An Artificial Cleaning

Title reference: "An Artificial Night" by Seanan McGuire

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Ah, Grandma's old rug! How cool would it be to put it under the new poster of "The Walking Dead" that I just stick to the wall?! Sure, it's kind of rugged (he he Got it? The "rug" is kind of "rugged"!), but it's no big deal! Nothing that a good, professional rug cleaning London company (yes, those do exist! What... did you think it's just a joke?!) couldn't deal with! Besides, it creates a sense of... "hominess" (put the dictionary down, there's no such word!) that my previous place lacked! Nothing says "home", like Gran's rug... or honey-cake! O, that honey-cake... 

Anyway, all those thoughts were running through my head, while me and Tate were putting our new house ("our" in a very pure, non-platonic and non-sexual buddy-buddy way!) together! Naturally, we weren't making much progress, as Tate's idea of "putting things together" is to throw everything at random cupboards, or just let it lie on the ground, or on the bed, or in the sink, or... You get the idea! Pretty much, we were making a bigger mess, then the newly emptied house already was! Ever heard that old joke:

The trouble with owning a home is that no matter where you sit, you're looking at something you should be doing.

No? Well, read it carefully, because it IS true! Very, very, painfully true, actually! And following the dude on the picture's example (bare feet on table, beer in one hand, a piece of pizza - in the other) does not help to move things along at all! No, sir! So, at the end, after wasting most of our day drinking and eating, and watching re-runs of "The Walking Dead", we decided we could use some help...

In came Lulu and What-was-her-name-again-hotty, both not very happy to see me, but ready and willing to help Tate (he does a great impression of Shrek's Puss in Boots' innocent kitty-cat eyes... even over the phone!), who at that very moment was sprawled on the couch, complaining he's had way too much pizza for comfort! Yeah, big surprise there, Tate, big surprise! Still, a quick foot-tickle (Tate's got extremely ticklish feet!) and he was off the couch and on his feet in no time! Geez, that was easy! Now was time for the hard part...

The cleaning!

OK, wanna' know a secret? Do you know how two guys with little-to-no-income could afford to rent a house? Easy! Just get the one house on the market that no one, and I mean no one, wants to live in! Trust me, there's always one of those! Someone reported a ghost sighting, a lightning fell and hit the roof, old ladies passing on and leaving their eighteen cats untended and undiscovered for days at a time are commonly cited examples of how a house becomes an "outcast". The hungry cats had to be moved out of the property before anything could be done, and what they left behind was a sight for sore eyes, even by professional standards. And, voilà, we have a property that no one would rent... Unless you're me or Tate, that is! But, hey, just don't tell that to the ladies! They may find it disturbing!

Anyway, there is a reason why people say that the cleaning profession is much akin to the law-keeping profession. Cleaners and cops alike are used to dealing with the very dregs of society, individuals with nothing to lose and, it would seem, nothing to live for. Have you ever wondered what an eight room townhouse in Shepard's Bush looks like after a dozen travelling Aussies move out after two years of living there? Probably not, and with good reason. One London cleaning team stumbled upon just such a situation during an otherwise routine day of one off cleaning. The scene was positively dire: dirty socks, half-empty tins of marmite spilt onto mattresses, hundreds of empty cans of Fosters and a Kangaroo Halloween costume covered in every brand of bodily fluid imaginable. And they did the job, though not before renegotiating the price with the greedy managing agent looking to swindle them out of two days work and a few hundred quid. The kangaroo suit alone took more than 3 hours to sanitize and dispose of! (That last bit is a piece of "key" information that Crazy-in-a-boring-to-death-sort-of-way-chic provided us, before throwing away one of Tate's baby pyjamas... Why was he caring it around is a mystery that (hopefully) will stay unexplained forever!)

But back to the main topic, it turned out that settling into a place and putting your staff in order is much, much more complicated, then I'd have guessed! Which is weird, as I don't recall having such troubles when moving in my previous residence, but hey...

Things change, right? 

Luckily, there's one thing that is always a constant: you could never have too much beer and pizza! 

Right, Tate?