home is where your underwear smells like fried potatoes

It's been one month since I moved into my new space where it's christmas year-round and mini ponies shit on the sidewalk to my doorstep, and I'm pleased to say it's already starting to feel like home! Today the eminently terrifying Romanian girl with whom i share a kitchen not only leant me two onions but also insisted I try an entire cutlet of the pork she made for dinner. Maybe it doesn't seem like a tale worth telling but this is the same girl who on day 3 of my tenancy I was certain would have decked me for very stupidly having used one of her plastic bowls which I thought was communal. Imagine that! A flapping piece of piggy flesh acting as a metaphorical olive branch! Putting money down that by next month we'll be braiding each other's hair and slamming bubblegum daiquiris at the local TGI Friday's. Watch this space. 

Train home from dads today. Got lost and ended up in some terrifying suburb where you definitely wouldn't want to stay for longer than absolutely necessary. But I'll tell you what, I found this little gem that seems  to shamelessly recall one of my great loves and suppliers of Kentucky Fried popcorn Chicken.  This one advertises "a unique taste" and offers not only burgers but also indian cuisine so I'm thinking about going back.

I digress. 

One of my first orders of business moving to Dartford (or as my black operations pocket telephone coincidentally autocorrects "Fartford") was joining a gym. Physical activity is the only way I can combat my natural tendency toward a very bad attitude. I found a no frills spot where I can push around iron slabs for £20.99 a month.  No poser males sporting armpit cutout tank tops to their waist apparently unintentionally revealing pepperoni sized nip slips to other patrons while admiring their own reflection. One of the reasons I suppose it's so cheap is that there's minimal staffing. Instead of someone manning the desk, there are two "pods" separating the outside from the inside of the premises: 

You enter a personal code to get in, the small cylindrical pod opens up from one side, you step in, the sliding pod door closes behind you, and then the sliding door opens permissibly in front of you allowing you to walk out. So basically for a fraction of time the capsule holds you captive in that space designed to be tight so people don't sneak in twos.  It's enough to make a claustrophobe poop his pants which I guess is what happened the other day when I found myself trapped in said vessel and obliged to the stench of the last person's fermented colon contents. It was so pervasive my eyes are still watering. 

Fartford. 

Did you ever suffer that recurring nightmare during childhood where you showed up to school fully unclothed? I have been having a biweekly nocturnal scare where I am roused to find my bare ass poking out from underneath the duvet, on full display for my bosses to see. The grossly unsettling thing about this is that moments later I actually wake to find my actual arse (not just my dreamed one) poking out from beneath the covers and facing west toward the hospital only a few hundred meters away where my bosses COULD be. Like, if there were no walls my bosses would actually be able to see my butt. It's like a totally fucked up merging of my subconscious with reality. 

I sleep on a twin bed with an unstable headboard that gives way to the pressure of my back against it merely from sitting up to read a book. You can't imagine how annoying this is. Like, you are a headboard and you have ONE JOB. The hospital pillow gives no neck support which means tossing and turning against its synthetic fibers that squeak to the pattern of my shiftiness.  I’m so flat in bed I can’t breathe and wonder whether I may be cardiopathic????? I have to stuff my Hungarian down duvet (which I obviously supplied myself) under my neck to use it as a pillow and sleep in my robe for survival.  

I did my first load of laundry here - a typically enjoyable activity - that now makes me cringe with anticipatory dread. I did a 14 minute power boil of my clothes so as to minimize the chance of infection by cross contamination of strangers' pubic hair. I mean, can you imagine how many people must have washed their sticky unmentionables in this drum? Only worse,  I hung my own out to dry just outside the communal kitchen and all my panties ended up smelling like fried potatoes. I blame the romanian. I hope she doesn't read this.