Today, as it is our final full day in our house, I would like to talk about our landlord. Our landlord has provided us with endless hours of fun, so this seemed like a good opportunity to spread the word. It was also the day of our house inventory, so I've been thinking about the things I'm leaving behind here.

There isn't enough space to do justice to our landlord in a few short lines, so perhaps the best place to start is the chess. He is a Serbian immigrant of immense but uncertain age, and appears to have played chess for his entire life. Over the course of his life, it appears that his wife has become somewhat disillusioned with chess, so for many years he has been playing chess in the middle of the back garden of our house. It doesn't really matter what the weather is (we've seen him there sitting in the snow with a blanket over his head), as he plays there every day that he doesn't spend at a chess tournament. It's a shame really, because his house is probably the only one in our town that has grape vines growing around a carved wooden porch, and would make a perfect chess-playing spot, and he would be much more comfortable there. Still, it means that he has been able to escape from his wife in other ways, as small piles of loose change on a mattress in our shed bear witness.

The other thing about Anton (I will call him Anton, because I like him too much to use his real name) is that he has a bit of a soft spot for damaged furniture and variegated paints. Our whole house is populated by oddly-coloured bits of furniture with drawers that don't draw, springs that have sprung, and wheels that don't wheel. This is part of the reason why today's inventory-taking was more fun than expected, as most of the notes said things like 'bathrom dor, glas, pain ted wiv leperd spots an purpul stars, very durty an peint steined.' It would've given us all a little more confidence if our inventorier could spell even his own name, our furniture wasn't in a terminal state of decay, and our landlord wasn't stark raving mad.