Welcome To The Jungle

Last night I ate some wonderful sausages. They were both pork AND beef, and were sold to me by an awkward man in a Waitrose hat. I am also awkward, so it was a suitably awkward exchange. I'm used to just buying sausages that have been caught, processed, packaged, and left for me on the shelf, with handy packaging telling me what they might taste like, what shape they are, and how long I should cook them for to make sure I don't die.

But I've been feeling in a crazy mood since Monday, when I cycled to Brighton to prove to myself that it was possible to cycle to Brighton, so I went to the butcher's counter and interacted with a real, other, human being. I looked at the sausages, he came over. I wasn't ready to choose which sausages I wanted, because I hadn't looked at all the sausages yet. So I rejected him. He hovered for a bit. Then he walked away, just as I was ready, so I had to call him back. Then I pointed at the sausages, but like a dog he didn't understand pointing, and so just looked at my hand. So I read the name of the sausages out loud. I told him how many sausages I wanted: four. Greed. Then I went home and cooked the sausages.

Back home an hour later, I was just finishing my fourth and final sausage, ignoring my vague plan to hold one of the sausages back for the following morning's commute (I've never eaten a sausage sandwich on a packed commuter train before, but - as I mentioned above - I'm feeling a bit frisky at the moment so the idea appealed to me). I was watching Channel Four news with my grandma, (we both congratulated Jack Straw for how he handled the lusty questioning of folk hero John Snow) and trying to decide what to do with my evening.

Then the phone rang. It was Alastair. I went outside to answer.

"Hello. Are you at home?", he said.
"Yes. I'm full of sausages", I replied.
"That's excellent. I'm wandering the streets of New Malden because I have cleaners in my flat, and I don't know where to go. Do you want to go to the pub?"
"Yes."

Shortly after this, we met in Bar Malden and bought some beer. Alastair explained that, as he is selling his house soon, he needed to get some cleaners in to make his house look presentable, as he couldn't be bothered cleaning the house himself, on account of his being lazy.

"It's hard to find good cleaners. Did you get a recommendation off someone?"
"Yes I did, but they didn't turn up. So I just got some off the internet"
"Fair enough. They must be reliable if they know how to use the internet"
"Yeah. I've just left my house to them. They have a dog. They should be finished soon. I'm really worried they might just steal all of my stuff"
"They won't do that. They have a website."
"But they're quite young. What if they steal anything? Bis told me to trust the kids. If they steal anything, I'm writing to Manda Rin to complain."

We talked for a while, about important things: his move to Bristol, how it feels like the end of an era, and Geordi La Forge's failure to sleep with any women over the course of 178 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

"I think it's really unfair that they made the only blind member of crew hopeless with women".
"Yes, but it's not like they were going 'I'm really sorry Geordi, but I can't go out with you... because you're blind'".
"Yeah, but it's what they were thinking"

After ninety minutes or so, it was time to head back to Alastair's flat, to see if the cleaners had stolen his Sheffield Wednesday clock, his figure of Nagash: Lord of the Undead, his Play Station 2, or his Playstation 3.

As we approached we could see them hoovering his front room. The woman shouted "Shit, he's back already!" in Polish to the other two, and to the dog. (Fuelled by alcohol, we could, for this moment, understand Polish)

We came up the stairs. The dog was outside. I introduced myself to it. Alastair talked to the cleaners, who said they needed another fifteen minutes. What could we do for fifteen minutes?

We went to another pub, one slightly closer to his house. It was one of those murderer's pubs, full of locals and murderers. Despite living in New Malden for a large proportion of my life I'd never been to that pub before, because it was full of murderers.

By the time we got there, as Alastair pointed out, we only had seven minutes before we needed to go back, so he ordered shots of Tequila while I went to the toilet.

The regulars watched us very closely, with some puzzlement evident. They were too puzzled to murder.

We drank our drinks and left minutes later. On the way back, we passed an emo kid, walking up and down an alleyway smoking weed and looking unhappy. We talked about our infamous (within our own personal friendship narrative) monopoly pub crawl of ten years previous, which we vowed to finally complete within the next month. Only eleven squares to go, from Fleet Street to Mayfair. Hopefully we'll arrive home before... hopefully we'll arrive home this time.

We get back. They're just finishing up. I sit outside with the dog.

They bring out massive amounts of rubbish. Alastair gives them a wedge of cash. They leave, carrying beer and cleaning equipment.

We head in to the flat. It looks ok - bathroom looks like how bathrooms are supposed to look. Carpets are clean. They've done an okay-ish job.

Alastair goes to the fridge for beer. It is empty. He looks at the freezer. It is also empty.

I look through the cupboards - no sign of it.

I'm not saying we're desperate for beer, or anything, but we decide to rummage through the bins.

Alastair salvages many things from the bin bag: frozen food, plastic fridge compartments, a fajita kit. His oven gloves. They threw away his oven gloves. But no beer.

It eventually transpired that Alastair told them to "take everything out" of the fridge, to help them clean it. Translated via Polish, and giving them the benefit of the doubt, we decided that had been taken to mean "take everything from the fridge".

So they did. They drank some of the beer while they worked, and took the rest home with them. They threw away his oven gloves. They had a lovely dog.

The final sign of their visit: while they were cleaning, or drinking, they put a CD on. Their choice? Guns & Roses.

In Eastern Europe, it is still the late 1980s.