The Unclean Bowl

I ran another competition post a while back - the winners were Amy and Em, who fulfilled the criteria of making me laugh the hardest. All entries were very entertaining, by the way - theirs just happened to launch an A-bomb on my funnybone.

Their reward is a post on the topic of their choosing - and today I'll do Em's: a sharehouse or flatmate story.

It is a shocking thing for someone currently spending every spare waking moment on He Died with A Felafel in His Hand to say - I've never actually share-housed.

I know! I'm sorry! I'm a filthy Gen-Y who stayed at home for far, far too long, before snapping up my own joint and finally hauling my keister out.

Having said that, I have opened up the bay windows of Chez Clumsy to a couple of house guests in the last couple of years. The best story from that was The Unclean Bowl.

A certain person, who shall be known simply as The Spoon, crashed for about three months. The flat has two bathrooms, and to allow him privacy, I'd kept out of the main one since his arrival. So about four weeks or so into his stay, I decided I had to go in and clean as we were having a Doctor Who party and despite my laissez faire attitude towards day-to-day cleaning, I really hate other people to see my house messy.

I took my stash of cleaning supplies into the main bathroom, and headed over to the toilet first. There, I could only stare in horror at the muted reflection of my own face in the BLACK toilet water. The damn thing hadn't been cleaned since The Spoon moved in. My own fault, I guess, for assuming he'd listen to me when I said "Help yourself to cleaning equipment; it's all under the sink".

What really tipped me over the edge was The Spoon's excuse. "It was like that when I arrived," he said. "It most certainly was NOT!" I exclaimed. Possibly slightly grimy, okay, but I'm not so slobbish that I would let my toilet bowl develop into Swamp Thing's lair. But it got even better.

"I didn't want to ask you about cleaning it, because I thought you'd feel embarrassed about me pointing out to you that it was dirty."

Of course! How silly of me. It's far better to let a toilet slide into an unhygenic pit of e.Coli and despair than to perhaps ask the owner of the house who's letting you stay there about where you might find a sponge and some Pine-o-Cleen? Obviously I would be incredibly insulted and horrified that a guest would want to help out around the place. Just incensed. HOW DARE YOU GET OFF YOUR BACKSIDE! IT IS MY HOUSE, I MUST TAKE CARE OF YOUR EVERY NEEDS, WITHOUT YOU EVER COMMUNICATING WHAT THOSE ARE!

The Spoon eventually moved out. He's in Melbourne now, at acting school. Apparently they force him to run four kilometres every day. I can't say I feel too sorry for him...

Tune in later this week for Amy's request: an embarrassing story from my childhood.