The Home Straight beckons

Was it really April 3rd when I last posted on here? Guess "Gifted but Lazy" wasn't just a clever title then.

Stacey arrives on Sunday 2nd July and everything is now building up to it. I am nervous about itas anybody who has lived by themselves for three years would be, now turning over yourself and your place to the idiosyncracies of another person, no matter how much you cherish and revere them.

For a start, girls smelling abilities functions on a higher plane than mens. That is why they invest in candles, airwick fresheners etc. Because they can smell the filth that pervades your man-lair. What you consider an irresistably inviting mix of masculinity, pheromones and integrity merely registers as one up on cat pee to your average woman.

Similarly - the dust. What dust you cry?

Exactly. You just cannot see it for the life of you but like the bridge over the chasm at the end of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" it's an optical illusion. Once pointed out, there it is. A finger smear of shame, proving you are no more adept at keeping a clean house than one of the mentalists that Aggie and Kim rape-through-industrial-cleaning-and-abuse regularly.

To compound my sins, Stacey is an American. Which rightly or wrongly, brings with it a whole different level of unmeetable expectation. My perfectly adequate two bed semi now seems little more than an extravagent wendyhouse at the bottom of somebody's garden. The state-of-the-art British air-conditioning system (open windows) is now obsolete and the functional kitchen is revealed as little more than a fisher price playset writ large. Dumping my beloved George Foreman grill was merely a prelude to the nightmare of change and responsibility to come...