on tour...
Back in the day when I toured in showbiz, I constantly looked for the cheapest digs to stay in so that my equity minimum would stretch to being able to eat and live like any other normal Joe.
Most places were spotless as it was generally older ladies with a love of theatre, renting out a spare room to a young, fit actor type very cheaply.
When you could you'd ask friends and ask if they knew anyone where you were going and if they had a bed to sleep on for a week.
One week I was in Newcastle and luckily my wife's best friend lived in Sunderland with her solicitor husband and they had a 7 bedroom place where there was plenty of room. I was expecting a luxurious country manor, all mod cons home cooked food etc etc.
I turned up to a sprawling house in one of the studenty areas on the city and I discovered when I arrived that most of the other rooms were let out to students and I was staying in one where the occupant was away.
You would think that they would have a had at least a quick tidy up and change the sheets, no not even that, it had the usual litany of mouldy cups and plates, filthy rug, fully grown dust bunnies under the bed, and it being very late at night I went to sleep in filthy unchanged sheets and was promptly bitten to fuck by the fleas infesting the bed.
Next morning I got up and when I was picking up the change that had fallen out of my jeans I discovered a used condom under the bed with some dirty knickers next to it. It may come as a surprise but I subsequently found out that the room’s occupant was female.
In great trepidation, I went to the (shared) bathroom which incidentally was huge and had a clam shaped pink bath for 2 in it. Now, I have been a student and have put up with a certain level of muck in my time, but I spent the next 2 1/2 hours scrubbing it from top to bottom, almost on the verge of vomiting, clearing way the detritus of months of neglect and bleaching the mould and stains before I dared wash myself in it. The rest of the house was just as dirty and the kitchen a shrine to botulism.
When I had a conversation with Wife’s BF about it she was uncomprehending that this could be an issue with anybody, but she did thank me for the cleaning as she had been meaning to do it since Christmas...and it was now Easter.
Years later she still asks whether I still have OCD, dirty bitch.
(nimrodihnio making gravy for one., Mon 29 Mar 2010, 18:25, Reply)