ERGINA

Ergina Sampiatanki wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a moth and an ashtray, no matter the times we have explained it to her. Poor thing.

Whenever she has a boyfriend she gets so confused that she starts imitating them, as if they were cool. She now owns an electric toothbrush, a horrific bathrobe and a smart-mobile which has no torch nor numbers, because she doesn't have any friends nor sheeps.

She sings opera, not really, but she sings opera. She is not even an arty-farty chick, she just looks like an aunt, anyone's aunt.

She likes spitting on frying pans to check if they are hot enough and basically she's a barbarian. She too comes from Greece, like the other greek in the house. No more greeks, God is merciful.

Never in her life has she watched a film, although she keeps saying she has seen all of Tarkovky's. The truth is she may have watched a few Ferrero Rocher ads, and in her little brain that is Russian film-making.

She snores quite loudly, even though she has no nose. She lost it on the same adventure she lost her thumb's nail. She was trying to close a car's door and somehow she managed to close it.

She is no idiot, I hope you haven't got this impression so far. She plays the piano and also little bottles she fills with rice and lentils, already boiled, so that they make no sound.

Her diet consists of Metaxa, a Greek brandy, and olives she hates but tries to swallow for the sake of her ancestors, the villagers from Crete.

Everytime she goes into a plane she screams and screams until she gets a tube of Smarties to inhale. She should never have quit smoking, she isn't even a baritone anymore. Her voice reminds us of a squeaking snail with no house, a slug.

Her hair, please don't make me talk about her hair.

Instead I will talk about her skills... erm, gardening. She plants runner beans like there is no tomorrow and she then expects us to eat them, even if they come out pink with black dots.

She is so funny it hurts. Once she told a joke and all the flatmates, because she is also my flatmate, gathered to kick her out of the house. But she wouldn't go.

Her soul is stinky, as are her runner beans. She gets lost even when she goes to Stansted Airport. It doesn't matter if you have left her inside the train that would take her there, she will get off a few stops before she's due and then cry when the airport is nowhere to be seen.

I love her to bits, I really do. It took us a while to become friends. When she first moved into the house she was hardly ever not in Skype, talking to God knows who, but finally she gave up the social networks and began socializing with the rest in her peculiar way of grunting instead of chatting.

She is a music therapist with no boundaries. She can treat an schizophrenic as she can treat a piece of blank paper. She listens quite well, I promise.

In a few years time I see her as a USB.

She likes to salt and pepper her pillows and those of her acquaintances, and then forgets all about it. More than twice she has been punched for this, but she laughs.

Yo misma, Ergina y Maria