The thing that’s really pissing me off this week is old
people’s hygiene and washing up standards in particular. Remember the debacle
last autumn with Stannah Stair, my father-in-law, falling bonce-first down the
dancers? You know...that trip to the fragrant Vale of Croydon, where I got
dysentery in return for daughter-in-lawly concern? Well, Stannah is still alive
and he has been allowed to resume washing up. It’s just not fucking funny.
I have always known that old people can’t wash up. My mother
seems to store lumps of gravy in the crevices of pretty much every receptacle
in the house. She’s probably got Bisto-chunks lurking in her vest drawer, like
meaty dangleberries she can savour secretly when Countdown is on. There is
always a new variety of cheese in the dimples of her milk jug and handy egg
chunks, clinging to the tines of forks: snack-barnacles for the terminally
dirty and desperate. Laughably, my mother complains that my sofa smells of
piss, because we haven’t had it recovered since the kids were potty trained.
But Jesus could have used the baked bean souvenirs on her plates to feed the
five thousand. This is mainly because my mother buys her washing up liquid in a
large 5L container from somewhere like Billy's Bargain Busters. She also has shocking eyesight.
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| Washing up liquid does not come from a yak's fangita, OK? |
Now, it dawns on me that there’s a recurring theme here. My
mother-in-law, also mature in years, also uses Poundlessland yakpiss to wash up
with. You have to use a cupful to get any froth at all. Worse still – and
here’s the poke in the tiddies that gets me every time – she uses a brush. Who washes up with a brush? All she’s doing is scratching the
dried on food a bit and then putting the plates and cups away. But the
father-in-law really is the biggest offender. Reach for something to pour juice into for your child and you’re treated to a glass with week-old milk clinging to
the inside, with lip gank plastered round the top and a nice greasy thumb
print. Often there are bits of orange flesh from juice “with bits” welded to
the foetid milk too. Tell me if I’m out line, but I don’t relish having my son wrap
his childish chops around octogenarian gob-slobber in a bid to drink the
strange orange cheese concoction. It just ain’t right. And are those glasses
really just “discolouring with age”, or is it that they too are caked in two
years’ worth of second hand mouth-ming and congealed red wine? Ooh, what a fucking
surprise it was, when the discoloured, ageing glasses came up sparkling clean
after a proper soak in hot water and scour with a genuine washy-up sponge!
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| Use a brush and you might as well give your pots a wipe with your dentures.... |
And then, in my mind’s eye, I take a walk into the utility
room and see the raw meat joint that has been left unrefrigerated on a sunny
window sill for at least an entire day and night, ready for dinner time...right
next to the lovely dairy based desert, happily fermenting in its anchovy egg
barf-festooned dish. The 5/2 fasting diet has got nothing on this. Wanna shit
your extra kilos off in a weekend? Go for lunch at an elderly relative’s house!
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| Don't leave old bloke mouth-ming on cups, thinking you can sneak in a snog by proxy with house guests this way. |
