Rant - the joys of flat rental

Just when you think that everything in your life is trundling along merrily with not a care in the world, something always comes along to bite you on the bum. This is exactly what has happened to me in the last few weeks.

The contract for the flat my housemate and I share is due to expire at the end of August, and he wants to move on and find somewhere cheaper to live. This in itself is all unerstandable. However, the agency we rent through has given me only until 1st July to find a new tenant to move in, otherwise they're going to remarket the property. This doesn't give me a great deal of time to find someone - it's a pretty unlikely mission to be honest. So, I am now facing being turfed out of the flat I've been renting for the last 5 years because the agency won't give me more time.

Not just that - I have to now deal with the Morons of the World in the quest to find a new flatmate. For every nice and normal person that I hear from, I KNOW that there is going to be some almighty looney out there just WAITING to get in touch. You may suspect I hae done the whole flatmate interviewing thing before, and although it has always been interesting, there are some strange people out there. For example:

• The man who asked me if I was vegetarian, enquiring if I would mind him cutting up pieces of meat in the kitchen. Hence my subsequent visions of axe murdering. 
• The woman who measured the dimensions of the room using the span of her coat. Bizarre. 
• The smiley lady who wouldn't stop SMILING. I wanted to smack her.
• The strange lady who suggested we go out for a drink to get to know each other a bit and then turned up with absolutely no money. Luckily she only wanted a lemonade. 

Then there are the people who never get back to your emails - they send you messages asking questions, and generally sounding interested and then NOTHING. So I spend the next few days obsessively pressing send-receive and composing angry responses in my mind. Manners, people! I'm a reasonable person, I'm not going to mind if my flat is actually not quite what you are looking for, or you've found somewhere already, I'd just like to KNOW.

There are also the ones who make rubbish excuses when you offer them the room, like 'I want to live with more people' or 'it's too expensive' or 'I need to move sooner'. Can these people not READ THE ADVERT?

Anyway, please keep your fingers crossed for me during my hunt, and hope that I don't have any more weirdos/morons/rude people coming to see me about my flat.