In which home is where the haute cuisine is. Part Two...

It’s not often that a person lives up to their stereotype. I know a distinctly unfiery redhead, and one of my good blonde friends is planning on starting a Masters degree in Conflict Mediation – not quite so dizzy. And almost every American I’ve met has been as far from the dumb Yank stereotype as it’s possible to get. All, that is, bar one.

California Girl is doing her very utmost at the moment to provoke me into finding the clause in the contract that will enable me to kick her out on the grounds of being generally bloody impossible to live with.

A couple of hours into a session of reading about the relationship Ethiopia had with the superpowers during the Cold War, I decided a short break was in order. Making my way to the sitting room, I found California Girl lying on the sofa doing absolutely diddly squat bar staring at the ceiling, and showing as much sign of movement as a giant sloth on Valium.

“Do you mind if I stick the TV on?” I asked, folding myself into one of the armchairs. “The new ER’s about to start.”

“Ummm…” she sat up languidly. “I was about to watch a show.”

And with that, she grabbed another wretched Veronica Mars disc and stuck it into the player. Apparently, watching DVDs on her computer and letting me watch a new programme on TV is just too much like effort.

California Girl’s acquaintance with a culinary technique is also showing no signs of improvement.

“Ooh, that looks great,” she said, visibly salivating at the sight of my cooked-from-scratch enchiladas the other night. “I am really hungry…” She trailed off, seemingly expectant of an offer to share my supper. When she realised none was forthcoming, off she toddled to heat her nightly can of soup (now she’s been told how).

“You know, I think I am going to start eating from the kitchen,” she announced this week, having eyed up my roast vegetable and mozzarella salad with enough gusto that, had the salad been a person, the look would have construed sexual harassment. My mind boggled – where else has she been eating from recently? But no, apparently, “eating from the kitchen” entails spreading a sliced bagel with ready-made three cheese and onion sandwich filling. Oh, and sometimes eating a pepper. Cordon bleu it ain’t.

But the incident that’s filled me with most bewilderment of late has been California Girl’s “learning about religion”, the first stage of which entailed buying up a large percentage of Waterstone’s stock. In the flat, amongst other publications, we now have some book of daily Christian devotionals and a copy of the Baghavad Gita, the Hindu religious text.

“And I got this too,” she said, holding up a copy of Ed Husain’s The Islamist. “I wanted to learn about Muslims.” My heart sank.

“That’s not about Islam. That’s about Islamism – the political movement. You’ll learn as much about Islam from that as you will Christianity from a book about the IRA.” She looked at me blankly. I gave up. I wasn’t going to relinquish control of the TV remote for the sake of a conversation that would make me wish for death to the West, just for some peace and intelligence.

Tags: Bad manners, Home sweet home