Krazy Krystal's Laboratory

All the things that were wrong about this week

OR: Why I am the worst housesitter of all time

Here's a little social survey that some of you (read : none of you) might want to conduct during your daily interaction with the world. The scenario is simple. When greeting someone you know, ask them how they've been. I have noticed that the majority of people reply with a rapid "good" as an autopilot social nicety, however more often than not this term is further qualified with either "Busy" or "Tired" or both "Busy and tired". It is possible to be busy and tired and good. Usually if I'm not busy, I'm bored, however it is slightly alarming that the basal state of the populace at large can be summarised into these categories.

So why not keep a mental tally of how many good:busy:tired replies you get and report back here when you're not too busy or tired to do so...

Why is this relevant? Well it's not really, but as I haven't posted anything in a while I was contemplating how ludicrous it wuold be to use busy or tired as an excuse. They are true, getting home from work at 9pm on a Friday night tends to imply one is busy and leaves one feeling tired. Still I'm hardly incapable of typing :)

I've got a backlog of things to blog about - My bestest Kate and I have had some excellent adventures together and life is, in general, good. With background busy and tired :)
However I thought I'd supply a snapshot of what's happening in the here and now, whilst I relax over what is a disappointingly mediocre glass of wine.

One night when I was out having some krazy adventures, my great mates Cazandy asked me if I could housesit for them. They have three cats who demand a precise feeding routine, which was proving to be prohibitive to their holiday travel plans. The three pints inside me took a vote and decided that me housesitting was a great idea. This is what happened next:

1. The arrival

Cazandy live a few miles out of town, and had already left for their holiday by the time I was able to arrive at their place. So I got a cab with my suitcase in tow, but the taxi driver took a back way that I was suspiciously unfamiliar with. I asked and was told it was the "short cut" which I'm fairly sure is York taxi driver speak for "the easiest way to get money from lost Australian girls". We went pulled up outside of number 69 (dudes!) and I was again amazed that so many streets of England have all the houses lined up perfectly and that they all look the same. Thank goodness they're numbered. I got out the key and then noticed the basketball hoop and other teenaged paraphernalia in the driveway, and then, how strangely un-Cazandy-like the front garden was. A quick double-take confirmed my fears, so I then knocked on the window of the cab and announced to the driver that he had in fact dropped me off at the wrong house. How embarrassing. I hope no one inside the house realised how close they'd come to being invaded. It turns out that we were in the parallel street to the correct address and that yes, amanda, all houses in England do look the same.

2. Washing machines hate me

I had a recent fight with the washing machine in my current apartment, which I still haven't gotten over. Luckily the appliance insurance people sent round a member of "da Boyz" to talk sternly to it, and it's behaved itself ever since. However, I'd been away for the weekend, and so I arrived at Cazandy's on monday night with a bit of washing to do. In go all my clothes.

*insert long tiresome rant about how British people don't wash in cold water and how odd it is to parboil your clothes at 90 degrees celsius for two hours*

The door wouldn't open. It's an under bench front loader and the door wouldn't open. All my clothes are in there. And it still won't open. They were stuck in their ALL WEEK! I had to keep running the cycle through every other day to prevent them from going mouldy. The smug little device taunted me with it's efficient spin cycle, I could see my skirts and shirts tumbling round, but couldn't reach them. I had to stop via home the next day to find something to wear to work.

When Cazandy got home, a swift kick to the appliance in question quickly released my threads from their shiny prison. When asked why I hadn't kicked it sooner, I told them I wasn't in the habit of abusing other people's whitegoods. I now know that when in the UK you should show no mercy to recalcitrant electrical items.

3. Locking the front door is important

I've never been great with keys and locks. I know how they work in theory, but in practice it never seems to go that well for me. It's like I've been cursed by the patron saint of locksmiths or something. I got up on my first morning of housesitting, fed 2 cats outside and 1 cat inside as per instructions, and left the house. I turned the key to lock the door and checked to see that it was, and it wasn't. I couldn't lock the door. No amount of key turning from the inside or out could persuade the bolt to side across. What was I doing wrong? How much of an idiot must I look standing outside the house unable to lock it. I went to the back door to practise with a little more privacy. I couldn't lock that one either. I could unlock it, but not lock it again. What's going on? I then started to panic, I was late for work but I couldn't leave the house unlocked. Someone might steal the cats and make them into mittens, and how would I tell Cazandy. I tried reaching them on their mobiles, but Britain is such a VAST country that it still has some areas without mobile reception. I left two vague and somewhat panicky messages along the lines of "What's special about locks and keys in England that I don't know about?". I didn't know what to do. Cazandy were the people I always rang to get help with the quirks of UK society. I have four years of tertiary education and a PhD and I can't lock a door! I stamped my feet and pouted for a bit, but surprisingly that didn't seem to help either. So I took a deep breath, swallowed my pride and rang the lab. Now, have you ever tried explaining to someone what a front door looks like? Apart from, "it's a front door"? I just didn't have the vocabulary for the kind of conversation that was going to be of any help, and was about to give up, when one of my fellow post-docs uttered the ingenious words "Sometimes you have to lift up the door handle".

Problem solved.

Grrrrrrrrr.............


4. Know your bike maintenance

Cazandy usually ride their bikes to work, so in keeping with the life-swap theory, I chose to adopt this mode of transport during my housesitting week. This is fine, cause I used to ride in Melbourne all the time, and even have my own cycle helmet here. It constantly surprises me that although England is the premier nanny-state, there is no law about wearing a cycle helmet. Madness. Although it's been a while since I rode, I wasn't too concerned, cause hey it's just like riding a bike isn't it? On foot York seemed deceptively flat, you never really learn how many hills and inclines there are in a town till you start hitting the pavement on two wheels. It's all good exercise I suppose. However, it all came a bit undone, literally, one night when cruising down a rather nice hill, changing gears to the terrible clunky sound of the chain falling off. Fortunately there was a shell garage at the bottom of the hill, which supplies disposable plastic gloves for you to use when pumping petrol into your car (see: nanny-state). I have no idea how bike chains are meant to work, something to do with gears I suspect, but I did manage to put it back the way I thought looked kinda right and get home in one piece (and feed the cats, all 3 inside at night time). I'm planning on buying myself a bike as a personal christmas/birthday present to myself, and when I do will someone please remind me to take a bike maintenance course. Cheers.

5. Mistaken Identities

Losing the key to the bicycle shed is bad. Bikes should not be stored in the kitchen when there are cats under foot. Especially when one of the cats is Sam. Sam is a rather large black and white tom-cat who permits Cazandy the false impression that they own him. Cazandy are also under the mistaken impression that Sam's name is Morris. They call him it all the time. But the first time I saw him, I realised that a mistake had been made when he was named, and that really he was called Sam. This happens sometimes. I had a drama student once named "Tim". His parents thought his name was Adam, and so he was called by this name from a very young age. However I knew that he was actually "Tim" and by the end of term not only was he answering to it, but most of the class were referring to him as Tim also. So I can understand how Sam was accidentally named Morris, and being a cat, it has been hard for him to say anything about it. Though I guess being British, he probably didn't want to mention it to Cazandy in case it embarrassed them or something...

I wonder what will happen next week - stay tuned !

posted by Dr Krystal @ 9:31 pm