I was struggling for inspiration for this post until I came across this post by my 'fabalicious' blog buddy, Confessions of a Rotten Correspondent.
http://www.rottencorrespondent.blogspot.com/2007/09/dragon-breath-blues.html
Go on read it. It's funny.

Anyway, it reminded me of a story my friend Barbara told me, and I think it's a story that deserves to be shared.

(Names have been changed to protect the innocent...erm, and the guilty.)

Right.

'Barbara' and 'Norman' live in a large top floor flat in the roof space of a dilapidated yet charming old house.

They share this flat with 'Nev', an old colleague of Norman's, who has hung around a lot longer than the friendship.

Nev pays half the rent.

So it's his flat too,

But he doesn't clean it, paint it or love it in any way.

So why are Babs and Norm living with him? I hear you say.

Well, Norm, in his bachelor days, needed a place to stay, and Nev needed a room-mate.

Norm, as he was a trucker and also a bassist, spent little time at their pad as he was either on the road or gigging, and Nev, as he was in some kind of flush of youth, i.e. not the first, but not mature enough to be called, well, mature, spent most of his time behind the fish counter at Morrisons, or in his local pub, the interestingly named, 'New Inn'.

NB. Nev didn't just hang around sniffing the sea bass, he actually worked there, so it was allowed.

Oooo, N.B. again, a 'flat' is an 'apartment', just in you weren't sure.

So,

Norm and Nev lived together out of convenience, which then became habit, which then became indifference. But nobody was in a position to ask anyone else to move out as nobody had been there first.

So, as the years passed, and Norm began to spend more evenings at home with various girlfriends (not all at the same time), he began to notice a distinct lack of something in Nev's life.

Infact a distinct lack of two things,

No, three...

1. Personal hygiene


2. Friends


3. A relationship with a female person of the opposite sex...you know...a girlfriend.

Obviously the absence of the first precluded the probability of other two, but this did not spur young (ish) Nev into extreme bath action.

Instead he lay about the flat, smoking, drinking and creating numerous unpleasant emissions from every orifice you can imagine, and indeed probably some you cannot.

In short, he was smelly.

Fetid, malodorous, whiffy and rancid.

Bereft of bath soak, lacking loofah, without wash mitt.

At this point in my tale you might feel I'm being unkind...

...that some foul deed must have befallen poor unfortunate Nev, but as far as Norm and Babs could judge he was merely an odorous soap dodger who cared not for his fellow human beings and would have been quite happy living in a dung heap.

Anyway, on with the story.

Now,

Of all Nev's nasty, nauseating, nostril assaulting, personal hygiene habits, his lack of oral hygiene was the worst.

His breath could melt tarmac. He could poison elk from a distance of 50 miles away, and no one ever saw him anywhere near small children...or at least no small children that lived to tell the tale.

Even his plaque had a problem with plaque.

In short, his exhalation caused expiration.

As for the visual pollution caused by these mournful molars, well I can only say that they were the colour of sunset over a lush summer meadow...

... yellow and green.

While Babs and Norm were not aways comfortable with their less than fragrant friend, apart from the above annoyances, he was a fairly easy flat mate.

In that, he kept himself to himself.

He only ate the food that lay festering on his shelf.

He did not leave his underpants on the floor in the bathroom,

and he only picked his nose and wiped it on the chair arm when he thought they weren't looking.

They sat on the settee.

But all this was about to change...

It's a normal day.

Norm and Babs go to work, then come home.

They eat.

They watch a film about an acrobatic postman.

They go to bed.

Nev arrives home late and can be heard in the bathroom next door.

He uses the toilet.

He flushes the chain.

He brushes his teeth.

OH MY GOD.

HE BRUSHES HIS TEETH.

Hooray, I hear you shout.

Nev has at last realised the error of his ways.

He is leaving his hideous hole and joining his fellow humans in the embrace of cleanliness.

Norm and Babs look at each other in shock, then with expressions of joy...

...then,

horror.

He is brushing his teeth.

But,

He doesn't own a toothbrush...