Welcome To The Monkey House (Jeremy)

I can almost picture it. Over one hundred years ago, a group of men sat around a table, preferably each sporting a decent amount of facial hair (as was the fashion at the time) and perhaps a monocle just to complete the picture. They were setting up what eventually became the Australian Football League, and were designing the uniform. One of them, the guy in the corner with a sense of humour (presumably Warwick Capper’s grandfather), sniggers and points to the knee-length knickerbockers proposed by the rest of the group. “I’ve got a much better idea than that,” he says, with a slightly cruel, maniacal glint in the very pupil of his eye as he grabbed the eraser and replaced the knickerbockers with a pair of shorts that looked as though they were painted on. “It’s a winter game! This’ll make men of them!”

Geez I hate that man.

Might I explain. It’s winter, of course, and the weather’s suddenly hit a cold snap at night because the clouds have suddenly left Melbourne for the last few days. Footy training starts at 6.15 every Tuesday and Thursday evening, and by then it is well and truly dark, and well and truly freezing. To compound that, I seem to have inherited a frustratingly annoying trait from the paternal side of the family; that would be the Hodges trademark Barely-There Butt. My barely-there butt makes clothes shopping difficult at the best of times (YOU try buying jeans that fit your hips but come about three inches past your knees) but it makes footy shorts nigh-on embarassing. I pull them out of my bag with a resigned sigh. They look as though they were made out of two facewashers stitched together (with material left over for the ties at the side). In short, they’re not much longer than my own handspan. As I jog down the race, you can hear me yelling out something that sounds like “BRASS MONKEYS!!!”, except of course that it starts with the letter ‘F’. As soon as I get home, covered in mud and filth from head to toe, the first thing I feel like doing is jumping into the microwave and doing about thirty seconds on defrost cycle. And I would, excepting of course the fact that a) I don’t fit in the microwave and b) I would cop so much radiation that I would probably grow at extra arm out of my big toe. I’m trying to work out if that would be beneficial for footy.

Of course, when the mercury does plummet and all good boys and girls decide to stay indoors, I have discovered a new best friend; my fingerless gloves. Oh, I love thee, fingerless gloves. I love you more than words could ever say, even if you do make me look like a wandering hobo. (When wearing my fingerless gloves in conjunction with my trenchcoat, I can make mothers with young children cross the street from thirty paces, preferably with Little Jimmy tugging on his mother’s arm, asking “Who is that strange dirty man, Mummy?”). I don’t care. I need functioning fingers, although I do appreciate that there are another nine where that first one came from.

So imagine my panic when I lost them (the gloves, not the fingers, idiot) in my room, on the floor, somewhere. I searched using my usual technique; they’re not bundled up in my coat, they’re not immediately visible under the bed, they’re not snuggled down in between the bedside table and the bed, and they’re not even busy acquainting themselves with whatever detritus has cultivated itself at the bottom of my bag. (Don’t ask.) I began to panic. It was obviously Time To Clean My Room.

I took a step back, and looked at the whole setup from the doorway. Simply put, it looked a bit like the sort of thing that really should have been cordoned off by the CSIRO. Bits of newspaper were almost walking across the room of their own accord. Various Year 12 notes – hauled out for some referencing – were scattered exactly where I left them about a month ago. This was going to be a job and a half. Welcome to the Monkey House (and apologies to the Dandy Warhols).

I went downstairs and came back armed with some new weaponry; not just one garbage bag but a whole roll of the damn things, a vacuum cleaner, a washing basket (and kero and a couple of matches in case things got really bad). First port of call was the massive pile of dirty washing in the far corner. I call it the “half-a-day pile”; but the cat-shaped imprint (complete with molted ginger fur) in the coat lying on the top of it told me that it was probably ready for a wash. One by one I stuck the items into the washing basket, pausing at times to say, “THAT’S where that went!” (for a necklace), or just “Eww” (for anything found in my pockets). Eventually the pile began to shrink and then disappear. “So THAT’S what colour my floor is!”, I exclaimed in surprise, as though making reacquaintance with a long-lost friend, before completely disappearing behind a clothesbasket full of dirty washing. I staggered, unbalanced and completely blinded by the wonderful viewpoint of last week’s jeans and dirty socks, down the steps to the laundry and dumped the whole lot in our large basket beside the washing machine. Task one complete.

Once I’d picked up all my notes from off the floor, I considered one by one the best place to put them in a neat and ordered fashion before completely disregarding all those places and throwing the notes into the top of my wardrobe. Keeping one hand on the copious (and heavy) pile of foolscap A4 which contained pretty much every single thing I had ever written in the year 2003 (my graduation year), I reached across to the other side of the cupboard and somehow managed to haul the door shut, all the meanwhile making a mental note to myself to never, ever open that door again.

Finally, it was time for the activity which I had been putting off for the entire morning; underneath the bed. Under The Bed in my room is the sort of place that the University Of Melbourne Biology Research Department would pay very good money to see. The items that are found under my bed can be classified into three different categories; things that were once alive, things that are alive, and things that will soon take life. I daren’t look as I plunge an innocent, unsuspecting hand Underneath The Bed. (Did I really hear that “meow”, or was I simply just imagining it?). “Now”, I say to myself as I see the sock that I somehow managed to pluck from the quagmire that lies beneath the mattress, “what WAS the original colour of that thing again?”. Straight into the garbage bag it goes. In fact, better make it two.

The good news is, that after a long, thorough session of room-cleaning, I finally have to myself a space that would be considered fit for human habitation without bribing the authorities in question. Now, to just work out how to study for the next six months without either using my desk or opening the wardrobe is the next question. I’ll get back to you on that one.

And guess what? Just earlier this morning I was walking out the door to meet up with Kim and Dylan from my Maths lecture – bless their little cotton socks. Turning the key in the lock, I spied two little spots of black out the corner of my eye, sitting on the desk we have beside the back door. I couldn’t believe it. Oh my fingerless gloves, how I love thee so.

w. love to all, even those who are not my fingerless gloves,

jez