Lifted Up

Today we received jolly good news. For the last three months of the year, our lift will be out of order.

This is fantastic news. Rather than a lift that breaks down unpredictably and usually when we need to move heavy luggage between the ground and the twelfth floor, we'll have perfectly reliable stairs. I suppose we had the stairs anyway, but now we have a reason to use them. That means a twice daily lower-body workout that can't be beat: three months of trudging up and down all those stairs means rock hard buttocks and strong quadriceps in time for Christmas.

Sadly, I'll be in Singapore a lot of the time, so it will be my wife that reaps the rewards, not me. I'll have to put up with elevators that take you to your required floor at the touch of a button, rather than ten minutes of huffing and puffing. How will I ever make it?

Normally one might be upset by this lift-deprivation, but I've got good cause to be happy: in return for having to walk up and down all those stairs, the building's management company is halving our rent while the lift is out of action.

Well, they're halving the rent if you stay; I'm not sure what happens if you go. Maybe they don't charge you any rent at all if you choose not to live there any more. Or (and this is my morning paranoia returning) maybe they're not actually going to replace the lift at all. Maybe they're hoping everyone moves out. Then, when new tenants arrive, paying far more, and complaining about the state of the juddering, shuddering, never 100% reliable lift, they'll just say "but it was fine before - you must have broken it."

No, they wouldn't do that. Would they? Surely the landlord has only my best interests at heart.

I write this from my friendly local massage joint, where I'm having my feet ground to dust by a skinny old man with a Bluetooth headset and incredibly painful hands. It's the first foot massage I've had in at least six weeks so I tried to numb the pain with a couple of bottles of Guinness beforehand. That hasn't worked. What with the running and the foot massage, I don't think I'll be walking tomorrow.