thirty-two

Lying in bed at eight thirty-one on Saturday morning the Pernod-induced feeling of well being I had basked in the previous evening was well and truly gone.

It felt as if I were being held down by the coldness of the room, as if that coldness had a physical weight (a presence that the insipid March sunshine would only burn away sometime after half eleven). I momentarily found myself longing for the radiators of home, the radiators I used to burn my back against as I sat on the carpet in my white shirt and flimsy grey jumper waiting for mum to finish doing her hair before she took us to school.

In the house I shared with Stewy and his brother there were only storage heaters (which added more to the size of the electricity bill and the depth of mould on the walls than to the warmth of the room). I did have a fan heater, which I occasionally put on for a few minutes, and lots of granny-knitted jumpers which I'd wear two or three at a time giving myself the appearance of a woolly Michelin man (and some inkling of what I'd look and feel like when I was fat and old). However, the jumpers and the fan heater, which I knew were lurking somewhere in the shadows on the far side of the room, did nothing to relieve the immediate burden of coldness that continued to press down upon me.

As I clung desperate to the therapeutic warmth of Debbie's body, still unable to forsake that busty cotton softness, I briefly considered ringing Mrs Barley and telling her I was ill. But some deeply-instilled work ethic (the curse and blessing of my class) - a misplaced pride which forbid me from not doing something I'd said I would do - took over. At eight thirty-seven, on dutiful autopilot, I threw the duvet aside and stepped shivering into the morning's frozen stillness.

The bath was particularly full of woodlice that morning, venturing out into what must have seemed to them like a vast white dessert, their armoured bodies oblivious to the cold as they went about their seemingly aimless business, undeterred by the bombardment of drips from Stewy's socks which hung on a rack above them.

We used to assess our friend's homes - the myriad bedsits above shops and rooms in shared houses - on a woodlouse basis. It was similar to the star rating system used to measure the relative luxury of hotels - only in reverse. Whereas the most lavish of hotels was awarded a five star rating, a five woodlouse rating would be awarded to a flat completely unfit for human habitation. Our house merited, I guess, about a three woodlouse rating (although it possibly scored higher with respect to various other infestations - which will, I promise you, rear their ugly heads later on).

Not being overly familiar with trends in pre-war domestic plumbing, I am not able to exactly date and describe the various items in the bathroom. All I can tell you is that they were all old and that none of them matched. The bath was probably the oldest thing of all. It's sides were tide-marked, like an old jetty. It was crusted on the base and beneath the constantly-dripping hot tap with a thick layer of limescale - beige in colour and impossible to remove with anything less than a chisel.

Above the bath hung a shower curtain (which seemed slightly curious as there was no shower). Among the folds at the edge of the curtain (yellow and blue striped plastic patterned with sea horses and star fish) was a globule of toothpaste which had been colonised by mould (the sticky whiteness disappearing more and more each day beneath an alarmingly large mass of slimy, green fungal fur).

In comparison to the bath, the sink was quite new (mind you compared to the bath a chamber pot would seem modern). The sink (chipped, pale blue china) was secured to the wall by two huge iron screws, which extended through a pair of brackets and disappeared deep into the brickwork. The plaster behind the sink had come loose in a single inch-thick slab (roughly the shape of Canada). Every time there was an airlock in the taps (a daily occurrence) the plaster slab shook on the iron screws, but refused to crack and shatter, instead hanging on resolutely like a fossilised towel.

Above the sink was a yellowed cabinet made from some indestructible plastic. The cabinet was lined with old wrapping paper (for some wedding anniversary celebrated decades before), which had cracked and crumbled at the edges like old leaves (but which no one had ever bothered to change).

The top of the cabinet and the edge of the sink were covered in half-empty shampoo bottles; miscellaneous aerosols; discarded razors blunted by rust and jammed with dried shave foam, blood and hairs; broken-toothed combs and fermenting aftershaves, which overflowed onto the rotting frame of a painted-shut window, veiled by soggy net curtains where more mould basked in glorious, grime-filtered daylight.

On the front of the cabinet was a mottled mirror. It was more tarnished metal than glass, and was covered in a sheen of dried soap. But from the fragments of my face which were visible as I peered into it, I could tell I looked pretty shit.

After brushing my teeth and washing (which I did with running water not wishing to risk contact with the mixture of hair, soap and God only knows what else that was enmeshed in the plug-hole) I made a brief visit to the loo (a room which I will decline to describe). Then (pausing only to marvel at the way a take-away prawn korma can pass through the entire length of the human digestive system without undergoing any apparent structural modification) I stumbled downstairs.

It seemed even colder down in the kitchen than it had been upstairs (possibly because someone had left one of the kitchen windows open or possibly because I was finally starting to wake up and my senses were actually beginning to respond to the March morning). I crossed the room to shut the window, walking on tip-toes to reduce the risk of treading on anything unpleasant - upturned bottle tops, lumps of curried chicken, fresh mouse droppings.

The kitchen was a mouse paradise, offering undisturbed shelter and a limitless supply of food on the unswept floor and the surfaces beside the sink, which were buried beneath a mountain of used plates, bowls and cups. Neither Stewy nor Colin had made any attempt to do any washing up for several days. Having run out of any crockery to eat off (other than the personal supply of plates which I kept in a locked cupboard for reasons of basic hygiene rather than petty possessiveness), the Golden Dragon across the road had become their main source of nutrition.

An assortment of half-empty aluminium trays and polystyrene cups were festering on top of the washing up along with empty lager cans. The mice must have thought it was their Birthdays - in addition to the cornflakes, biscuit crumbs and spilt sugar granules that our kitchen normally provided, we were now offering them a selection of nearly fresh Chinese and Indian cuisine on a daily basis! I imagined whole bus parties of rodents swarming into the kitchen after we'd gone to bed, discovering a discarded carton of number fifty-six or thirty-seven or whatever on the draining board, and squeaking in unison "Look Cantonese cashews! See peshwari nan! Great just great!"

Some weeks earlier, in an attempt to keep the mice at bay, we had acquired two kittens from Stewy's cousins, a couple of recently neutered males called Flip and Flop (the kittens that is, not the cousins). Flop (as you've probably guessed) was a fat, floppy kitten who used to laze around doing nothing (except occasionally licking his arse). Flip, on the other hand (or should I say, other paw), was very active and used to rush round the room leaping and somersaulting like he was one of those rubbery Rumanian girl gymnasts.

Flip was actually pretty good at catching things - woodlice, spiders, birds, slugs, beetles, discarded chicken curries (as if we didn't have enough of those already), old vegetables, crisp packets, etc - which he would drag into the kitchen through the cat flap. Just about the only thing he didn't catch was mice. I sometimes used to hear him clattering through the kitchen in the night, as if he might be chasing something. But, I suspect what I could actually hear was him playing some elaborate game with the mice (whilst Flop spectated sleepily from on top of the old gas boiler, which had been disconnected some years earlier, but no one had ever bothered to remove from the kitchen wall).

Eventually - realising that the cats, despite their numerous charms, were not going to do a Dick Whittington for us - we decided to deal with the mice ourselves. First, we blocked up all the holes in the kitchen with scrunched up pages from the Daily Mirror (I always knew it had to be useful for something) and Sellotaped all the cupboards shut. But still we found fresh mouse droppings littering the lino each morning. For a couple of days we couldn't work out where the mice were hiding, and then Stewy's brother, Colin decided to cook himself a baked potato. The oven had been on for about three quarters of an hour when he yelled out from the kitchen.

"Oi Stewy, Pete, quick get in here."

Thinking, from the noise he was making, that he had set fire to the wall or dropped a carving knife in his foot or something we both rushed down to the kitchen.

"What's going on?"

"Listen," he said.

We listened.

From beneath the oven there came a definite scratching noise.

"The little bastards," said Stewy.

He started sniffing the air.

"Can you smell something?"

"It wasn't me," said Colin, guiltily.

"No, not that," said Stewy. "It's a pissy smell."

"It's cat piss," I said.

"No it isn't. It's fucking mouse piss," said Stewy's brother. "Look"

He pointed to beneath the cooker. A huge puddle of amber liquid flowed out onto the lino.

"Shit," I said. "That must be one heck of a mouse."

And just as I said that, as if awaiting its cue, a huge mouse (or possibly a small rat) ran out from beneath the cooker and leapt out through the cat flap.

"Shit!"

"Fuck me!"

"Bloody hell!"

We did have a go at cleaning up after 'mighty mouse'. However, none of us could be bothered to unscrew the short cobweb-wrapped flex which wired the cooker to the wall. So, Stewy's brother just tipped a couple of buckets of concentrated bleach under it (which made it impossible to use the oven, unless you happened not to mind cooking in a kitchen filled with clouds of throat-stinging fumes).

I did attempt to make a humane trap of sorts, consisting of a walkway (a plastic ruler) leading to a piece of cheese suspended on a cotton thread over a bucket (the idea being that having caught the mice I would then drive them to the country and release them in a cornfield). Although no-one thought the trap would work, my hopes were raised when one morning I discovered that the cheese had been eaten (that was until I noticed the feline paw marks around the bucket's rim - Flop was very fond of cheese!)

I put the kettle on to make myself a cup of coffee and shouted up the stairs to Debbie.

"Do you want a cup?"

Debbie didn't answer.

But Stewy did.

"White one sugar please," he shouted.

"I wasn't asking you," I said, but made him one anyway seeing as I'd filled the kettle.

I took the tea into Stewy.

"There you go you lazy cun...."

I realised there was someone else in the bed, a headless shape buried beneath the duvet.

"Sorry, I didn't realise you had company," I said. "I'll make another."

"It's all right," whispered Stewy, brushing a tangle of bleached blonde hair from his forehead. "I think she's still asleep."

"Oh, right," I said, grinning as the shape shifted beneath the duvet.

"Better dash," I said in a hushed voice. "I was meant to be in work by nine."

"How come you're working today?" asked Stewy.

"I promised I'd go and help shift some furniture about," I said grimacing. "Only for a couple of hours."

Stewy nodded sympathetically.

"See you later then," said Stewy. "Have fun."

"And you," I smirked, nodding my head towards the shape which continued to wriggle beneath the duvet and erupted into muffled giggles as I backed out of the door.