My Sydney Landlord and his mum

I like my landlord. He is a nice chap. However, his mother is another matter altogether.

I reckon when people get old, like 70++, they feel insecure and a need to be validated. It is understandable of course and I fully acknowlegde that feeling of not wanting to be "obselete". However, when it becomes an obsession, it becomes another thing altogether.

You see, previously we had informed our landlord verbally of our intention to vacate. Our lease expire at end of june but we wanted to extend it by couple of days to suit our relocation move. We promised to call him with an exact date and so few days later we rang his place up.

His mother picked up the phone and perhaps it was a lousy bad morning for her, she started screeching at us when we informed her that we like to speak to her son (who had always been our landlord Anthony and involved in tenancy dealind) about our date of departure. Firstly she was hard at hearing, and she screamed at us to speak "proper english" and not "rural rubbish accent" because she couldnt get the dates right and we repeated 5 times. We were stunned by her vicious condescending remarks of course. For one, both of us speak fluent english and for christ sake, I probably had better grammar and vocab capacity that she does and my husband is an true blue Sydney Australian himself. What the fk does she mean by "rural rubbish accent"? For one, people living in the rural are not rubbish ok! I thought that was pretty "discrimnative". It's a good thing she didnt say "chinese rubbish accent" or I would have been irate.
Anycase, we cast aside her rudeness and merely repeated the date "xx July" louder for her to make sure she heard us right. This time, she screamed at us again saying that we were very rude! Huh?!!! My husband assured her he wasnt except to reconfirm the date. She started ranting, saying that "I AM THE LANDLORD! I AM NOT OLD YOU KNOW, I CAN HEAR YOU VERY WELL! EVEN ANTHONY HAS TO LISTEN TO EVERYTHING I SAY! and Anothony is very busy and has no tme for you, you will speak to me on everything. I WILL call u back later" and she hung up abruptly.

My husband and I were shellshocked by her uncalled behaviour. We certainly didnt deserve any of the old bag's callous behaviour but because she is THAT OLD, we let it pass. No point fighting with a senior citizen. We just bitched alittle about her "sanity" between us at home and laughed it off.

Shortly 10mins later, our home phone rang and despite saying hello thrice, the caller kept quiet and hung up. My caller ID indicated it was our landlord number. Fine, now its prank call? We didnt bother to call back and 5 mins later, the landlord old mother called again and suddenly she was angelic and accomodating telling us the details to give her. Gheess......

So as instructed by her, we wrote a letter with departure details (I was gonna do it anyway without her telling me) and the next morning, my landlord rang our door. He said he had heard from his mother that we called. We told him the departure dates again and handed him the letter. Then he said "I will give you my mobile, please call me directly as my mother cannot remember a thing. she is too old now and she cannot handle anything anymore." We said fine. We didnt share our nasty experience with him, except when he left, my husband and I felt extremely sorry for him to live with his mum as such. It's no wonder he hasnt got married at his old age and probably never will until his mum dies i guess.... Its a pity, coz he is a really nice chap... too bad about the mum thumb he had to live under.....

Well, that's my gripe for now. Next time, I have to make sure my landlord is not some sour looney old bat. Otherwise, we will have a hard time.