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 

Bus Nutters.

It has to be said that as far as London lunatics go, I've already experienced more than my fair share. It seems that regardless of what time I leave our flat and set off to work (this can be any time between 8 and half past 8 due to oversleeping / bad hair days / major not bothered attitude), and never mind the fact that buses run up and down Uxbridge Road every three minutes, I will without fail, ALWAYS get on the bus with a nutter.

Three days after arriving in London back in October, and still a bit scared of the whole bus thing in general, I jumped on the 260 to White City clutching my oyster card like such a geeky newbie. The bus was so packed, as in it was a literal case of body to body, bump and grind the whole journey. To be fair to me, as soon as I'd got onto the bus I'd scanned the crowd and spotted what can only be described as a definite pervert in the midst. So I'd positioned myself near the smiley blonde girl and felt a-okay.

Due to the constant pushing and swaying of bodies around me I hadn't noticed that the aforementioned pervert had moved through the crowd and was RIGHT behind me. I didn't notice until he began to erm.. rub himself.. against my bum. Once, twice, three times he sort of bumped deliberately into me and I had had enough. I turned around put my hand on his chest and pushed him away saying very firmly, "Stop doing that", and again moved myself to be as far from him as possible. Sorted.

Or so I thought.

Once again, the swaying movement of the bus meant he could creep through the crowd like a lurking lurker and appear RIGHT BEHIND me again. Nothing I could do except get off the bus, which I planned to do at the next stop even though I was still a little way away from where I needed to be. With this plan in mind I just ignored him as he started again. Until the feeling against my back sort of.. changed? I swirled round ready to really shout at him this time and was presented with something that is now burned onto the back of my eyelids for life. Let's just say he had taken 'it' out and was relieving himself onto my back. Needless to say I had a major-scale meltdown, made a right scene and the good people of the 260 handled the situation by chucking off the pervert and reporting the incident with the help of some iPhone snaps.

Other commuting highlights include a man shouting at the driver about going slowly so much so that the driver stopped the bus, came out of his little cubby hole and squared up to the hot cross man. It was a few minutes after forehead-to-forehead anger when he said to the now FURIOUS driver; "Do you not know who I am mate!? I'm Mo Farrah's cousin mate, and as a family we don't do moving so slowly!" Hilarious in hindsight, except not so much when I had to leap off the bus to avoid being in the middle of a genuine fist fight as more passengers got involved to diffuse the situation.

And a woman dressed head to toe in red faux fur who sat down on the priority seats despite there being a couple of particularly frail looking elderly men just arrived on the bus. When one of them asked if she would mind standing so they could sit (so politely) she said that her outfit made her so hot she had 'felt faint'. Outraged by this response, another passenger said to red fur lady; "Take off your fucking fur bolero and let them sit." Red fur lady didn't like this one bit and literally started SCREAMING at the lady who had dared to get involved and eventually both of them got kicked off the bus. So annoying because I was so Team Other Passenger. Either way, at least the little old men got their seats eventually. To finish this post let's just take this moment to laugh at the fact she had a BOLERO on. So damn retro.

L x