Just when you thought you understood everything...

It seems our little house in the best part of town is just a façade. Mrs. F was greeted by two young men at the front door this afternoon who turned out to be police officers investigating one of the other residents in the house. Illegal immigrant? Delinquant? Bike thief? None of it. Heroin Dealer. Yes, we appear to have a heroin trafficker living on the ground floor. That's nice news when you have two small children. I hope they'll go through with their investigation and sling him behind bars for a (long) while. Pleasant as he seems to be, the thought of having someone like that introducing drug-addled scum into the building is beyond my already sorely tested tolerance level. I'm rather inclined to go with Sarko's suggestion of going through certain buildings with an industrial cleaner and to hell with the consequences which, in this case, would only be positive.

I remember we had a similar problem when we lived in Providence, Rhode Island. No-one would ever have thought that the girl upstairs was a crackhead: she was pleasant, courteous and had a little baby. The police were waiting outside the front door one night when I went to work and they explained everything. One guy was already bent over the car in handcuffs, 'helping the police with their enquiries'. More was to follow but we moved out the next day. A word of advice: never go and live in Providence, RI; it's the most desperate hole known to mankind: run-down, dangerous and corrupt. We had to take a taxi to get to the supermarket and our driver on the way back had his left arm in a sling. He'd been stabbed for the contents of his wallet a few days previously. Lucky old mugger got away with $20. The glories of the American healthcare system meant he had to get back to work as soon as possible so as not to endure foreclosure on his house, so there he was, steering and changing gear with the same hand while his lacerated arm healed. Greatest democracy in the world, you know.

I'm wondering what the next surprise will be. Maybe the Brazilians on the first floor are actually people traffickers or disposal agents of other countries' nuclear waste. Actually, seeing how many rubbish bags they put outside every day, that might not be so far from the truth.