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“I would much rather have somebody who’s older than some of the other places I visited,” she says, describing ill-kempt shares with college students who seemed to party and fight constantly.

Its Soviet-era apartment blocks are flaking and ill-kempt; the newer towers come styled in generic “urban shab”, with flimsy sliding windows and mean balconies, their hulls crusted with air-conditioners and satellite dishes.

She agreed not to go to bed with Captain Black again or give him any more of Nately’s money, but she would not budge an inch on her friendship with the ugly, ill-kempt, dissipated, filthy-minded old man, who witnessed Nately’s flowering love affair with insulting derision and would not admit that Congress was the greatest deliberative body in the whole world.

After well-groomed Croatia and Montenegro, Albania appears as shaggy and ill-kempt as a lovable hound, all dirty paws and enthusiastic tail.

So today I am visiting the Tirana suburbs of Babrru, Paskuqan and Kamez and houses representing a cross section of Albanian architecture, from crumbling brick to stucco and balustrade pretensions, to ask people just why their homes are decorated with these ill-kempt, oversized animals.