The end is nigh – but there’s worse still to come

Next morning – OMG the stench!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can smell it from outside the room, daren’t go in! Silly me, have to put my contact lenses in, which are inside THE ROOM. Can barely put second one in, I’m retching so much. Run to the kitchen and puke up, well nothing really since I haven’t had anything this morning, but you get the picture. Now, think about it, what is in the room which is desperate? Well, youngest’s rucksack including lunchbox (!), shoes, PE kit, can’t think of anything else. Find old mask which S has used when grinding bricks and decide to use that – any port in a storm. Works fine although I rather feel I’m just breathing in brick dust instead. Decide to call in at hardware store on way home from school run and buy new mask.

Find one which says it protects against vapours, sounds about right. “Caught it then, have you?” they ask.

Return home and decide that one really should have breakfast before one tackles the really grotty jobs in life. And grotty it was too. In between bouts of running outside to get some fresh air, I move every single thing in the corner of the room, and eventually I find the source of the stench. There, on a box in the corner, is the corpse. I take it, and its accompanying flies, outside and put it in a sealable bag. One of the flies seems to want to stay with it, so it shall soon suffocate.

I go back inside and move the last remaining box in the corner to discover just exactly how it has been getting in and out of the back room. It has gnawed a hole a good three inches across through the skirting board and the floorboard.

At this point I reflect that in my life so far I have duplicated vast quantities of press VHSs of a BBC series called ‘Life of Grime’, and have also done rushes transfers since the first series. I can still remember the very first tape I transferred for them, which I made the very serious mistake of putting on and sitting down to eat my lunch whilst watching it to make sure nothing went wrong. What a mistake! The whole of the first reel covered a visit from the environmental health bods to a flat where someone had died six weeks earlier, during the summer, and they were coming in to investigate the smell. Jeez, the flies were having a field day! Ever since then the words “bodily fluids” have made me cringe.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, but probably not short enough for most folks, I now realise that when these environmental council guys go in, even though they have the white suits and the gas masks, I can tell you now from real experience YOU CAN SMELL IT!!!!!!!!!!! AND EVEN IF YOU CAN’T ACTUALLY SMELL IT, YOU THINK YOU CAN. AND IT’S TOTALLY DISGUSTING!

I never, never, never, never, never (x infinity) want to be here again!

And still the smell lingers……