So, I jubilantly returned to University yesterday. I skipped up to my bedroom door (I did say jubilantly), jocundly unlocked it and opened it (blithely) to a fleecy, green carpet. This may not seem too unusual, as green shagpile carpets do indeed exist, but my fleece was unfortunately mildew.

The Diagnosis:

A maintenance guy had been around cleaning shower heads around a week before my return. My shower is a little tricky to turn off, but when you’re a big macho man who cleans showerheads for a living, I’m thinking it wouldn’t have been too much trouble for this pathetic human being to give it that extra twist and turn it off. But no, he decides he can’t be bothered and leaves it dripping. What he also, moronically, does is leave my bathroom door wide open. Cheers mate. In the passing week between this likely event and my jubilant return, the water dripping from my sorry shower and the cold coming from the window created a CONDENSATION NEXUS MWAAAHAHAHAH! Well, basically there was mildew growing on the carpet near the bathroom door, the window and streaks of ugly green water had run down my window wall.

The TREATMENT:

I must say the University were exceptional in sorting me out. First of all they sent a lady with a shampoo vacuum, but when she arrived she said the mildew was too thick to shampoo straight off. So I went down to the residences office and they said they would send some staff soon to help me out. On my return there was a team of four ladies who helped me scrub my walls, strip my bed, throw my mattress, pillows and chair away, and scrape up the surface mildew from the floor. Once that task was completed a gentleman arrived with a dehumidifyer to soak up the moisture. This was left overnight and at 8.45am they turned up to check how it had done. There was about a litre of water in it, and the carpet was practically bone dry! So the woman returned half an hour later with the shampoo vacuum again and gave the carpet a good scrubbing, taking around ten minutes. Not a minute after she had finished the gentleman turned up again with a new mattress and a new chair and told me to leave the dehumidifyer on for a few more hours to soak up the shampoo vacuum’s moisture and the woman would return to pick it up on Monday. Bada bing! Within 24 hours of discovering a toxic spore-covered room that had been flooded for over a week, it is habitable again. Cardiff University are brilliant and it isn’t their fault they accidentally hired an incompetant workman. They are reimbursing me for the nice new pillows I got to buy and any laundry costs to wash my bedding.

Not bad eh? As Wallace would say “Job well done, lad”