WHAT IS THAT SMELL?! The horror of the post-holiday homecoming

I am not one of those people who says things like “sure there's nothing like your own bed” in an attempt to convince myself that I'm only fecking delighted to be back home after a lovely holiday.

You see, I love holidays. I heart them. I heart them so much that that my post-holiday comedown invariably starts a day or two before they're actually over in anticipation of getting back to the everyday normal.

To minimise the pain of the post-holiday comedown and after years of arriving home to a place that looked like a clothes bomb had exploded and we'd subsequently been burgled, we now try to leave the gaff reasonably clean and tidy before heading off. So when we got home late Tuesday night after our Christmas trip, I was feeling pretty smug... right up to the moment we opened the door.

We paused on the front step, both wondering if we were imagining the decidedly strange whiff that wafted out to greet us.

Unfortunately, we weren't. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I tell you I nearly lost every breakfast, lunch and dinner of the holliers when Himself opened the fridge door and then immediately slammed it shut again.

Yep. In the mad dash to pack, tidy up, and drop the dog to his minder's, it turned out we'd completely forgotten to clear out the fridge. I'd been really careful with our grocery shopping in the run up to our trip so at least it wasn't full, but even so it was absolutely putrid. Meats, cheeses, mixes for two Christmas puddings that didn't work out, leftovers, orange juice: all were gone off and stinking to high heavens. Even Kim and Aggie would have been bent double and heaving into their Marigolds it was so bad.

I don't know how Himself managed to chuck out the rancid contents of the fridge without chucking up (full body HazMat suit with its own isolated air supply, I reckon) but I'm very, very grateful that he did the job solo; just thinking about it now is making my stomach churn.

Have you any post-holiday horror stories? And please do feel free to share your own tales of gone-off produce, too.

They might help make me feel a bit less disgusting!

Image source: CS Monitor