h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A few days ago a friend of mine, while visiting my house, used my toilet. "Your bath's pretty bloody disgusting" he called out. I could only agree. The rest of the bathroom wasn't too pleasant either. Every white surface was liberally dusted with a substance that looked like fine hair, but I knew it wasn't because it looked completely different to the actual hair that lined the rim of the toilet. The purple patches in the seal around the bath were presumably a life form of some sort. Something would have to be done.

So this evening I cleaned it all. All the tarnished taps and tidemarks, all the tiny bits of carpet fluff at one end of the bath that have presumably hitched a ride on my feet when I got in to have a shower. The microscropic civilisation on the back of the shower curtain proved impossible to eradicate completely, but I've reduced it to the early bronze age at least.

As I was doing it, I got to thinking. Really, this is all about sex. You see, there's this girl I see on the bus every few weeks on my way into work, and we've had a bit of that significant eye contact, you know the kind. She's beautiful. Really beautiful. With her red hair and long black leather coat I'm pretty certain she's the Morrigan, the ancient Irish goddess of war and death, and that's only one of the reasons I'm too pathetically terrified to talk to her.

Another of those reasons, it occurred to me as I was sloshing the soapscum away, is probably a very good one. My subconcious, always on the lookout for me, is trying to save me from certain humiliation. I mean, just imagine at some point in the distant future I do actually talk to her. Imagine I actually persuade her to meet me for a coffee or something, and one thing leads to another (which it never does, you always have to bloody work at it, but that's a rant for another day perhaps) and she... wait for it... comes back to my place. At some point during the evening, unless she's very ill, she's almost guaranteed to want to use my bathroom.

Now I will interject at this point that it is perfectly possible for women to be at least as slobbish and unconcerned with domestic hygiene as any given man. My brother, hardly exactly fastidious himself, has some stories about the flat he shared with three women at college last year that'd curdle milk. But on the whole it's pretty reasonable to assume the opposite. So, to maximise my chances of getting anywhere, it's only good sense to have a bathroom that you feel cleaner coming out off than when you went in.

So it's done. One less excuse. All I've got to do now is learn to make really good coffee. And carefully arrange my CD collection all around the room in nothing like alphabetical order. And get a more impressive wardrobe. Then I'll be able to introduce myself to her without fear.

Oh, and tidy the kitchen.