Moving House, The Danger Room and Mad Eric

It feels like there's a never ending steam of house moves going on. In 2003, we moved house 3 times. Then in 2004, I helped Stead move house. Now he's moving house again. I know that's not actually very menay house moves in total, but all I said was that it SEEMS like it. Ok.

This time, Stead's buying his own place rather than renting. So on Staurday we went down to Fishponds Road to pick up a Luton van. We emptied out his one bedroom
back-to-back box of a house (with cardboard walls), drove it over to his new place - a 3 bedroom detatched mansion (at least incomparison).

Interesting place, Stead's new house. The hallway and lounge have some very tasteful wooden beams on the ceiling and walls - yes, walls. Actually, it looks more like they staples a few bits of 2 by 4 to the wall and ceiling and painted 'em browner. Niiiice. Then there's the nice anaglypta rendered walls. Nice texturing.... for the sixties. And of course we mustn't forget the carpet. The lovely lovely carpet. That belongs in a pub. DOn't ask about the internal doors. Just don't.

The highlight of the house, however has to be Mad Eric's Danger Room. Eric, presumably is the name of the young lad who lived with his mum and her boyfriend in this house. We surmise this from the 'inscription', written in black marker on the bedroom door, underneath the FHM girlie sticker. 'Eric's Room' followed by the horribly mis-spelt 'Smoking Parler'. On the outside of the door frame, is a hole that looks suspiciously like a bolt used to be attached to the door. The outside of the door. What, you may ask, were they trying to lock in?

Upon entering Eric's room, the full horror of it becomes clear. Turned to maximum, the badly installed dimmer switch causes the light to come on with the awseome power of what appears to be a 20 watt bulb. Worse than that, the light flickers on and off, occasionally getting a little brighter. Remember the Electric Six song 'Danger, High Voltage'?

The one of the walls is full of little embedded ball bearings, as if Mad Eric had a BB gun and spent his evenings firing them at the wall. The opposite wall if full of little holes - probably from missing a dartboard. The whole room was pretty mucky. Ewwww.

So... Mad Eric, who was almost certainly a smoker, was locked in his room at night (possibly just on the full moon) where he shot holes in the walls with his little bb gun. The airing cupboard door, immediatly iopposit his room has at one point become very intimate with someone's foot. Was Mad Eric a kicker? I suppose we'll never know.

Anyway. We sent the Vic round with some antibacterial wipes and some Orange Mr Muscle to make the whole place a bit less grimy. Give it a couple of weeks, and I'm sure you'll never know it was as nasty as it is now!