The move

After packing a car load’s worth of books, clothes, sheets, towels, TV/DVD stuff, and general detritus of my life safely into Dad’s car, we embarked on the drive to my new place at uni. I signed a set of forms as thick as a phone book, collected the key and went to see what room had been allocated me…

I was underwhelmed.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting a palace, or even anything bigger than your average shoe-box, but I did expect a basic level of hygiene. Upon opening the door, our noses were assaulted by the musty smell of a room that hasn’t seen sunlight in at least a year—that’s fine, I didn’t expect them to air the room in anticipation of my entrance—but when I moved a wardrobe to make better use of the space I was a little put out to discover a forest of mould growing on the carpet beneath it. I’m talking tree-like structures and the whole bit. After a liberal dose of Glen 20 and a smattering of domestos (fuck the carpet’s dye running) I’m monitoring the situation to see it doesn’t sprout little shoots of nastiness again. Apart from that the room itself is fine—it’s the same size as my room at home, maybe a little bigger—with a comfortable bed and enough space to store all my crap. I opened the door to the bathroom I share with my neighbour…

I was disgusted.

The shower curtain looked as if it was alive and kicking during the 80s, with an appropriate amount of mould and mildew for a specimen of its age. The shower itself sported once-white-but-now-a-tarnished-grey tiles, and grout that hasn’t been its original colour since the shower curtain was installed. According to all the stuff I’d read on uni housing, the bathrooms are supposed to be cleaned weekly. I went upstairs and checked out the bathrooms up there—they were fabulous—and came to the conclusion that ours has somehow been missed out of the cleaning roster for quite some time. I will be showering upstairs.

The kitchen is clean (but then after the bathroom I would have considered eating off the floor in the kitchen). There is a sandwich press under the sink that looks like it was manufactured when my parents were teenagers, going by the shape and the general purpleness of its mouldy exterior.

But hey, it’s a place to lay one’s hat, as long as one remembers to be careful of what one lays it on… more to come…