Into the dragon’s lair

The other day, I mentioned that I was going on a trip to the local drunk’s flat because a friend had asked me to help him put a framed picture on the wall (my friend owns a gallery and does framing etc). Well, this is the story of that day.

You know how, when you have someone coming over to do something, like you know the gas man is coming to read the meter, you clear a space for him. Say it’s tucked in the far corner of the basement or somewhere awkward, you move some stuff out of the way so it’s easier to get to. Well, Mr Red Wine had evidently cocked a snook at that type of thinking and done absolutely nothing to make our visit easier. In fact, it looked like he’d thrown everything he owned onto the floor and bed and sofa, just before we arrived.

Confusingly, the front door didn’t open properly. It got a little way open and stopped. I now realise it was because he had the sofa right behind it. It was quite wierd because he had a space either side of the sofa that he could have moved it into, so the door would open properly. But he’d pulled it directly into the line of the door.

As we carried the frame into the flat, I had to open the kitchen door and go a little way into the kitchen, to allow us to manoeuvre the frame inside.

It was awful. Awful. Months old dishes were stacked in the sink and everything was slightly tinged with dried-on reddish grease and dust.

As we passed the sofa to get the picture inside, I noticed the one shiny grease-covered spot where he obviously sat, the rest of it was covered in mess. In front of the sofa was a long coffee table, every inch covered in mess and cigarette stubs.

We had to hang the picture on the wall behind the bed and, as he’d moved none of his mess to allow us to get near the wall, we realised we’d have to stand on his bed. We asked Mr Red Wine if he had something we could put on the bed to stand on, to save us standing all over his pillows etc. He got us his dressing gown and kind of threw it on the bed. To be honest, the dressing gown looked it had been used as a doormat so not the best thing to put on a bed but we didn’t question it. We just said thanks and got on.

It was so hot in his flat and I had foolishly worn a scarf which I then couldn’t even consider taking off because there was nowhere clean to put it down.

So onto the bed we go, which was a bit dirty and, wierdly, had a huge pink fish-shaped fairground cuddly toy on it. We were trying to hang the picture but it won’t catch on the hooks so my friend asked me to take the whole weight of it, so I dropped onto my knees and held the frame up.

At this point in my visit, I thought, where did it all go wrong? I was brought up well, I went to a good school, I’ve got degrees, I have a nice job and wonderful friends. How did this happen? How did I end up on my knees on the local drunk’s bed in his flat? Something has gone terribly wrong here.

It was at this point I also thanked myself for changing out of my open Crocs into a pair of closed laced shoes.

Once we had managed to hook it into place, we scarpered quickly, reeling from the experience, and sighed with relief as we went back to our normal greaseless, bedbugless lives.

And that is the story of my visit to Mr Red Wine’s house.