DESIRABLE TENANT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 405, 28 March 1947, Page 7

DESIRABLE TENANT

(Written for "The Listener" by

M.

E.

DESIRE to rent a-single furnished room: not a Flat-that would be presumptuous-but a Single Furnished Room with Use of Conveniences. My friends assure me that it is by no means an impossible ambition. Look in the evening paper any night, they say, and you will see quite a long list of rooms to let. People are only too thankful, they add encouragingly, to acquire a desirable tenant. The way they say this confirms my own belief that I am a Desirable Tenant. Let us lock at what constitutes Desirability in the view of a prospective lord or landlady"Single furnished room to let with use of conveniences. Suit business gent. Must be respectable, sober and cleanliving." I am respectable by birth and by upbringing; by calling also, for I am a Government servant. Not a mere employee, mark you: in the frequent letters we write about ousselves we are always referred to as "the above-named officer"; and we work in a Department with a capital D. Some junior officers of

course may not yet have achieved complete respectability; but my own status may be gauged by the fact that I occupy a chair that goes round and round. And there is another Desirable point about our officialdom beides the respectability it bestows:.a Government Department starts work at 8 «.m, thus removing us at an early hour from the Conveniences, ‘leaving these to more leisurely Business Gents for the use of. ‘

Sober? Certainly: I only indulge in alcoholic. refreshment when it is paid for by: someone else; this rarely occurs. Clean-living? I think I qualify in the effirmative to this phrase in all its implications. My. existence offends no moral laws; I have been brought up to wipe carefully around the bath after daily use of. Other unspecified qualities are innate in the truly Desirable. I expect to pay ,»my rent regularly and in advance, even when not in occupation. I expect to behave quietly, especially should I come home late, and not to slam the door when I go out early. All that remains, then, is to reply to one or two of the many advertisements in to-night’s paper. Here is one of several-‘"Sunny furnished room to let; central; separate entrance; suit professional gent." Or another-‘Furnished rooms with use of conveniences, share er single, to let to business man. Only desirable tenants accepted." There are plenty of similar ones. To which fortunate advertiser shall I offer my desirable self? Alas! Not one of them would even consider me. I am respectable; I am sober; I am clean-living; I work in a Government Department. But I haneen to be a woman.