Our House, Take Two

I hate my house. More specifically I hate my room, but I hate most of my house too.

My room is freezing. It had been roasty warm for weeks, as the heating came on to my great relief shortly after the first vaguely cold spell of the year. This sunday I attacked my room, and it's now tidier than it has been since I first arrived. Of course, this isn't really saying much, but you can almost get to the bed without having to watch where you tread. Almost, not quite, I wouldn't recommend it, and I hope it wouldn't be possible to sue me if someone broke an ankle in the attempt. Anyway, sunday I tidied up, and aired my room out by leaving the window open all night whilst I sat in the kitchen and ate too much.

Maybe the heating's been turned off, because for some reason my room won't warm up again. I sit in the kitchen, and it's cold. I walk out into the corridor, and it's colder. I walk up the stairs, into my room, and I have to fight the urge to run away screaming. I hate my room.

Stupid bloody weather systems. Stupid fucking pseudo-seasonal latitude. God-awful maritime temperate wannabe...

I'm currently listening to a guy from Health And Safety crash about and swear in the outhouse in the back garden. The outhouse is where we dump the rubbish bags before putting them out front for collection. Last week room #5 saw a big fuck-off rat in it. The sheer volume of distress has me worried. I might go check for survivors before wandering down to the math department to be late for a lecture.

I know this is supposed to be a gripe about my living conditions, but I'd like to take the oppurtunity to mention yet again just how much I hate my course. Um, yeah. A lot. Hate it a lot.

The kitchen is also a complete state. The house is divided into Those Who Wash Up, and Those Who Do Not. Everything is always a mess. As I'm sure is obvious from the description of my room, I'm not the tidiest of people. But I am at the very least obsessively hygienic. Well, no, I'm not obsessively hygienic when it comes to my health, but I refuse to leave dirty dishes and rubbish lying around. I tend to draw the line just after ignoring any kind of use-by date and dodgy water supplies. I believe my immune system is there to be used, and should be given plenty of oppurtunity to exercise. As long as it's not a funny colour, or furry (or meat or fish) I'll eat it. I think this is working out quite well for me. Of the 17 in my group when I went trekking in Bolivia, I was the only one that didn't get ill in any way.

But our kitchen is disgusting. I keep having to remind myself not to walk around barefoot in it. And there are plates with remants of food on left all over the table, and wrappers and packets and saucepans and cutlery and grill pans... There is hardly ever any clean plates or cutlery to use, and to be honest I'm getting a little pissed off by it all, as I wash up whatever I've just used immediately after using it. I'm basically doing two sets off washing up whenever I want to cook anything. This was a policy adopted not for any obsessively tidy personality reason, but mainly because I wanted to avoid the politics involved in pooling the washing up.

I did that for the first few weeks. Didn't like it at all. Somebody told me to do the washing up. Like, as an instruction. I should have refused on principle, especially as it wasn't really my turn, but I'm really not good at that.

Anyway, my house is horrible, I hate it, I want to go home, and I actually had a daydream the other day about doing a good vacuum of the stairway carpet. I'm late for a lecture. Like, really late. Might not be worth going. Oh, darn.