Winter Monsoon

This post will probably be an excellent reflection of what a dick I am.

I am currently sitting in my bedroom with my immersion heater on, watching I-player, blogging about the fact that my upstairs neighbours pipes froze over the last two days and ruptured this morning, creating Niagara-Living-Room. I say living room, I've described what it's like before - to be honest the new water feature has Feng Shui-ed the fuck out of this shit hole.

Yesterday, Mr Upstairs came down and knocked on my door, waking me up at 9.30am (thats, nine thirty in the morning), to tell me that his pipes had frozen, asking if he could check if my water was running OK. It was, so a hurried him away so I could have a warm shower followed by a delicious glass of Robinson's Orange and Pineapple juice, topped and and diluted by beautiful tap H20.

As he left, guess which one of these I said?
"If you need a shower or anything, please feel free to use ours mate."
"There is a swimming pool 5 minutes down the road, looks like you'll be scrubbing up there pal"

Neither, it was too early to really speak properly.
(But for the record, I was thinking the latter one).

So anyway, this morning (closer to 11am this time) this guy starts banging on our door again, frantically. 'Sake. My flatmate is in the shower, so I resentfully ignore him and stay in bed. Should have got a two day pass at the pool buddy, now bugger off, I'm dreaming.

But about five minutes later I get awoken again by a commotion in the hallway, I leap to action in my new tartan lounge pants and Blind Guardian t-shirt to see what the din is, only to find Ben, my flatmate in the living room, where it is raining.

"There's a massive leak in the living room!" he says. I concur, that there is in fact a leak in the living room - that is massive. So we assemble the bucket troops and a few bins and place them strategically across the living room. Ben picks up the TV to move it and drops it, as if to destroy it on his own terms.
"The TV hated sea-life documentaries, but loved wrestling - it's what it would have wanted"

I update my facebook status.

I am really not that bothered at all, there is nothing I can do but change the bucket every 5 minutes. Then Ben's dad turns up and is not very happy, so I just stay out of it, occasionally showing face to move a remote control one foot further away from the living room.

This is nothing like 'nam.

The main reason that I don't care is that I told Ben about two days ago that I'm moving out in January to a lovely new place off Byers Road with my darling girlfriend. I'm also going away to Dubai on the 21st to see my mother for Christmas, then immediately going away over New Year as well, so I literally only have a week and a half left living here. Unliterally too.

The BEST part in this story is when I go through to pretend to help and Ben says "there's a girl coming over to look at the flat at midday, is it OK if she has a look in your room?"
"Of course man, that's no probahahahahahahahahahhaa, are you serious!?" The living room looks like an aroused whale's vagina, but yeah she can look in here, just let me know so I can minimise this blog I'm halfway through.

The plumber is apparently going to be a while, so what can you do really, other than have some cornflakes and maybe start watching last nights Apprentice? Oh hold on, incoming phone call from the viewing flat-hunter.

Ben picks up "Hello... hi yeah... the back door is open (because he have to roll a wheelie bin full of water outside every quarter of an hour) so just come in."

They eventually turn up and Ben opens communications with "Hi, do you like running water?" Not sure if that is funny or stupid. I come out to be nosey and to observe that this person is the fucking POLAR opposite to me. I'm a thin, white, sensible, Scottish man who had corrective laser-eye surgery two years ago - but this is a large, black, loud-mouthed, American woman, with glasses. She got very excited and loud, and it felt a little like the backstage area of the Jerry Springer show - but with a strong stream of water falling from the roof, into some buckets. Anyway, the short of it is I had to run back into my room to smirk, because I started thinking how funny it would be to say "Yo mamma so fat, she wet herself and flooded our basement flat".

So it's still pissing it down. The guy from upstairs has just turned up and met my new replacement, Oprah, so Ben goes "This is Steve, he lives upstairs". It doesn't click with her at all.