Henry James Foy
Drama at the homestead. With the end of our tenancy fast approaching, and the very distinct possibility that our deposit will never reach our thirsty bank accounts, we made the seemingly brave step to call in the professionals.
“I do this for a living, you see. Landlords call me up, I come in the day tenants move out, and advise the owner as to how much they should steal from the deposit,” he confesses, running his finger along our bannister and looking disparigingly at the end result.
“Um, steal?” I venture.
“Well, students are always getting ripped off,” he laughs.
Hmmm. Well, this is going well.
“But you’ve done the right thing, getting me in here now,” he adds. Ah ha – this is more promising. However, it’s a week until the dreaded day – the day of ripped up cheques and wafer-thin legal threats – and I’m nervous.
“I can have a look around, give you a quote, and you’ll be paying me a darn sight less than you’d end up paying the landlord.”
I’m rapidly warming to this chap. The warming continues when, tour of the house over, he says:
“Look mate, I would take your money, I really could, but you just don’t need me. Seven of you, four hours, all done – top to bottom.”
I’m gobsmacked. This wasn’t in the ‘chuck money at the situation and it’ll fix itself’ plan. We’d already worked out a decent profit margin on the cleaning
expenses/potential deposit return graph.
“What will undoubtedly win through is inaction, leaving us all £300 out of pocket, and giving the new tenants something other than their ogre-like new landlord to worry about”
It was only after he left that I realised the conundrum that faced us. Quite prepared to spend £20 each and watch as the squat transformed into a shining palace, we now had to beg the question: Was he serious, or was he dropping the double-fucking on us?
The jury was out. Do we accept his magical, economical words of wisdom, and do our very best to scrub the place up, only for Mr Muscle himself to stroll in on Friday with a smile and drop the deposit-shrinking bomb? I mean, let’s face it, he’d have a bloody good idea where to find the really bad stains. Or do we unravel his dastardly plan, call a competitor and get the place powerhosed?
There are the ambitious among us – me included – who have faith that teamwork and determination will shift the crap that has accumulated throughout our abode. Then there are others – mostly those who spend the majority of their waking hours either in front of a mirror or drunk – who appreciate our complete lack of cleaning experience, which would explain the current predicament, and would happily double the agreed spending limit if it got rid of the problem.
What will undoubtedly win through is inaction, leaving us all £300 out of pocket, and giving the new tenants something other than their ogre-like new landlord to worry about.
It’s a given that we’ve started the worrying far too late. I have friends who commenced the big clean weeks ago. It’s going to be friendship-shattering. My most flapping of housemates will undoubtedly be too busy packing to help out, my more lethargic companion will probably begin multiple tasks and finish none, and the two ladies will – enraged by the lack of support – throw in the J-cloth. Alas. Perhaps I could salvage some of my deposit by leaking the locations of the dirtiest spots to Mr Muscle.
So I’m a Journajizzer. You got me. It’s useless, they grumble. It’s a waste of a page, they moan. Well patently not, because it got your wingeing little backs up, didn’t it? Hiding behind that marvellous veil of anonymity (except for the really moronic ones that leave their York email address) you snipe away, congratulating yourself with every blow of your razor-sharp wit. Except no-one really cares. But wait, that’s your point, right?
Anyone would think I’d single-handedly invented the concept of the column for Christ’s sake.
It’s egotistical. It’s self-referential. You read it or you turn the page to read a review of a film you’ll never watch. I can only guess by their insightful comments that Mr and Mrs Anonymous didn’t choose to flick past.
Some points of information for you, and please listen up, Miss Hebden: Journajizzers, spraying their literary seed, are here to stay. In fact, in a world of 24/7 television news and internet reporting, Journajizm is what makes Richard Littlejohn the second-highest paid staff member on the Daily Mail, after the Editor, and why The Independent, Telegraph and Times bend over backwards to keep Johann Hari, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Clarkson respectively on their rapidly shrinking pages.
Personally, I enjoy the Journajizm that they so gracefully ejaculate. Now they are far better jizzers than me, but at least I don’t cum in orange.
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I see you’re proud to write provocative articles. Quite right. But don’t you think your time would be better spent writing articles that provoke something interesting or constructive, rather than the general impression that you’re a puffed-up egomaniac? It’s just a bit dull, as well as disconcerting that the NUS Award-winning newspaper’s editor looks up to a bigot like Littlejohn.
“Hiding behind that marvellous veil of anonymity (except for the really moronic ones that leave their York email address) you snipe away”
When we leave our email addresses, they are not published on the website. Are you telling me that you use your authority on this paper/website to look up the email addresses, then see who the people that leave the anonymous comments are? That makes me feel very uncomfortable. Fair enough if someone has insulted you on one of your pieces I suppose, but what if on another article someone wrote anonymously for a very good reason, would you look their identity up through their York email, just because you could?
By the way, this isn’t a criticism of your column, I’m just concerned by invasion of privacy blah blah blah. Sorry in advance if I’ve got the wrong end of the swizzle stick.
So the moral of the story is…you’re a prat?
>> By the way, this isn’t a criticism of your column, I’m just concerned by invasion of privacy blah blah blah.
We don’t look up who people are as a matter of course, Henry was just pointing out the irony of leaving a comment anonymously slagging him off in his previous column (presumably with the intention of being anonymous to Henry, one of the few people who can see the data left in the e-mail fields) yet leaving your York e-mail address, therefore making yourself not anonymous to Henry (if he so desired to look up e-mail addresses, which is something we only really do if there’s good reason to – generally to confirm the origin of potentially libellous comments and potential impersonation).
What a curious piece. The first section was quite interesting (or, at any rate, more interesting than the previous) – other students can get something out of that, at least. It didn’t need to be followed by a piece of querulous offended self-justification in which Foy compared himself to Boris Johnson and Jeremy Clarkson. If Foy really thinks spending his days complaining about the sewage in his kitchen and the perils of the Mr Muscle bomb is a good use of his time, he can start a livejournal – that way, he can write as much ‘journajizz’ or complaints about his fellow students (and readership) as he wants without subjecting the rest of campus to it, and leave the page to anyone on the Nouse staff who has something useful to fill it with.
Much love,
Anon (who doesn’t really care whether Mr Foy knows who he is or not, but likes his name not to be visible)
P.S. – Someone needs to fix the formatting. The paper article puts a space between the two streams of thought, and begins with bold caps; this version makes no difference. The effect is to suggest that someone accidentally copy-and-pasted in a first-draft Foy left lying around in the Nouse office.
pps – Must we suffer the large Foy photos? There’s already a photo of him as contributor, we don’t need another.
Reading through the second half of that, I think that Henry has missed the point of a column. It is truly supposed to be arrogant and self-referencing but at the same time it is supposed to have direction. The first half of this piece has that, indeed, but the second half seems to simply point personal egotism as a weapon towards anonymous contributors to his website. Whilst some columns contribute and raise enough attention to warrant the popularity they receive, it is often solely due to the personal level of fame and I suspect that Jeremy Clarkson is a little more famous. The name Henry James Foy isn’t enough to draw crowds so the author should probably write more of the first half and less of the second.
why was foy seen leaving Tru on tuesday in tears?
could it have been due to the previous departure of a member of his party earlier in the evening??