SLAMMATOWN - Slamma Swap

Illustration by Onnie Cleary

I’ve been watching a television show called Wife Swap, not as a guilty pleasure but as a kind of science. Thinking about my own home, The Peach, and the role I play within it’s starting to become clear that I have become Un Slamma Terrible.

At The Peach my housemate Grizelda is a good lantern, she puts up with just about anything I can think of doing though she does tell me, quite often, that can’t possibly be another person on the planet as uniquely annoying as me. 

On Wife Swap the first thing the wives do is write a manual for their home outlining the general vibe of the home, the rules, schedules and a detailed setting out of who does what and when. I’ve been imagining writing a manual for The Peach and I have to tell you that on paper I’m not sounding so good.

I prefer to wake up at a different time every day. I hate doing things the same two days in a row. I hate washing dishes so every time I do it I do it with hate. I have been known to run up and down the hallway drinking rum from a bottle just for the hell of it. I listen to loud music as often as possible. I set my drum kit up in the middle of the library. I hate cooking and will yell about being hungry rather than go shopping. I hate boring people and people with bad hair cuts. I won’t talk to people I don’t like. I will invite people over for dinner and then not cook anything. I go out to see bands and come home plastered at five in the morning. I shoot the television with a water pistol when I don’t like the show I’m watching. I won’t let anyone else use my teapots, toothpaste or milk but if I find a hidden stash of chocolate I’m going to eat it. If I was a man I’m quite sure I’d leave the toilet seat up on purpose.

My next door neighbour is more settled and domestic than I am which is saying something because he just happens to be the former tour manager for The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead. He is about a thousand years old, has hands weighed down with skull rings and has lived just about as wild and hard as a man can live. But even he manages to get up at the same time early each morning, make a cup of tea, ponder a little and then get on his day in an orderly fashion.

I’m beginning to think Grizelda deserves some kind of medal for living with me. Speaking of which, we’ve got a vacancy at The Peach. Anyone want to move in?

First published on RHUM...