We recently discovered what seem to be reports from an apartment block with more than its fair share of idiosyncratic characters. Is this place real, or a figment of someone's imagination? Perhaps you know these people. Maybe it's your building. Maybe it’s you …Part 1: The Naked TruthPublic nudity was on the agenda at the Dardanelle Towers Executive Committee meeting last week.It started with a note from Mrs Alexander – somewhat unkindly known around the building as “the all-seeing eye” – who claimed to the new female tenants in 304 had been sunbathing naked by the swimming pool.Dr Macdonald whose apartment overlooks the pool confirmed as much, to tuts and mutters from the other members of the committee, but he wasn’t complaining.“What’s the fuss?” he asked, winding up for one of his verbose observations. “We’re in greater danger of being hit by Mrs Alexander falling off her balcony as she leans over trying to get another offending glimpse than we are of any moral turpitude from catching sight of liberated female flesh.”“No need to minute that,” Bernard, the chairman, whispered to Ms Tran, the secretary, as he looked at his watch.“Turpentine?” said Lady Luckby, rousing from a slumber, slapping the table with the flat of her hand and shouting “Order!” for good measure. Lady Luckby, a tiny sun-dried former socialite, had lived in the building since it went up in the 1940s. She took her late father’s place on the committee, was chair for many years and thought she was still in charge. Everyone else had given up trying to prevent her from running meetings as, in any case, she invariably fell asleep shortly after “minutes of the previous meeting”.“Moral turpitude is the least of it,” said Jonathan from 708, ignoring Mrs O. “This is a serious breach of our rules, to wit, By-law 3, section 2 – and I quote – ‘residents and their guests must be dressed appropriately at all times when on common property’.”The worrying thing about Jonathan was that while he was quoting this rule accurately, he was doing it from memory. Jonathan was a junior paralegal with a large city law firm and, as his 35th birthday approached and his dreams of a partnership, a trophy wife and 2.5 trophy children all evaporated simultaneously, he increasingly took refuge and comfort in a detailed knowledge of our by-laws in particular and strata law in general.“Let’s take this step by step. What exactly did you see?” he asked Dr Macdonald pompously, in an unintentional parody of cross-examination.“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Dr Mac winked, obviously enjoying the memory a little more than was entirely appropriate. “I can tell you one of them had had a Brazilian,” he chortled.“What do you mean ‘had had’?” Jonathan asked, revealing instantly why his career had stalled before he was out of the mail room. “Is that ‘had had’ as in ‘had sex’? And how do you know they were Brazilian?”“We’ve got Brazilians in the building?” Lady Luckby erupted. “We just got rid of the Colombians.”We winced in unison at the memory. Lady Luckby had “Tasered” our Filipino cleaner, James, when he came in to empty her bin – as he did three times a week as a favour to her and (especially) her neighbours. Apparently she’d
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Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.
