Poo.

Not going to lie, poo has been a huge feature of our lives since moving to London.

Firstly, you've got the whole "Don't go in there for a while, I've done room spray but.. you know..." scenario. I mean, don't get me wrong, we've been pals for bloody ages and these things are really not awkward, but it's still like common courtesy to pre-warn your flatmate of odours that may lurk. I suppose the first few times were a bit stressful. Running the tap and create a crash mat out of loo roll were techniques that we both employed, just incase noise was an issue also.

Then, after the first couple of weeks living together and a bit of sneaking around the subject we turned a corner overnight, and actually began to update each other on our poo situations. Whole Whatsapp conversations revolve around; "Can't wait to get home and poo, I'm too scared to go at work" and "I really should have tried to go this morning, I'm in pain".  The tap wasn't turned on, the room spray wasn't really used and coming out of the loo head held high became the norm.

Next, the dog poo shenanigans began. One day, when we had just got back from a lovely walk to Hammersmith... there it was. A huge pile of dog poo right on our front step. We'd been meaning to clear the front step for a while because we've also got the world's messiest neighbours who are apparently blind to their bins being torn apart by foxes and rubbish strewn everywhere. The dog poo was the nudge we needed to set to and sort things out. Moving it was so distressing and involved a lot of gagging (from me). To be totally honest I ran away screaming (and practically crying) while R stood there holding the poo at the end of the brush before she swooshed it into the bin bag like a trooper.

As if Karma was coming back for me after leaving R with the err.. shitty situ.. a few weeks later, and after quite a few smaller piles of dog poo on our front step (an on-going problem), I was home alone having a cleaning spree. The radio was on, I was kitted out in marigolds and a top-of-head bun and I was having a lovely time splashing about with bleach. I even started to go through my wardrobe and pack away unwanted clothes into a bin bag ready for charity. To create some space, I decided to pop the bin bag of clothes in our under-cover porch bit outside our front door.

LO AND BEHOLD, what can only be described as the hugest pile of FOX POO I've EVER SEEN is genuinely, no exaggeration, ON the threshold/door mat of our front door. The smell burnt my nose and eyes and hit the back of my throat. My eyes started watering and I had to RUN to the toilet and hang over it attempting to fight the urge to be sick. This tells you how sensitive and fragile I am and goes someway to explaining my abandonment of R in the previous story.

In a terrible attempt to move the poo & door mat all in one go without touching anything awful, I thought I'd roll the mat into a poo spring roll and put the entire situation in to a bin bag, sacrificing our pretty floral "welcome" mat for the greater good. What I didn't realise was that the recent rain had water-logged the door mat so much it had turned into a literal dead weight and when I went to lift it alll my feeble little arms gave way, the mat unrolled and the poo exploded everywhere. More gagging.

Panicking again and getting the serious stress sweats, I realised something more was going to have to be done here. In a moment of pure genius, that I'm still proud of, I decided to woosh the poo away using numerous pans of bleachy water as a type of water canon. I stood one side of the poo and forecefully tidal-waved it away over to the far side of our door and eventually picked up the mat and threw it on top of the now far-enough-away poo.

I'm ashamed to say that our floral poo-mat is still in a heap a little way away from our door and neither of us have checked underneath to see if the poo has biodegraded yet. (Does this happen? We're hoping so.)

Good grief.
Lx