The apocalypse at Room 10.

It is official. God, or.. whoever, is seeking revenge on my little room. As you may have read here, on the 20th of August, while I was on holiday, my block of flats caught fire. Lucky for me I was on the 3rd floor, the fire was on the 1st and nothing of mine was destroyed. You would figure, one minor catastrophe would be enough for my room, but, you'd be wrong.

Last Saturday, as I told you, I went out to celebrate multiple friends' birthdays. It was a lovely night, albeit in the centre of London where it will set you back easily £4 for beer, £7 for anything more spiffy (note: don't go out in the Centre) and will not have very good music. It was also raining torrentially. Still, I had my friends, it was fine. At 2am the plan was to head on to Fabric (dance Mecca in Farringdon), but I discovered it was £18 for entry. Sorry Fabric, I'm not an electro girl, I can't justify £18 for 3 hours (at best) of techno beats. (Plus, again, expensive drinks. I'm a £1.80 half-pint-of-cider girl myself).

Disappointed, I arrived home at 3am, clambered up my stairs and opened my door. The light didn't work.

Odd.

So, I assumed my light had blown, shrugged it off, took off my shoes. The floor was wet.

Still more odd.

I wasn't drunk enough to be hallucinating. So, in a panicked frenzy, it was off with the stockings, off with the coat and jumper, crawl on the floor. Sure enough, it was entirely saturated.

Sat on one mattress: saturated

Sat on a chair: saturated

Picked up my quilt: saturated

Sat on the other mattress: lets say, mildly moist.

Joy.

By some miracle, my computer, TV, heater, and passport were practically the only things unscathed. I slept on a semi dry corner of my semi dry mattress in some semi dry pajama's (how I avoided pneumonia, I do not know), and in the morning, surveyed the damage.

There had been 4 leaks in my room. Some big enough I could probably have stuck my fingernail in there. My landlords came up later to survey the damage, saw mine, shrugged, and walked out (surely after the fire you would think they would have tried a little harder re: tenant protection or insurance). Clearly no.

So as you can guess, these past 5 days I've been drying, scrubbing, chucking, vacuuming in a constant cycle trying to avoid damp, mould, musty smells, etc. To top it all off le copain arrives tomorrow, it is a bit of a stress.

The good part of this is, I can recommend to you good cleaning products should you trash *your* room!

• Firstly, a heater, on constantly, all day, all night, preferably a low heat. (Particularly useful for mattresses that have been transformed into sponges overnight).
• Carpet cleaner. Not just for obvious stains anymore, oh no. I sprayed it over stinky areas of my floor, rubbed it in, vacuumed it off, it cleaned deep down and helped me start to lift the intense smell of damp from my floor.
• Cross ventilation. Not good for the environment when you have the heater on, but I had no other choice. Fan one end, window other, heater in the middle. Let it do it's thing. Helps for drying out mattresses as well.
• Baking soda: sprinkle on floor, rub it in, leave overnight, vacuum up. Niiiice.
• Febreze, £1.25 from Sainsburys. I might take this down as I'm not 100% confident it does what it claims. According to the label, it's a wash for the fabrics you can't put in a machine (mattresses, carpetc, etc). Instead of just masking the odours it actually eliminates it. I have noticed an improvement, will let you know.
• A really smelly candle or incense (not a cure but hey, makes the crime slightly less obvious).

Now I feel like I'm a mother giving cleaning tips. *sigh* that's my life at present. The moral of this story though is - have a decent landlord! Ciao.

Note: I was raised by an Agnostic and an extreme Atheist - sorry if my mentioning of 'apocalypse' and 'God' was blasphemous and/or offensive to you, it's in my blood.