Fire! Rats! Filth! Terror!
There were seven of us living in a large house in Sheffield. We were all men in our early twenties, lazy to a fault, and our lives revolved around takeaways, drugs, dancing and playstation. We were not the tidyest of groups. This untidyness was exacerbated by the fact we were a party house - the after party was usually held at ours and on more than one occasion I came home at about 9 or 10 in the morning to find a party going on in my living room, and me not recognising anyone.

Periodically we would have a mass clean up, and shovel everything into bin bags. However, as there was too much for a bin to handle, we just lobbed it into the garden. This carried on for months, and eventually there were in the region of 60 black bags, full of rubbish; old food, cans and so on.

Our landlord persistently asked us to remove this steaming pile of crap before the rats came. We agreed to, but just never got round to it. Then the council were involved, sending over environmental health inspectors and giving us 28 days to remove the rubbish, or they would do it and give us a hefty bill.

We agreed to do it. However, a couple of days before the agreed mass clean-up was to happen my folly solved the problem. I left a newspaper on top of the oven. The last person to use the hob had left it on, but switched it off at the wall. My mate put some food in the oven, turned it back on and when I went in to check progress the kitchen was ablaze. Panicking, we scooped the burning matter into a tray. That caught fire, owing to the fat and grot still on it. We opened the back door and lobed the tray out, straight onto 60 bags of highly combustible litter.

We didn't have to clean up the litter, or deal with the rodents that were indeed living there. However we did have a lot of explaining to do to the Fire Service, Police and above all the council, who were determined to believe it was deliberate.
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Thu 26 Jul 2007, 11:02, Reply)