for, but clearly it’s not quite the volume of traffic that’s going to have Bloomsbury beating a path to my door...

Since the dawn of 2010 then, it’s fair to say that my motivation has been pretty poor. And until last week, I’ve had very little to blog about apart from the tiresome weather. What happened last week? It all started when the Farmer got a call from the police asking if we were landlords of a flat in town.

About three years ago, we bought a one bedroom flat in a fairly smart neighbourhood as a rental investment. It was one of about a dozen in a converted Victorian hospital and until last November, had been successfully rented to the same quiet living tenant. Sadly he left, so the flat was re-advertised in the local paper.

Being unfeasibly paranoid about showing the flat on my own to potential axe murderers, the Farmer did a couple of viewings and let the property within a matter of days to a bubbly Brummie girl who told him she was setting up a Fake Bake franchise. She gave him two letters of reference and paid the deposit and one month’s rent – in cash. The subsequent month was also paid in cash.

I immediately thought she’d done a runner on hearing the news of the police phone call. ‘It’s worse,’ the Farmer said grimly. Worse? I repeated. She can't pay the rent? I groaned. ‘No, the rent’s all paid up,’ he said, ‘because the flat’s being run by a ring of prostitutes!’

He went on to explain that after a tip off from one of the neighbours, the police had done a stake out of the property: the girls worked in 2 week cycles leaving the key under the bin for the next girl. However, they couldn’t prosecute them – allegedly they were doing nothing wrong (tell that to the neighbours!) – it was the pimp they were after; in most cases, usually the landlord! But after interviewing the Farmer, they quickly ruled this out. ‘A spot of farm diversification,’ the Farmer joked.

We were, as you'd expect, completely gobsmacked – our lovely little flat, a brothel! Worse still, I had to go round and clear out their belongings, left behind in their hurry to leave. Armed with rubber gloves and bin bags, I found a colourful selection of eye-popping underwear, bottles of baby oil, value packs of BIC razors and lots of air freshener... Fortunately, there was nothing more sordid than this.

Sitting down to dinner that night, the Farmer pointed out that while the situation was not ideal, at least they had paid the rent before they were busted. True, I agreed, we may be suspected pimps but at least we're not out of pocket.