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I have one neighbour on my floor - I'll call him Cheery Bald Neighbour - who, every single time he sees me, says two things during the course of the conversation.
He always tells me I've lost weight, even though it's patently not true (lardier than ever right now, if anything, though it's been more under control the last four weeks) and he always exclaims that the dogs have "grown since he last saw them". WTF?? One of them is three and one is four and they are not fucking TREES. They STOP GROWING after a while. I've explained this to him - oh, no more than two hundred times or so.
I realise that he's trying to be nice. I think what he's actually trying to say is that I look good and the dogs look healthy, only for some reason the part of his brain that deals with social interaction has decided that those words are a good way to express those sentiments. He's another one like me (and half the residents of this block) who got a Council flat after coming clean from a long spell of substance abuse and homelessness - unfortunately his drug of choice wasalcohol, EDIT: Coke - and I think the brain's somewhat the worse for wear in his case.
Even if I ignore the hackle-raising unthinking assumption that all women always want to be told they're thin when they're NOT, and the equally annoying implication that I'm either lying or don't know what I'm talking about when I tell him for the 363474784th time that the dogs are fully bloody grown and have been for some time, just the sheer bloody-minded persistence of him coming up with the same stupid badly-phrased attempted compliments every fucking time I see him makes me want to slap him round his shiny head with a very big wet fish.
Also, I'm 90% certain that he was the perpetrator of Lake Domestos last week. The stairwell still smells faintly like a public swimming pool.
He always tells me I've lost weight, even though it's patently not true (lardier than ever right now, if anything, though it's been more under control the last four weeks) and he always exclaims that the dogs have "grown since he last saw them". WTF?? One of them is three and one is four and they are not fucking TREES. They STOP GROWING after a while. I've explained this to him - oh, no more than two hundred times or so.
I realise that he's trying to be nice. I think what he's actually trying to say is that I look good and the dogs look healthy, only for some reason the part of his brain that deals with social interaction has decided that those words are a good way to express those sentiments. He's another one like me (and half the residents of this block) who got a Council flat after coming clean from a long spell of substance abuse and homelessness - unfortunately his drug of choice was
Even if I ignore the hackle-raising unthinking assumption that all women always want to be told they're thin when they're NOT, and the equally annoying implication that I'm either lying or don't know what I'm talking about when I tell him for the 363474784th time that the dogs are fully bloody grown and have been for some time, just the sheer bloody-minded persistence of him coming up with the same stupid badly-phrased attempted compliments every fucking time I see him makes me want to slap him round his shiny head with a very big wet fish.
Also, I'm 90% certain that he was the perpetrator of Lake Domestos last week. The stairwell still smells faintly like a public swimming pool.
