This was a group effort...
As I have previously mentioned (just last week in fact), as a student of drawing and graphics and all that shit, I house/flat shared for a couple of years.

The first house share was with a couple of good blokes, Rob and Phil, who I’d got to know the previous year, and our dwelling was a regular open house. There would invariably be some shapeless lump huddled under a spare duvet on the couch each morning, an innocent victim of our ‘hospitality’ the night before. One such regular visitor was Gaz (actually, he was so regular he probably should have been paying rent. But I digress).

At a certain point of the year, a fortnight’s work experience was organised for some students. Rob and I, who were doing the same course albeit a year apart, were both scheduled in for such a session, but a few weeks apart. It was Rob’s fortnight, and because he had to get into Newcastle before 9am, got into the habit of going to bed early (i.e. before midnight) so he could be up and catch the 7am bus into town. He had to get up early because the traffic at that time of the morning was so bad it took about 90 minutes to complete what should be a 50 minute journey tops, and there were no bus lanes in those days.

One evening, after we’d been to the pub with Gaz and another lad, Simon, Rob declared he was heading off for some shut-eye, reasoning that the 5 pints he’d had would send him off to sleep no problem. Now, we were all a bit merry that night, and Phil’s room was next to Rob’s. Our devious drunken minds began to hatch a plan as we huddled on Phil’s floor against the radiator. We waited until we heard the dulcet snoring coming from Rob’s room and then set our plan in motion. Waiting about an hour, we crept into his room (quite how 4 extremely spackered teenagers can creep into anyone’s room without waking them I’ll never know, but we did), and, in between trying desperately not to burst into fits of drunken giggles, altered Rob’s alarm clock so that it read 05:50.

During this fortnight, Rob had been setting his alarm clock for 6 am…

We shuffled back into Phil’s room, took our positions against the radiator and waited, stifling the giggles that threatened to spew forth. It was possibly the longest 10 minutes ever…

Six a.m., and off goes the alarm. We heard Rob mumble something along the lines of “Eeeerrrghhchristisitmorningalreadyfuckinhellifeellikeshitwhatwasidrinking”. We heard the alarm topple over as he tried half heartedly to find it in the dark. We heard the duvet being thrown back, and the sound of footsteps padding across the landing towards the bathroom. We heard the shower being switched on… and we could contain ourselves no more, collapsing against each other in helpless mirth at our stupendous prank.

Thirty seconds later Rob stuck his head around the door.

“Bastards”, was all he could muster himself to say, before turning on his heel and heading back into his room.

Thirty seconds later he popped his head around the door again, flashed his infectious grin and gave a thumbs up sign. Five minutes later he was snoring gently and peacefully once more.

He did say the next day that he thought something was amiss, as it was summer yet when he got up at ‘6 a.m.’ it was still pitch black… top bloke, wish I knew where he was now.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Thu 13 Dec 2007, 16:23, 1 reply)

Have hope.
If he's not dead he'll turn up on Facebook at some point.
( wangmaster2000, Thu 13 Dec 2007, 17:01, closed)