PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS

The house meeting was entertaining. Whether it accomplished anything remains to be seen. But it brought some laughter afterwards. True to form, however, there was evident conflict in A towards J. He contradicted anything that J said, and the reasons he gave were thin. J offered to clean a stubbornly dirty window but A told him to leave it alone. J mentioned some advice given by one of the landlord’s associates and that info was dismissed by A as incorrect: “it doesn’t work that way, mate”. But there is a moment of checked hilarity when A asks quite honestly if everyone can keep the lid down on the toilets. Looking around the room where we are all sat, his smoking and TV den, piled with cigarette ends, rolling papers, ashtrays, blankets, DVDs of The A Team (of course, A and his A Team!) and the stench of stale marijuana smoke suffusing everything, his request strikes us as absurd and hilarious. At first we think he is joking and that he has thrown a comic moment purposely into the proceedings, and we laugh. But his stern look quickly changes that and we realize that he is being dead serious. For a moment the meeting looks like it might go pear-shaped as he evidently takes offence, and then he qualifies his request by saying “it looks better that way; and we don’t have to look at any pee or stray pubes”. That’s it for J; he holds back a huge laugh and politely ends the meeting there and then. In his room he rolls on his bed with laughter.

At 2am, waking after a dreamy sleep, J goes to the bathroom to piss. The toilet seat is up! He frowns, smiles again to himself and puts it back down.

At 6.45am J’s alarm goes off. The only other person awake in the house is A. J listens to him hawking and coughing in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, showering etc. When A vacates, J gets up and goes straight for his ablutions. What does he find? The toilet seat has been left up – by A! J finds it even more amusing. He wonders if the request was perhaps a test by the stoned A to see if his co-habitees would honour any request. Or maybe it is just A’s view that it’s one rule for him and another for everyone else?