This should not be taken personally by anyone who has been kind enough
to invite me into their home.
Other people's houses are always too cold.
The carpets aren't just threadbare, they're falling apart.
The chairs were rescued from a skip.
There is no table in the living room.
There are about 50 books in the living room. 47 of them are of no interest
at all, to you or to the residents. The other three are somebody's current
reading: middle-ranking science fiction paperbacks
you've either read already or don't intend to unless, like now, you have
absolutely nothing else to do.
There are several hundred magazines, leaflets or pieces of paper lying about,
some in piles, some on the bookshelves, some on the mantelpiece, some on
the floor. Out of boredom you start reading them.
The pieces of paper are admin stuff relating to the local housing
association, correspondence (two years old) with police about a stolen bicycle,
or menus from local takeaways.
There are no wastepaper baskets.
The front door doesn't quite close properly unless you know the trick.
None of the windows (single-glazed, of course) slide properly.
The spare room where you'll be sleeping is packed with junk.
Most of it belongs to Dave, who moved out nine months ago.
There's a crack near the foot of one of the kitchen windows.
The kitchen cupboards are full of cooking ingredients
but nothing to actually eat at 6 in the morning.
If you can find a loaf of bread, it's almost finished.
The breadknife is always blunt.
(How do you blunt a breadknife?)
The only coffee is instant.
The kitchen floor is never, ever cleaned.
The kitchen bin is already overflowing.
There are breadcrumbs in the margarine.
There are traces of margarine in the jam.
The jam is the cheapest brand of strawberry jam from the Co-op,
and the jar is almost empty.
The fruit bowl contains one apple and two oranges.
The apple is shrunken and wrinkled, but surprisingly
turns out to be edible. At least someone in the house has the good taste
to buy Cox's Orange Pippins.
The dish towels are stiff with grease and as absorbent as a plastic bag.
None of the cutlery is really clean.
The toilet roll is just about to run out.
The "shower" is just a showerhead
above a bath giving a trickle of lukewarm water.
When you stand under it, there's nowhere to put the soap.
The soap in the washbasin is dirty.
Any of the towels might last have been used to dry the dog.