Floyd Kelly

My neighbour, Ms. Adellina Kleistenschlectenbergenstein, is less a sweet old lady and more of a human telephone pole in a floral apron. The woman is very, very tall and very, very skinny, a walking exclamation point who has to duck to go through all doors. Her head is crowned with a magnificent, gravity-defying, big gray beehive hairdo. She’s a proper curmudgeon, and she is the source of all my current problems, which revolve around a crisp £100 I owe her after losing a bet about a particularly cheeky squirrel stealing brillo pads.

“Just pop a cheque in the mail, dear,” she’d grumbled. How hard could it be? That was my first mistake.

The act of writing a cheque to Ms. Kleistenschlectenbergenstein is a proper challenge. The “Pay to the Order Of” line is a small space. My first attempt with a ballpoint pen was a disaster. I got to “Adellina Kleisten…” and ran out of road. Hopeless. I even hauled my old typewriter out of the loft. Still, not enough space. The carriage bell dinged halfway through “Kleisten…”. It was completely barmy.

My other neighbour, Barry, gets her mail by mistake all the time because our postie, just gives up. Barry sees how people have trouble getting her name on the envelopes; he’s a witness to my suffering.

The problems aren’t just on paper. This morning, a big hunky handyman knocked on my door. “Lookin’ for a… Kleisten-shlek…shlekten… bergen-steen?” he mumbled. “Dispatch says you have a leaky tap and a squirrel problem.” I pointed him next door, he looked and shuddered. “I ain’t going over there. The stories.” Before I could respond, he scurried off and drove away in his rusty old banger.

I decided to end this madness once and for all. I went to her door, holding the one-hundred-pound note. “Ms. K,” I said, “here’s the money I owe you.”

She had to duck to look out at me, her beehive hairdo scraping the top of the doorframe. She squinted down at the money. “Don’t be daft,” she said flatly. “I don’t carry cash. Just pop a cheque in the mail for me, won’t you?”

She retreated and slammed the door. I was left standing on her porch, defeated. But on the walk back to my flat, staring at my useless chequebook, an idea sparked. A brilliant, absurd idea.

I went back inside and got to work. I took out three cheques. On the first, I carefully wrote “Adellina Kleistenschle-“. On the second, I continued with “ctenbergen-“. On the third and final cheque, I triumphantly finished with “stein.” ⸻ each for £33.33 ⸻ I then marched back over to her house with my roll of tape and meticulously taped them together end-to-end, creating a long, magnificent paper trail of debt repayment and with one final penny taped to the door.

With a sense of pure, unadulterated victory, I posted my three-part, hundred-pound masterpiece on her door. I had done it!