Mike is, as this site is rapidly becoming damning evidence, really quite... "unique" in the way he does things. Having lived with him for the last eighteen months, I have grown accustomed to the things that are part and parcel of sharing a house with Mike. The daily "Mike! Have you got any plates?" "No." exchange followed by entering his room and finding a small crockery farm is now part of the tradition of our house. It wouldn't be the same without it.
However, even considering this, even considering how accustomed we are to the subtle anomalies that arise, nothing quite prepared me for the news Andy delivered to me over IRC today. He's still in Leamington with Mike; Jon and I have returned to Witney.
Ah! I thought to myself. Mike's gone and put something silly in one of the bins, hasn't he. Nope.18:08:12 <@nawab> graeme did you hear what mike did last night? 18:08:28 < graeme> No. 18:08:38 * graeme is going to regret asking, isn't he. 18:08:53 <@nawab> well, i was putting the bin bags at the roadside...
You're all familiar with how Mike does washing, aren't you? If not, it goes something like this.
Aha! You're all thinking. So what happens is that Mike's washing gets mistaken for the rubbish and put outside for the binmen to collect?Mike puts his washing in the washing machine, asks us how to operate it, and eventually works out how to turn it on. The washing machine goes about its duty, finishes, and switches off. Mike leaves his washing in the washing machine for the rest of eternity, or until someone else wants to use the washing machine, whichever comes first. The next person to do washing may, if they wish, amuse themselves by the pointless exercise of asking Mike to remove his washing from the washing machine so that it might wash other clothes. That person removes Mike's washing, dumps it in a black bin bag, and puts said bag on the kitchen floor next to the rubbish bin for Mike to deal with later.
No, it gets worse. What happened in this instance was that earlier in the week1, Mike's washing had indeed been put outside by someone mistaking it for rubbish (or just by a drunken Jon having a laugh). However, when Andy went to move the bin bags to the roadside for collection, he noticed that one of the bags was open, and contained Mike's washing.
So, lucky escape for Mike's washing there. Andy called to Mike and suggested that he might want to do something about this bag of wet washing that's been sitting outside for several days2 and nearly got ploughed into a landfill site. Mike eventually made the trek into the kitchen, emptied the contents of the bag into the washing machine and turned it on.
Andy thought nothing of this, and returned upstairs. One hour later, he heard shouted from downstairs, the following harbinger of Mike's latest cock-up...
"What would your reaction be if I said we had a dead hedgehog in the washing machine?"
Emotions don't get transmitted over IRC too easily, so we can only imagine the look of blank incomprehension on Andy's face, the long pause of contemplation, and the Mike-strangling moment of realisation that, yes, the Towers of Annoy really had not only bundled all his washing into the machine, but along with it, and somehow without realising, an innocent hedgehog that had climbed in amongst the washing with the intention of getting a bit of kip.
"So, what's the worst thing you've put through the washing machine, Mike? Money?
Mobile phone?"
"Well, actually..."
Corrections (21st March)
1 Apparently I got some of the time scales
wrong. According to Jon's account, Mike's washing was put on the kitchen floor
in a bin bag about four to five weeks previously.
2
Jon tells me it was put outside around the weekend of Week 17 (21-22
Feb) which means it was actually outside for about three to four weeks.