More student grubbiness
In my second year at Uni (you can read about my first year here) I shared a house with four other blokes. Our collective regard for hygiene was effectively non-existent: cleaning used up valuable time that could be spent...well, doing anything else, really.

The bathroom was simply never cleaned. The sheer quantity and variety of fungi that occupied its various corners and surfaces was a natural wonder in itself. Luckily it was in an extension on the back of the house, so the smell didn't really bother anyone.

Washing up was on a strict rota basis but, thanks to our forward-thinking -- during our first year we'd waged a slow but steady campaign of cutlery/crockery theft from the halls of residence canteen -- it was only ever necessary about once a fortnight. So the sink and surrounding surfaces would gradually disappear under teetering mountains of dirty dishes until the next poor sap on the rota would set aside an afternoon to work their way through it.

It all came to something of a head, though, during the Easter holiday. It'd been a cold winter and we hadn't been out in the garden for months when Scott and I -- the others had gone home -- saw that it was a lovely sunny day and we should go out and have a barbie or something. But on opening the door, we were all but overcome by a stomach-churningly powerful stench.

It turned out that all the while we'd been merrily washing our dishes in the sink and flushing down it whatever lumps and scraps of food as were left, the drain had blocked solid. Over the weeks (months?) this had all collected in what can only be described as a slick; the cold weather had kept it from smelling too badly but the warm weather had changed all that.

It was like a thousand people had all vomited simultaneously in the same place.

We were too poor to get someone in to deal with it, so off we went to the Hire Shop to get some drain rods. Oh, the smell! I can still remember the sensation of having to put my hands into the gloopy, stinky mess to get to the drain cover underneath.

Great, now I've put myself off my lunch.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 14:23, Reply)