Eroding
Crap Mountain
There is a stack of plastic bags the size of Mount
Everest in the middle of the sitting room floor. They are filled almost
entirely with rubbish. I gulp down some beer and look at the pile morosely.
It's two fifty-seven in the morning, and I am beginning to grow tired.
Another heap of stuff rests alongside the exterior wall, beside the door.
It consists of:
One dismantled school desk (has crude and anatomically improbable diagrams
of men's body parts etched into the wood of the upturned lid).
A grubby futon.
A tray of rather sickly cacti.
A stockpile of bottles and jam jars (for recycling).
Two antique kitchen chairs, in need of slight repair.
One computer, with accessories (including 2 broken printers and a tangled
bag of wires like a nest of Adders).
An ornamental bookend shaped like a Tiger.
Two coasters, a mug tree, and the metal parts of a cafetière.
One mug, sans handle.
A half-used bag of filter coffee secured with a bendy tie.
Half a roll of toilet tissue.
Two medium fruit boxes (containing books), two small fruit boxes (shoes),
five small fruit boxes (old university notes), five large fruit boxes
(contents unknown).
Ten shoe boxes of cassettes and CDs.
Twenty bin sacks and a duvet cover (filled with clothes). A sleeping bag
stuffed with toiletries and glass ornaments (looks like a very large,
very knobbly Christmas stocking).
Ten coats, three Christmas jumpers and a roll of Star Wars posters.
A wood-effect rotating CD rack.
A collection of vintage Polaroid 'Land Cameras'.
A heap of breakables, assorted.
Half of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' series.
An Egyptian 'hookah'.
A Toilet Duck.
A bag of used J-cloths.
A collection of women's magazines (retained for free samples of moisturiser
and perfume). On inspection, they date back to 1985.
A ceramic pot containing cocoa butter foot cream.
A stack of old copies of the local paper. Kept for humorous headlines
such as "Woman in Shredder Horror" (woman traps hand in electric mincer,
could have injured herself if she hadn't been rescued).
A belly dancing costume.
A draught excluder shaped like a snake.
Five bin sacks of mixed paperwork.
A one-eyed cat.
An incontinent Springer Spaniel, resulting int
A foul odour.
Although it is the product of three solid days and nights of work, of
sorting and packing and chucking out, the nasty heap is still far too
large. Apart from the moulting cat, custody of whom goes to my ex, and
the Springer Spaniel, who belongs to dad, I am faced with a heap of stuff
that I don't really like, but paradoxically cannot bring myself to throw
away.
Whatever I choose to keep must be hauled out of the house, crammed into
a Hi-ace van, driven five miles across town, and then hoisted up four
flights of stairs into what is, by any standards, quite a 'compact' little
bedsit. To make things worse, although the bathroom has been emptied,
the kitchen is pretty much clear, and I've made around fifteen trips to
the rubbish dump, there is still a whole bedroom full of junk to sort
through upstairs. I am jolted out of my gloomy reverie by the noise of
the clock striking the hour. Three O'Clock. Shit, I'm running scarily
late. That's it. It's time for action. I will not be beaten by trash like
this.
Gaining in resolve, I take another swig from my 250 ml bottle of Stella
beer and regard the mound of belongings more aggressively, making snake
eyes at it and firing off an imaginary pistol. After much consideration,
I remove the bookend and the ceramic pot of foot cream from the 'keep'
heap, and sadly add them to the rubbish pile. I feel oddly deflated.
From the shelf on the wall, the complete Terry Pratchett 'Discworld' collection
looks down at me smugly. Apart from one slim volume that was accidentally
purchased in duplicate, the entire set has been commandeered by my ex
as part of the divorce settlement. Mind you, I gave in without too much
of a fight, on the basis that he was prepared to provide a stable home
for our delinquent cat.
Draining the bottle, I flick it aimlessly on to the foothills of what
I have now dubbed the 'Massif Centrale'. The Springer Spaniel, woken by
the noise, jumps around a bit and runs after a couple of shadows. I form
some screwed up college notes into crumpled balls, and fling them across
the room for her to retrieve. She leaps joyously time and time again,
skilful jaws closing on the crumpled projectiles, which rarely even have
a chance to hit the ground. This diverting interlude ends when a paper
ball lands too close to the evil one-eyed moggy, who defends his territory
with a blood curdling growl, lashes out with a tetanus laden claw, and
draws a bloody slash across the spaniel's oh-so-sensitive nose. Flummoxed
by a nemesis who is around one tenth her size, she retreats into a corner,
hides whimpering under the table, and does a little, nervous widdle. The
daft dog could squish that cat with one half-assed bound, if she could
only work out how to point herself in the right direction. But strategic
thought is alien to the intellectually challenged Springer, who is genetically
programmed to Watch, Sit, Give Chase, and Retrieve Game Gently Without
Breaking the Skin. Unless I picked up the pussy, rendered it unconscious,
and hurled it across some open, swampy ground, the dog would never stand
a chance.
As I crawl under the table on all fours, attempting to simultaneously
mop up the pee and comfort the distressed hound, questions begin to form
in my addled, sleep-deprived mind. Am I also ill equipped to survive unassisted
in the big, bad world? Is it possible to get everything moved out in the
next twelve hours? How can one person gather so much junk? And why, oh
why is it so hard to throw any of it away?
How can I have so many clothes, without ever having anything nice to wear?
How will I possibly cram all of this stuff into one small bedsit? Why
is it that the only person who will help me to move house is my previous
partner, who does a good line in heavy, martyred sighs, and has such a
bad back that he can only carry items weighing less than a five pounds?
Aren't we supposed to be living independent, separate lives, for god's
sake? What happened to the concept of contentious separations, anyway?
And most importantly, will I ever have sex again?
The next morning, I hire a skip. Does this make me a has-bin?
by
Emma Pearson
6th July 2003
Extract 4 from "Bedsit Bliss - A Beginners Guide"
by Emma Pearson. This essential singleton's survival guide is available
for ten Euro (plus five Euro P&P) from epearson@ippa.ie
/ emma.pearson@another.com
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