Dear Deidre,
My name is Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson. That’s bad enough – it takes me fifteen minutes to sign a cheque.
I am chairman of West Ham United. That’s even worse.
I moved to England in late 2006 with a friend, Eggy Magnusson. We rented a flat with a girl called Alice Pardew. She was a nice girl, but I knew immediately that living with her would be difficult- she just didn’t know DIY, and the flat was falling apart. I’d only been there a few days when I saw her bolt on a picture frame to the wall. It fell down four times, and each time she just tried again.
She had no idea what she was doing and frankly she embarrassed us. So we asked her to leave. It was sad.
Going through the stuff she’d left, we found letters from a Sheffield solicitor, claiming she’d stolen a couple of Argentinean vases we thought she’d inherited. To be honest though, we quite liked them, and wanted to keep them in the flat. So we flogged one to a major antiques dealer in Liverpool in case we had to settle a court case, and kept the other one (it was in better condition) to brighten up the lounge.
It was that which first attracted Alice. No, not the first one – Alice Curbishley, our new flatmate. Even though the flat was a tip we needed someone to share the rent with. Alice had lived in the area when she was younger and had always wanted to move back. I’ll be honest here, I had a crush on her. The idea of bringing her back to her family home seemed magical (and actually, there was no one else available).
It wasn’t great initially. She wanted to do the flat up nicely, so I stupidly gave her some money, and off she trotted to the shops. She didn’t have the best taste though, and a lot of stuff she bought broke immediately – she got a mat from Birmingham which tore within minutes. But a few bits and pieces were ok, and the Australian glue she got really did the trick a holding the place together. We even found a place in the fireplace for the Rio poker Alice Pardew had left!
As time went by, it got better and better living there. I’d realised Alice was actually a lovely looking girl. Yes ok, I’ll admit it: I got a crush on her. When she made the place look so good after the dump it had been before, who could blame me?
I let her settle in and get the flat sorted, and then I asked her out. It was amazing. We used to go out shopping together, her spending my money, but me not caring because I knew a girl like that needs to be spoiled. She got a lovely Welsh dragon for the front room, and also a nice Swedish model to make the hall look good. (Actually, I dropped it on the way back from the shops! I glued it back together without her knowing, but bits kept falling off it from then on….)
It was the perfect relationship. That was the problem, really. I didn’t want people to think Alice was with anyone but me. I got jealous of the attention Eggy got when people saw him and talking to her. I know he was a mate, but I had to ask him to move out. I wanted her all to myself. He was a bit resentful, but I didn’t care. I had Alice.
Then that went sour too. Without Eggy there to talk to, I realised how boring she was. I had got bored of her tastes in interior décor, and she only bought expensive crap which got in the way or broke when you looked at it. I ended up hiring a foreign girl called Nani to come in to clean, it got that bad!
The conversations became painful and laboured. To be honest, she wasn’t a charismatic sort of girl. I knew she had had a really long relationship with a guy called Charlton before me so I assumed she must have something to say for herself, but it was like talking to a piece of toast. I had loved inviting guests round before, but with boring Alice there the whole time I had real trouble entertaining them. They were clearly not enjoying it and they started to take me aside and tell me to throw her out. How could I do that though?! After all the problems there had been before she moved in, I’d have looked so ungrateful!
So I had to drive her out. It was cowardly, but it was the only way.
I decided to get rid of some of her stuff. She had this statue of a moose on the mantelpiece, and I flogged it to a guy in Sunderland. He was surprisingly keane actually – I’d always thought it was quite ugly. Alice didn’t like that.
Then a few days later I really hurt her – I rang the guy back and sold off a load of her CDs behind her back. I knew she didn’t have any others, but I got rid of them anyway – even some stuff by McCartney, her favorite Beatle. That did the trick.
She was wild. She said I’d gone behind her back and she couldn’t trust me any more. She couldn’t listen to music any more, and she felt like a stranger in her own home. She stormed out, and now I’m alone.
I’m not proud of it, but there it is. Now I’m lonely and I don’t know what to do. How do I get a really nice girl to like me? I can’t stand any more nutters. I’m just worried the nice girls are out of my league….
The Armchair Fan promises to bring you all the stories from the football world which you will have missed in the regular press – check them out at his website.
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