"Love your Immune System", by the Bleach Boys

I am not someone that can be described as being OCD clean. Call it what you will but, being obsessively tidy or clean or organized is just not what I do – in comparison with the majority of my Spanish girlfriends that is. They clean and dust and arrange their bedrooms and given half a chance mine too. They iron their clothes and I mean all of them, not just the ones that need ironing as they can’t pull off the wrinkled look… and to top it off, they iron their sheets. Regarding sheets, I’ve always figured that once you roll around on them for one night, bob’s your uncle! They’re wrinkle free. But the Spanish way declares otherwise and thus makes me look like I shouldda been a boy sometimes…but a clean boy.

I live in what I like to think of as an organized disorganization. My mum says I spread. But when I’m not spreading myself about the house, I have piles of clothes crowning every surface of my bedroom, but I know what is in each pile and I would like to add, they are clean piles of clothes. The worn go into the washing basket, there’s no two ways about that. Unlike a close friend of mine who happens to be quite a boy; I watched him rummage through a pile of clothes on the floor (mine would never be on the floor), sniffing t-shirts until he happened upon one and exclaimed, “That smells amazing!” I looked up expecting to see roses fluttering out of the sleeves and he looked at me and said, “I mean, it smells clean.”

You see, the end of my jaunt around England lead me in the direction of Plymouth for 2 days to visit one of my best friends. A boy, who we’ll call R. One with smelly inclinations, apparently. Not his actual self being smelly, but more so his surroundings.

I’ll start from the top shall I? One of the friends R. and I have in common visited him for one night this past September, thus meaning the reputation of the house he lives in preceded him. I was told it was dirty, to put it simply. When I found this out I nearly cried. I may not be obsessively clean, but bad smells and the hint of unhygienic are enough to turn me into a Stepford Wife. I spent a week or two beforehand making it very clear to my friend that I needed clean sheets. CLEAN SHEETS. I did not care what the rest of his house was like, but I was banking on the fact that he is fully Spanish and was hoping his mother had drummed enough of the basic hygiene code into him that 4 years of living at uni. hadn’t destroyed.

I got a wonderful surprise when he declared that part of his rental contract was a cleaner and she was cleaning a few days before I arrived. Somebody in the sky clearly loved me. Or did they?

I walked in to find my friend’s room smelt of boy, but panicked not as one morning of girl deodorant and perfume would sort that out wonderfully – also, me cranking open the window 2 seconds into my visit worked a treat. I then got introduced to the sitting room where the TV was on and rumour had it a human abided. I saw a pile on one of the sofas move and out emerged a head from a hood and a sleeping bag. Housemate no. 1.

The boys had decided that instead of working with the confines of a small kitchen, as most would do, they would move half of it into the sitting room. Behind the sofa housing the hooded housemate stood a work surface with plates, chopping boards, cutlery and in one corner a big old fridge humming the cold tune of its life.
The bathroom made me cry inside. The wallpaper was peeling with sufficiently obvious and dirty looking dampness that made me consider strapping on the pair of balls passed within the women of the family, and ringing the local council, but the boys weren’t bothered and I was going home. I was going home…I was going home…I was going home…but before home came the fact that they had run out of toilet roll that same day and so were using kitchen roll. My lady skin puckered at the thought.

They did not have any hand soap in the bathroom. They did, but they didn’t. The options were a bar of Dove soap that after having been poked at with one tentatively wet finger turned out to be made out of plastic, or was just old. And the other option was washing up liquid… I bought a little bottle of hand sanitizer. I also had to buy myself a towel as my friend is friendly enough that for guests the option is to drip dry whilst wearing his bathrobe. I bought a towel and shower gel that smelt of clean girl and took my contacts out so as to revel in my short sightedness.

My friend showed signs of offense at my snotty behaviour towards his house, saying, “We’re not dirty!” I do love my friends and hate confrontation and love to keep things on a generally good level, but it had to be said, the house was filthy. My feet stuck to the kitchen floor, making me think of everything but fudge; it smelt of unventilated boy and there was all sorts of crap in the sitting room; the sofas were used as dumping grounds for objects ranging from cardboard boxes to suitcases – all being ignored and being sat/lay on – to humans. I found myself taking a deep breath and joining the latter category as we spent an entire day watching TV – I love English TV...sacrifice ending with a rash for TV? It sounds like love to me.

I would also like to point out for the sake of pointing things out, that I sat through a game of rugby and a Star Wars episode. Am sure that information will work in my interest one day....

Everything happens for a reason…I can only assume my visit to an all boy house was to strengthen my immune system – and show me what a darling my friend is, and that living in a clean environment is not all! (I feel as though am lying, but it has to be said: on this occasion living in a mess does not reflect on the good core of who this boy is. His heart is clean, at least.)

The end of my jaunt around England has made me think in a summarizing manner, my English professors would be proud. But with my adventures coming to an end, for now, I cast my struggling memory back and review my stay.

One thing that stands out is that my friends are all growing up. I do see how I can be thrown into that group as well, I certainly am not going backwards, but given that they are in their final year at uni. and I still have one more left, they feel more grown up than me. I have friends planning husbands and children and the sharing of houses for life AFTER uni. and just before married life. I have friends applying for jobs and thinking about life AFTER university – which just confuses me ever so slightly as I am still unsure what country that means for me…and whether life after uni. even really exists.

So given that everyone was mixing uni. with future lives involving husbands, jobs, kids and the sort, I went and had coffee with a possible candidate for a husband. A fiend of mine, not somebody that answered my ad. – which funnily enough is not having as much success as I thought it would. Suffice to say I do believe we shook hands over getting married, with some financial parameters put into place; sort of, you earn ‘x’ amount and we’ll get hitched. Not the most romantic of engagements, but I feel as though I have done my bit regarding the thinking about of my future in the realm of marriage.

And the job, well, a 9-5 office job would probably bore me to tears and threaten my sanity, so for the best part, I’d say I’m on it…watch this space.

Fannying about England has been great fun, it has done wonders for the recycling of my current life; topped up my reserves of ‘ummph’ to keep me going for a bit more; made my immune system stronger and has apparently landed me a husband. I couldn’t think of a more successful trip actually!