Thursday, August 24, 2006

Rages from the smallest room

The first Toilet Roll Murders may well be perpetrated by me.
Maybe someone has done it before and has just been too embarrassed and said voices made them do it.
I have no such shame.

This particular gripe began a couple a weeks ago but this mornings events have sent me raging.
What is the point of leaving one sheet, ONE fucking sheet, on the roll?
Not even a slightly useful sheet, no, the one stuck to the cardboard! That even Grissom and the whole CSI team couldn’t tease from the roll.

I share a house with four others and for the most part we rub along quite well. We’re a good mix, Male and Female, Straight and Gay (and ambiguous!), short and tall, fat and thin, introvert and extrovert, Christian and Non Christian. Irish, Greek, Welsh, Polish, Scottish and Caribbean blood are all represented through our assorted families so we are a little bit multi-cultural. Job wise, we have three representatives from ‘Education’ and two from ‘Medical’. We all have a university education. Sounds quite good put like that doesn’t it? NO!!
I refer you back to the toilet paper issue. I will expand.

Is there anything more annoying than the sound of someone else’s alarm clock going on and on and on, until YOU have to get out of bed and shout at the person to wake them up?… Possibly.
Or coming home to the question, “You know there is a difference between heat and temperature, don’t you?” before been shown the huge burn on the carpet?
Or Random, unidentifiable hairs in the bathroom?
Or slices of processed cheese in the fridge? That stuff the colour of dandelions..
Or how when the fridge has a smell, people open it up and say, “Oh, the fridge smells!” Then close it.
The smell doesn’t disappear people!! It stays in there! Uck out the 6 jars of redcurrant jelly (all opened), the month old brie, the endless half used slabs of lard (and whoever is buying that?, STOP! We have some!), the stuff that used to be coleslaw from Ken’s Kebabs. Find what smells, and CLEAN it!
All of those I can now deal with because of the Toilet Roll Issue!

Have spent the afternoon with Chris The Carpet Burner! AKA Captain Chaos, King of Dyspraxics. We have drunk afternoon tea from Raffles Hotel in Singapore, courtesy of Sarah Down The Road. (A gift for feeding her cats while she was away) We have smoked ‘greenery’ and laughed a lot. As if to prove my point, he suggested that the carpet could do with another clean.
“I’m not stopping you, knock yourself out”, says I. He regarded me with such a look of abject horror you’d have thought I’d asked him to take up Morris dancing.
Then to compound it, while making tea he opened the fridge got the milk, remarked on the smell and closed the door.. (On this occasion it happened to be the bin!)

But with that out of my system, I can say they are brilliant to live with. We have slipped into an easy comfort with each others ‘little ways‘, foibles and prejudices.
We laugh, we cry, we get outraged for each others hurts, we cook for each other, we shout and bawl. There is someone to talk to if you want and they know when to piss off when you don’t. We also have our ‘Part Timers’, they don’t live here but so easily could and would fit perfectly.

Community living has to be worked at. Hard. You have to negotiate and re-negotiate terms constantly, sometimes on a daily basis!

And yet……….. The Toilet Roll Issue has left me feeling murderous and spiteful, the same person who looks at the news and the war and suffering and says,
“Why can’t people just get along?”… Because we JUST can’t!... It’s human nature.

I’m ready to go to war over toilet roll. Who’s with me?

7 comments:

Schneewittchen said...

Totally! I'm in!! Oh wait....except I love Eilie and Chris....and Murphy the splayed paws cat, and Chris does grow those wonderful chillies in his lab at school....but if Ben Laden EVER comes to live at your house..I'm there, leading the assult, ONE FOR ALL AND ALL FOR ONE! Wipe and be damned..FORWARD!!

Sleepy said...

I knew I could count on you schnee!!

I make you General of the cycling units!

Karen said...

I had a roommate a while back, Virginia was her name. Age: 58. Emotional maturity: 10. My emotional maturity went down to that around her. She was too cheap to buy toilet paper, so she would bring home these industrial rolls she somehow stole from her washrooms at work. One ply they were, with a huge hole in the middle.
Now that I live on my own, I go to Costco and buy 24 rolls - 3 ply - just so I'm never out. Your situation sounds much better.

Sleepy said...

Karen.. I'm with you on the bulk buying! I have 18 packs (That's packs with 18 in) of Charmin' in both toilets and all my lazy arsed housemates have to do is drop their left arm... but no! this is too much of an effort.

It's not like I have those Mensa test holders that they have to be attached to (ATM extolled their virtues once and I removed every one of 'em, but that's between me and her!!)

I also understand that all I have to do is drop my left hand, but that isn't the point!!

Crisp-e said...

I not been at Allen's for weeks now, so I'm perfectly within my rights to comment on the nasty habits of my housemates! At the end of the day, I protest because I would never have smelly cheese in my own fridge, nor would I consistently store yesterday’s food with no intention of ever going back to it. I suppose I'm a realistic preserver. i.e. don’t refrigerate what you KNOW wont be consumed! Love you all...ha ha ha

Sleepy said...

crisp-e... Noted... Careful or I'll tell the people about your 'Feeder' tendencies!

Crisp-e said...

Ok, ok. However, these 'feeding' tendencies have lapsed somewhat in the past few months; too many of my hosts know the score! I must find new, less clued up targets to practice my cooking on.