I have the worst housemates ever
I'm constantly cleaning up after them and there is no end to their complaints. I bring in groceries, mark them clearly as mine, but the minute my back is turned, they are plundering like it is new found wealth. They are up all hours carousing and making noise. I try to reason with them, but they just wander off.

I swear, just because I gave birth to them, they think they own the place.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Thu 26 Feb 2009, 16:31, 3 replies)

Back in the day....
...I used to live with my mate, lets call him Paul, because everyone else does.

In no particular order he...

*ripped the banister from the wall while trying to climb down it.

*nuked the microwave somehow, and took the electricity supply for the house with it. He repaired the damage with tin-foil and sellotape.

*he drove his mums car into/through my fence

*he fell out of my bathroom window, bounced off the porch roof, landed on the grass and then went in and drank a beer, like nothing had happened.

*he set fire to himself, and things, on numerous occasions.

....but then you have his finest moment. We threw a party, people came, everyone loved it, the beer went down a treat, and then, in the case of Paul, came up a treat. All over my sofa.

He hoovered it up and turned the cushion over.

For the next 12 months I was baffled as to why the hoover smelled like it did. It still makes me gag to this day.

He was my best man though, so he must have some redeeming features.
( The Pollitt chooses to listen to Enya on, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 16:28, Reply)

I used to live with a group of chickens.
They were fowl.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 16:25, 4 replies)

Weird Housemates Part 1
The first clue that I got that living with A with going to be a weird experience was when he introduced himself to me as I was moving in. I was moving into the ground floor room of a house of 10 guys.

He was dressed totally in black, a round shouldered, acne scarred, potbellied individual. His face was glowing red, his ears sticking out behind the vague buzz of his half chopped hair style, a crusty towel drapped over his stick thin arm, a weird smile playing around his chapped and thin lips. He introduced himself as I unlocked my door, and started to move my stuff in. As I got to know the others in the house it was clear that he weirded them out as much as me. We nicknamed him Igor.

About 4 days after I had moved in, my then girlfriend returned from a trip around Serbia and Croatia. She was coming back to the UK for just two weeks before going back home to the USA, thus inevitably ending the relationship. I went and picked her up from the bus station at 4am, we got back to mine at about 4.30am, and she wanted a shower.

She went upstairs, showered, presumably vigorously towelled herself dry before unlocking the bathroom door.

Igor was at keyhole level, kneeling on the floor outside the bathroom door. She stared at his greasy head, he stared right back at her chest. She got freaked out and came downstairs and told me. I went to find him and asked what the hell was going on. He laughed in a very sinister way, and went back to his cellar room.

A few days later my girlfriend and I had been out to dinner. We were a little drunk, and rather horny, so we were heading back to the house as quickly as possible. One thing rapidly lead to another and within minutes of getting back we were entwined in a writhing mass of hands, legs, and various other wobbly body parts. Things progressed nicely for a few minutes until from outside my door came a shout, followed by a string of swearwords in Russian, a bang, a crack, more swearing in a mixture of English and Russian, and someone running away.

"What the fuck was that?" I said. My girlfriend looked up at me and, as she had been born in the USSR and spoke Russian, said, "Someone has just been called a dirty cunt". Interesting, I thought. I put some trousers on and went out of my room, to find one of my other housemates, a Russian guy called V, there with his fiance. They had come back and had caught Igor with his hands down his trousers listening against the door of my room. V, to be fair, had kicked him in the balls, then slammed his head against the doorframe of my room.

It got worse. A few days later V's fiance and my girlfriend were in the kitchen chatting in Russian. Igor came in, and then asked them if they'd both been "well knobbed" last night, before staring intently at their breasts.

We had 'words' with him again, pointing out that neither of our ladyfriends enjoyed being used as a mastubatory crutch by him, and perhaps he would like to calm down a bit or V would "get some of my Chechen and Azerbaijani friends from London to fuck you up".

Thing calmed down a bit after that and Igor mostly didn't bother us for a few months. My girlfriend went back to the USA and things seemed to be fairly normal.

Then we noticed a smell in the kitchen. V and I spent ages trying to figure out what it was, going through all of the cupboards to see what the source was.

Eventually we found it in Igors cupboard. He had a large plastic bag full of rotten oranges, USED condoms, and various stained tissues right at the back of his cupboard. The bag was juicy, purple and green coloured. I threw up in the bin, V threw up in the sink. Igor, it must be pointed out, never had girls over, never had a girlfriend...

He started taking food from us, coaxing local cats into the house with fish, commenting loudly that he'd heard V and his fiance the night before, asking another housemate all about his wanking habits with a weird halfsmile on his face. He showered once a week and changed his clothes once a month. He'd wander around the house at all hours of the night humming the same tune loudly, unscrewing lightbulbs, and listening at doors (he was caught a few times and shouted at). He never flushed the toilet after using it and, as he lived almost exclusively on takeaways and microwave food, he produced the most prodigiously foetid turds I have ever smelt.

At the end of the year when I started dating another girl he made repeated comments about the (admittedly impressive) size of her breasts to her. She slapped him everytime, but he'd smile and then go back to his room.

Eventually, the year was over and I moved out into, as it happens, another house with weird housemates. Igor went to London and I have no idea what he's doing there. He'd managed to stay in the house, despite everything, because the landlady loved him and refused to believe anything said bad against him.

Weirdo.

Apologies for length. Possibly.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 16:24, 1 reply)

This QOTW brings a smile to my face...
My housemates moved in a while ago - first a single girl, who we'll call "Claire" and then about a month later, her newly single best friend, "Kate". No, this isn't going the way you think.

I was hesitant at first to let Kate move in. "She can't move in if she's just going to mope around and get teary about splitting up with her boyfriend," I told Claire.

"She won't, I promise," was the reply.

There is too much detail that I could go into for the events that follow. I'll give you the highlights.

Kate, fortunately, wasn't too upset about splitting from her boyfriend. Especially as she now lived with her new partner-in-crime. In fact, she was quite positive about it all. And a bit too keen to flaunt her newly-found singledom with her equally single best friend.

I came home one sunny afternoon to find that they'd moved the sofa into the street, and got shitfaced on cider. Then, with me sat there, had started flashing the local scrotes who were hanging around the street smoking weed. I had to leave to meet friends, and told the girls that on no terms should the chavs be allowed in to the flat. I left. They promptly invited four of them in, "for a laugh". These scrawny fuckweasels must have been 18 at the most, and complete strangers - none of them even lived anywhere nearby. I was not happy.

The next day, there were apologies, but I had to point out to them the stupidity of letting strangers into the flat - at the least, we could have been robbed. The girls were in no state to stop them. They had assumed I was annoyed because they weren't paying me any attention. Seriously.

Life returned to normal for a short while, until one night when one of my friends, Dan, was staying over and was sleeping on the sofa. I woke up in the morning, turned to switch off my alarm, and he was lying next to me. "Erm... morning. What are you doing?" I asked.

"The girls brought back a load of blokes last night at about 3am. They told me to fuck off out of the living room. I would've just stayed any way, but two of them looked like they were going to puke on me..."

Oh. I walked into the living room. It was empty. But covered in puke. The bathroom floor had become a lake of piss. The front door was wide open. And my laptop had been stolen. I bolted the front door, and got a very large knife from the kitchen.

As luck (!) would have it, one of the guys was still asleep in bed with one of my housemates. He was friends with the wankers who had robbed me. And he was locked in an unfamiliar flat, with a very, very angry, knife-wielding Sloppy stood over him, and Dan looming in the background. Frantic phone-calls where made, and my belongings were returned by some very sheepish looking teenagers. The girls were 26 by this point, FFS.

Again, there were apologies. Tears this time. Kate admitted she wasn't coping with being single at all, and was bringing home anyone who showed any interest to make her feel better. Claire's brutally honest excuse was, "I'm a bit of slag when I'm drunk, but this will never, ever happen again."

I'm a bit of soft-touch, and being a couple of years older, felt some sort of brotherly duty to give them another chance to sort themselves out. When they were good, living with them was great, and so I decided I would try and overlook these slip-ups - they were genuinely shaken by what had happened, and it was obviously a lesson learned. For a fortnight.

I woke up, two weeks later, at 5am, Sunday morning, with music pounding from the living room. The girls were in there, with 4 blokes I had never seen before (turns out they hadn't either) all snorting ketamine off of the coffee table. It was impossible to get any sense out of them. Turning down the music had little effect, it went straight back up every time I left the room, several times. I was told to fuck off, that I was being boring. By the blokes I didn't know. I walked out at 8am and wandered London aimlessly for hours, grinding my teeth.

I returned home to find a stranger slumped against my bedroom door, who I kicked out of the way and then had to step over to get into my room. For the next three hours, I listened to idiots with Special K-induced paralysis of the limbs tumble down the stair case, and then laugh hysterically, presumably because they'd landed on a purple marshmallow made out of tits.

I did my research. The comedown would hit them, hard, on Tuesday morning. Monday night, they were told on no uncertain terms to get the fuck out of the flat, and left to dwell on it for the rest of the week.

And so the reason I'm smiling? As I type this, they are walking backwards and forwards carrying piles of crap to a van, with looks of despair on their faces as they prepare to move back to their parents' box rooms, since they've blown the little money they had on drugs and booze.

Two of my friends are moving in on the weekend. I'm tempted to say that we'll celebrate with a huge line of ketamine and an orgy, but unfortunately for the sake of ironic punchlines, the guys moving in are not druggy slaggy wankers. We will however, get shitfaced and have a laugh, without inducing the urge to rip each other's faces off, as any good houseshare should operate.

Apologies for not being particularly witty, but I am revelling in the appropriateness of this weeks question. Whoo!
(Sloppy Giuseppe, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 16:19, 7 replies)

another one
a previous housemate of mine once had his flat completely invaded by upwards of 40 strangers, when the girlfriend of one his then flatmates got fucked on mdma and decided to invite half the pub they lived above back for an impromptu party.

took them ages to get everyone out apparently.


i'd have gone absolutely fucking mental.
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 16:17, Reply)

not me
but a close friend

he went travelling a few years ago with a few friends to australia, where they all shared a flat in sidney for 3 months. after the first few weeks, it became apparent to him that one of his fellow travelling pal housemates believed it was acceptable to help themselves to whatever was in the fridge, regardless of who paid for it. having a fair idea of who it was, but not having any proof to confront the culprit on the matter, he decided to take matters in to his owns hands.

que such items as catfood sandwiches and bottles of coca cola topped up with his own piss being left in the fridge. all of which were consumed, but not by himself of course. i always laugh to myself when i think of it... and i hard even harder when i see said catfood sandwich eater and piss-drinker in the pub when we're all out together. as far as i know he's the only one in our entire circle who still doesn't know about it.
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 16:05, Reply)

Housemate wank drug death attempt
I got a phone call one evening from one of my housemates, J, saying he was sure that our other housemate Ahab (well, it's the first pseudonym I thought of, ok?) should have been going to work for his nightshift, his light was on, he hadn't been seen all day, and his door was locked and there was no response to all of J's banging.

Locked? The doors don't have locks... so I instruct J to just shoulder-barge the door until he either a) breaks it down or b) gets a response from Ahab.

Now, I knew that Ahab had been spending a lot of time and money on recreational drugs and drinking, and I just had this horrible image that the bastard had managed to kill himself in my house.

Luckily I get a call back from J five minutes later saying that although Ahab had barricaded himself in, and was clearly off his mash, he'd grunted a semi-coherent response and was in fact still alive.

I got back at the weekend, and J told Ahab to tell me what he'd told him. Apparently Ahab had drunk and smoked quite a lot, then popped a few magic beans and done some nosebag, and decided that he'd pull the chest of drawers across the door (so as not to be disturbed with a lack of lock) and spread his grot mags in a wide semi-circle, and have a really good, out-of-this-world, wank.

Unfortunately, he'd fallen into a deep slumber, and failed to make it into work, which is where J and I came in to the story.

"And tell him the rest" says J.

"Oh yeah" says Ahab "I woke up to find I'd puked down myself".

"Oh mate" I say, shaking my head.

"Yeah, and I pissed myself"

"That's really bad. Really bad" I say, thinking in that state, he's lucky to be alive and not to have choked on his own vomit.

"I know, I know" he says "I could've easily shit myself an' all."
(JohabMorelli is spenging merrily away, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:51, 2 replies)

The missing Steak
This is not a tale of thievery. Oh no, it is much more humorous!

At uni I lived with 3 other lovely girls, we're still very close, and one frequent extra who lived in our shed. The extra would change as various people on campus had the need of the shed.

One of the girls, N, was a slob. We gradually got into the routine of putting her stuff in big black bags and under the big TV table. This would be after a month of her socks adorning each radiator in the house and going pretty rock hard in the process. We told her, she agreed this was a good idea, and was still amazed when we gave her the bag of socks 8 months later - because she'd thought she was missing some! Bless.

But she really was very messy.

She lived at the end of a corridor, and we only ventured down that way to get to the shed. One day, walking past, I got a whiff of death from the corridor. I ignored it, but a few days later we all congregated down there to try to figure out where it was coming from. Very clearly N's room. At which point N reveals that the smell has been there for a couple of weeks now, and she has been burning candles, leaving her window open, even, unbelievably, emptied her bin, all to no avail.

It was some time later (about another week), that she decided to tidy her room. Under her bed, under a pile of junk, were two entirely rancid steaks that her uncle, who'd visited the previous month, had brought her.

Even she thought this was bad.

We laughed a lot.

She also used to shampoo and CONDITION her muff. Again, we laughed a lot. And send her fella (over in abroad land) worn knickers. He'd return the favour by sending worn boxers. Which she would then wear. She also used to role-play "Mexican bandits" with her fella.

I have no idea how we managed to get this information from her. We tortured her mercilessly about it all year at any opportunity.

It more than made up for her being a slob around the house. I miss that house, stench and all!!
(Psyche finishes work at the end of June! Yay!!!, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:39, 3 replies)

another from me
In my second year of University I lived in a pretty big student house which was about 8 bedroom (well kinda like 8 flats, with a communial kitchen)

anyway, we was all sat in the communal lounge watching telly and one of the lads I lived with was necking heroic quantities of alcohol and gradually becoming paraletic.

I went back into my room whilst he was still there, about an hour later I popped downstairs to go to the toilet..and there he was- stark bollock naked staggering down the corridor...missed his room and wandered into my other housemates room where he apparently trys to mount him

and he didnt remember any of this...poor guy
(Lord Chode, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:36, 2 replies)

Serious
I'll give a shorter rendition of this one as it's one that I'm still a little scarred about.

My first house in Sheffield was dodgy - that's "DODGY!" by the way. The landlady was shifty - count your fingers territory....

Anyway - the first year was ok - mostly. The second year, I couldn't be arsed to move out and she didn't get any tenants (something about not getting gas certification....)

So she moved someone in - Name witheld, although I'd love to name and shame.

Turns out he'd done time. For GBH. And ABH. And was angry, menacing and dodgy as they come.

Nice.

I went home one weekend and when I came back, my room had been broken in to - with no sign of external forced entry. He insisted that "he chased off the thief".

I told the landlady, she threw him out.

And left him with the key.

So, I'm in this dodgy house, in a shifty part of Sheffield (just off London Road) on my own. And nutter bloke who I "got thrown out" has a key.

I didn't eat for 4 days.

I settled down after a week with my friends help and we went clubbing. I made the mistake of letting my friend go when there was the slightest sniff of skirt for me - bad move.

I go to the loo - nutter bloke's there.

Shit.

His bouncer mate clears everyone out and I'm suddenly pinned up by my neck against the wall with Shit-for-brains demanding money with the bouncer "watching the door" - I have none (genuinely) so he tells me to turn up at this pub 2 days later. Or else.

He lets me go and I'm shitting myself - he knows where I live - he knows where my mates live. He knows a lot about me as some of my personal possesions were stolen in the "break in".

I have a mini crisis - opt to not call the police (don't know why) and nearly quit Uni.

My friends rally around me in a way that I never truly expected. They literally drag me out of the house that day and make me move in with one of them. They called the landlady and tell her that I'd moved out and there would be no forwarding address.

Like an idiot, I went to the pub and he wasn't there - I went with a (large) friend though.

This all happened just before Christmas and, needless to say, I nearly didn't make it back, but my friends made me.

I moved in, properly, with a Uni Lecturer who let me his attic room and all was good.

I ran into that same nutter about 6 months later. With all my mates. Who knew him. I think he was going to start, but he didn't - I wasn't cocky about it, but said very little.

It was far worse than I've described it as there was extra stress, no eating, weight loss, much bowel emptying and general terror over about a month.

It took me a while to get over it and I still haven't told my then "girl" friends as the "boy" friends handled everything for me. I'm sure the girls knew as the difference in me was obvious.

Personally, I hope he's rotting in a jail as some bloke "called Bubba" 's bitch.
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:35, Reply)

Not everything on the internet is good
I live in a house with three boys, and as the token girl, you can imagine that a lot of the arguments come down to cleaning. I think it should be done before mould grows, some disagree. I can't understand how you get pubic hair on the ceiling, but it gets there, and it's something I have to accept. That's the joy of shared living, though, and I can live with that. Unfortunately, our arguments mostly centre around Housemate 3, whom I shall refer to as The Twat, because that is what we call him.

Now, The Twat is not an easy man to live with at the best of times. He would charitably be described as arrogant; he knows more than anybody else on any given subject, since apparently a degree in Sociology confers upon you omniscience. Believe me, when he's just torn the cover off an out-of-print edition of a book by my late Uncle, it was good to know that 'It's not a good book anyway'. He once spent an hour lecturing one of my housemates on the difficulties facing families with a parent in prison. When housemate 2 tried to point out that he knew about it, having spent most of his childhood with his father in prison for smuggling? 'Yeah, but I did a course on it, so I think I know more about it'. He also makes terrible racist jokes all the time, with such frequency and fervour that the 'Just kidding, I have great respect for the Muslim community ever since I did an essay on Halal mortgages' bullshit sounds like, well, bullshit. In fact, several of my friends have been offended so badly they won't come to my house anymore. Though naturally when I told Twat this, and other housemates agreed that it was offensive, we were totally wrong to think this, and in fact we were victimising him.

So far, yes, he's a twat. Add his inability to understand the concept of cleaning as something that involves him, and his tendency to help himself to anything he wants in any of the cupboards (cheese, bread, wine, vodka) and you could see why he'd be annoying to live with.

The real problems however, only surfaced after housemate 2, the ex-army fella, and a mate of mine from school went into Twat's room unannounced, to borrow his printer. This day proved to be the end of any attempts to befriend Twat.

The smell was the first thing to tip off Army. We'd noticed a certain 'unwashed' sort of fragrance in the landing, but mostly ignored it. The smell was coming from Twat's bed. Army's braver than I am, and he flipped back the covers, and as you may have guessed, they are not only obviously piss stained, but they're caked in shit. He has actually been sleeping in a bed full of his own excrement.

So, Army decides to grab the printer and run; discretion being occasionally the better part of valour. To do this, he had to see what was on the screen. Please read this bearing in mind that I'm b3tan, and my tolerance is pretty high for most things. Tubgirl? Two girls, one cup? Pterodactyls? I've seen and laughed at most of them. And who doesn't love porn? Porn is great.

He likes rape porn.

Rape. Porn.

Not because he heard of it, was curious, went 'Heh heh ew' and logged off. No, he wanks to videos with taglines like 'All she can do is cry' 'Features three chloroformings' and 'Watch her bleed'. I've asked the advice of the most hardened perverts I know, and consensus is the same; this is severely fucked up. If we were in an episode of CSI, this would be a clue pointing to the fact that he did it.

I can't stand it, and the only reason I'm still living there is I love the two other guys. Sorry for the turn toward unfunny, but he genuinely creeps me out. An important sidenote to the story would be that two weeks later, Army went back in there... and Twat hadn't changed the bed.

Length? Well, if he can't get a girl to consent to it...
(That's Just Not Funny, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:35, 8 replies)

Badge of Religious Identity
I once had a flatmate who said he was a Quaker. He did'n't wear a hat, and he never once made porridge.

I suspect he was a liar.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:33, 5 replies)

stressed colin....
Colin was not the sort to thrive on the stress of doing a degree. In fact you could almost see the vein about to pop in his head sometimes.

Early suspicions were raised when 2 girls got chatting with another flatmate on a night out and rather than be a good "wing man" and talk to the 2nd girl, Colin stood there silent as if he was in church... leading to the bored left out one of the girls taking her mate away and a frustrating conclusion to the night for our hopeful flatmate.

What started out at mild frustration that he just couldn't let his hair down soon escalated into poor Colin being the target of all flat mirth.

We developed our own sign language for a start. This meant when the 5 of us in the flat were in the living room circa 6-7pm on a Saturday, in front of the tv, one of us could silently signal to another it was time for a night out. Thus one by one we'd each saunter out of the living room to get ready in our bedroom. Then through arrangements silently communicated in the living room at a set time like some perfectly executed military operation we'd creep out of the front door leaving Colin obliviously watching the tv alone. We'd silently sneak into one of our cars, which being parked right outside the living room window we'd release the handbrake and roll 20 metres down the road before starting the engine and making off undetected.

The cling film on the toilet bowl dissappeared and we knew none of the rest of us had been it's splashy victim! Yet nothing was said.

The day he lashed out was an eye opener... we'd been keeping empty packets/bottles/boxes from all the food we consumed and hiding it in our own cupboards. When Colin went to the supermarket we emptied his kitchen cupboards and refilled them Tetris style with empty packets. There wasn't space left for a pack of tic-tacs.... when he got back with his groceries he opened the door and was confronted. Something snapped and he lashed out, punching and kicking the empty boxes which tumbled to the floor! Colin had a temper! Now this was something to work with!!!

Without a word he walked away and sulked in his room until the next day.

From that day on, anytime we needed some entertainment all he needed was a little push and you could see the frustration and anger building within. One day he's gonna be in the news.... for killing everyone he works with I'm sure!
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:31, 7 replies)

my mates housemate
A mate of mine- lets call him 'J', back in Sheffield lives in a bit of a grotty 2 bedroom council maisonette with his dad

anyway, about 4/5 years ago, a friend of his (who also lived in Sheff) got his house broken into, lost everything and after the incident he went into a downward spiral of paranoia and decided to move back in with his parents in Brum.

a month or so later he shows up at J's door, initially we where pleased to see him again and welcomed him in and had a cuppa and a chat.

During which he announces that he wants to sort things out and get back on track so he asks J (and his dad...) if he be able to stay for 'a couple of days' just until he finds himself somewhere...

Present day,
he still currently lives at J's, he kips in J's bed during the day and up all night playing on his xbox360, never leaves the house, pinches J's dads baccy and fills up J's computer hard drive with random garbage
(Lord Chode, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:25, 1 reply)

Urgh
When at Uni, I had a proper schizo as a housemate - mad as a large box of frogs.

Let's call her, er, Hilly. Ahem.

Anyhoo.

When I moved in to this house in Sheffield, it was a nice, big house - 6 people were to live here. Most of whom I knew through my best mate Steve. Hilly, however, I'd not met.

I was on placement and would be home at random points in the day - she worked at Alton Towers and would call the house for a chat and inevitably get me. We got on really well on the phone which was great - as she was due to move in, I figured we'd get on like a house on fire.

Fire it was.

She moved in and initially, all was well. But it turned out she had a hair trigger temper. She'd go off on one quickly, but settle down quickly too - however, the settling down started to take longer and longer...

Inevitably we fell out over something (probably the washing up - or her moron boyfriend) and we'd argue.

Well, argue would understate it, more like raise the kind of hell the Gods on Olympus would be proud of - we'd shout and scream in each other's face and God only knows how we never came to blows.

Unfortunately, we began to really, really dislike each other to the point where we'd barely acknowledge each others presence.

Needless to say, this took its toll on the housemates. Steve was my best friend and Hilly's friend - Steve was good friends with the other house mates - Micheal (who was the one person who moved in even though he knew noone) sided with me and, unfortunately, we baited Hilly sometimes (usually drink fuelled).

Over time, the house split down 2 lines with Steve in the middle, me and Michael - and Hilly and the other 2. Relations were strained and arguments would break out over nothing resulting in much shouting.

My room was above Hilly's and, sometimes, I'd play my music a tad loud. Sometimes with the powered subwoofer face down to give "added love" she'd repay me by banging on my door and arguments would ensue.

Under normal circumstances, this might have been classes as sexual tension, but she was attractive as a Rotherham born crocodillypig with a personality to match.

Her boyfriend was a c*nt of the highest order, but that's another story.

Steve's still friends with her and she married the boyfriend. She's not changed, from what I hear, and her baby... Well, I've seen more attractive swamp-donkeys.
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:23, Reply)

Bareback skank flavoured sheets
Housemates. Bit of a non sequitur in most cases isn’t it? They start off being your ‘mates’ but very quickly you see the other side of them.

I used to live with three chaps. Dean, Steve, and Conor. I didn’t really know them very well when I moved in, as it was a bit of a rushed, start of term moving- in- job. They seemed nice enough. Your typical football supporting, beer drinking lads I suppose. I wasn’t, but I thought I could get along with them. However from when I first moved in, I started to look for a new place due to the odd annoyance.

Like finding Steve in my bed with a girl doing a fuck when I came back from my girlfriends once because his sheets were too disgusting to sleep in and she complained. Then having the temerity to ask me to ‘shut the fucking door’ when I demanded them both to leave while I threw the sheets out. Bareback skank flavoured sheets? – no thanks!.

Like ‘humorously’ rolling up used toilet tissue back onto the roll.

Like Dean coming in one night and vomiting snakebite and black copiously into my full clean laundry basket. Left a bit of a stain as it turned out.

Conor wasn’t so bad though. Or so I thought. Conor was a self described ‘bog’ Irishman who was very softly spoken and gentle to a fault. He had moved over to Canterbury where we were for a number of years. However whenever he had a sniff of the barmaid’s apron he eschewed his gentle Irish exterior and became a good old proper English hooligan complete with a Chigwell accent and a propensity to take his shirt off and expose his bony abdomen.

It was on one of these hulk-like alcoholic rages that forced me to leave that particular household. On that particular occasion, after a few brewskis, Conor had threatened to rape me and was rather graphic about what went where. He tried to pull me into his room to presumably do the deed. I freed myself from his clutches, grabbed some stuff and went to stay at my girlfriends.

I came back in the morning to find every single window in the flat broken and puddles of blood everywhere. Girding myself for the worst, I crept into Conor’s room and saw him asleep with the bottom of the bed red with blood and there was loads of glass embedded into his sticking out feet. Conor looked like a fucking vampire. I called an ambulance and got him off to hospital and started to clear away the blood and glass.

Dean yawned and slippered his way into the kitchen and I asked what the fuck happened. Dean said that Conor had wanted to recreate the scene from Die Hard where all the glass gets broken and Bruce Willis’ character has to run through it.

“And you let him do this? What about the glass? Why did you let him bleed? Why didn’t you call an ambulance last night?”

Deano shrugged

“Dunno, just looked fun watching him.”

Steve emerged from his room and started laughing at all the blood.

“Fucking hell, look at that claret. That was shits and giggles man.” And gave Dean a high five.

Yeah, I got out of there.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:20, Reply)

The Strangest of all...
Katherine - went to France without telling us (her flatmates)

She disappeared for FIVE DAYS.

The morning she left for the airport I was getting ready for work. "Bye" I said and got the usual cold glare response. Not "I'll be away for a few days don't worry" or ANYTHING LIKE THAT.

We live in South Africa.

There is crime here.

We phoned morgues, hospitals and the police. She worked near the harbour. They found a body. We thought it was her. The body had been nibble by fish so they were in the process of doing a dental record comparison. It was only a fortuitous (and frantic) phonecall from the guy she had gone to see in France which alerted us to the fact that she was ok.

F*cking crazy bitch.
(MostlySunny, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:19, 1 reply)

I have never had a dishwasher.

This isn't the greatest hardship endured by man, but sometimes I think it would be nice to simply drop the plates into that magic white box and have them pop out steaming and clean in the morning rather than have them growing mould on my work surface for a week before I get around to chiselling the now rock hard "food" off them.


The worst thing about this yearning for a dishwasher is that I had once, for one day only.

It was the beginning of my second year at Uni and as a group myself and some of my chums were moving into a new house, it was a bit of a shithole, but it had a large living room, large garden, huge kitchen and the all important dishwasher.

We had a long day carrying boxes, unpacking porn collections, building Ikea furniture and smoking more weed than is good for anybody. The evening came and we were al fairly shattered and decide an early night was in order, K who had not been smoking and was less tired proclaimed that she would stack the dishwasher. No probs we thought as we all slunk off to bed.

I was first up the morning as I had raging thirst. I stumbled to the kitchen, went back to my room to put on some clothes as I remember that I lived with people, stumbled back to the kitchen and retrieved a glass from the dishwasher. Without paying much attention I filled the glass with cool, refreshing water and took a deep gulp.

Oh good god, it felt like I had ingested the crushed bones of mummified Gandhi! I ran the tap to see what the problem was, it was running clear and fresh, how queer I thought to myself. I moved my attention to the glass which I now realised had a strange frosted appearance. I picked at the glass and white powder came away under my nail.

This really was a conundrum and when I checked inside the dish washer I found that all of the crockery, cutlery and glass wear were covered in a thin film of some sort of white powder. Gradually my housemates emerged and we all began to discuss what could have left our eating implements in such a state.

Eventually K arrived and we quizzed her on her dishwasher usage skills. She explained that she had taken the dishwasher powder from under the sink and ran the machine as the instructions indicated.

This seemed like a fairly good explanation, until someone made the salient point that none of us had brought any dishwasher powder with us. “Yes” exclaimed K “but I found some under the sink!”

She duly retrieved the dishwasher powder to show us.

It was plaster of fucking paris!

The heat from the dishwasher had baked it onto every plate, every knife and every glass; it all had to be binned as we couldn’t clean it. As for the dishwasher we tried to flush it out, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts it coughed, burped, farted and died for ever more. If we cut away the outer shell and piping I guess we would have had a perfect ceramic model of the inside of an Indesit 4200.

And that was the closest I ever came to having a dishwasher.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:15, 3 replies)

Razzles
My housemate was anti-porn. He said that it was not only unerotic and embarassing, but degrading to women. Quite right.

We spent a whole weekend looking for his stash, and finally found it behind his Argos leatherette settee.

A sprinkling of Men Onlys, a couple of Knaves, and the biggest pile of Razzles you have ever seen. The most well thumbed was the centrefold of the Razzle halloween special. A classic "housewife pile-up shot" of middle-aged women in a kind of a stack, all dressed as witches.

What the internet has brought in variety, it has taken away in class.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:11, 3 replies)

Poisoning
We were having the standard "your room is scummier than mine argument" too often and so I decided something had to be done. When I saw a gone off pork chop in the fridge the rest of the plan sort of fell into place.
It was under his bed for two weeks, after a couple of days I had to water it daily to aid the decomposition process. Oh how I laughed as he took his room apart looking for the smell. Eventually the eye watering stench permeated the rest of the house so I decided the game was up and revealed my trick. Oh how we laughed - until my housemate went down with acute tonsilitis caused by air borne contaminants. He was in bed for days and couldn't speak for about a week, the doctor asked if he'd been working around refuse before prescribing a brutal course of anti-biotics. Other people judged me harshly but he admitted he would've done the same to me.
(andrew.hancox, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:04, Reply)

Psycho Paul, who threatened to kill my mate, after punching me to the ground
Admittedly I was skateboarding on the driveway at 2 in the morning, probably being a bit noisy, but I think his threat of murder was a tad over the mark. Later found out he'd only recently got out of prison for attempted murder of someone else. Ooops.

Psycho Paul's brother who tried to convert me to Christianity, after I staggered back home, barely able to see i was tripping so much. Luckily my survival instinct kicked in, and I managed to remain unaffected by his religious onslaught. The fucking nutjob.

edit: And as a housemate myself, I have (or mates of mine have) managed to:
-Burn down the garden
-burn the carpet
-Have the firebrigade called out to an over-enthusiastic bonfire, in which a neighbours pear tree got burned down. Our landlord placated him with a cup of tea. Amazing.
-Died the shared bath black
-Filled the communal fridge with about 60 pints of milk we relieved from peoples doorsteps on an early morning tripping adventure
( LemonEntryMyDearWatson This time, Moriarty, the hand is on the other foot, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:03, 1 reply)

My dad
Lived in Bradford for a while in the early '70s and shared with a guy who was a bit of a ladies' man, a bit smooth. Everyone liked him and he was always good for a joke down the pub. What nobody realised was that the guy was in the process of killing 13 women with a hammer.

Yep. Peter Sutcliffe.
(frankspencer, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 14:54, 6 replies)

Loved Up
Isn't ecstasy supposed to be the sort of drug that makes you euphoric and love everyone?

Si was a plant geneticist with whom I shared a flat in 1998/9. His main interests in life were belching, wearing shorts, and going out to get off his chops at the weekend. And ecstasy had an unexpected effect on him: he got aggressive. More aggressive than he was in sober hours.

Early one Saturday morning - or late on Friday, depending on your perspective - Si stumbled into the kitchen and living area where the five of us who lived in the flat used to congregate. His small eyes fixed on Paul.
"YOU LOOK AS THOUGH YOU THINK I'VE GOT A TURNIP ON MY HEAD. HAVE I GOT A TURNIP ON MY HEAD?" he bellowed.

Paul looked scared. Si was about seven times his size.
"Er... no..." he offered, timidly.
"Good," said Si. "'Cos if you'd said I had, I'd've fucking KILLED you!"

And with that, he wandered off to bed. Paul, meanwhile, hyperventilated in a corner.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 14:52, 3 replies)

I am lucky to have been forgiven.
Instead of bitching about other people, I'll turn the spotlight on myself.

It's not a flattering picture.


A friend of mine from University got a great job, bought a flat and wanted someone he could trust on his very frequent trips that took him away for days at a time.

We'd lived together in our third year at Uni and had been friends throughout.

So I seemed ideal.

Unfortunately, I am a dickhead.

And he no longer had the cushion of 7 other people in the house to protect him from the full force of my twatwaddery.

In the space of a year...

...I burnt a hole in his brand new sofa, despite not being allowed to smoke in the flat apart from leaning out the window.

...I had a fag out of the window in the middle of winter then promptly left for the weekend without either closing the window or remembering to turn the heating off. The bolier blew up by trying to get the temperature up to what had been set on the thermostat.

...I locked us both out. On the first day we moved in. We had to smash out the reinforced glass in the front door to get back in.

...I was late with the rent almost every month and didn't pay at all three times.

...He caught me having sex on the kitchen work top.

...He used to have very early starts or odd hours. Getting in from work at 3am. Then being woken up by my radio alarm at 6 because I constantly went away and forgot to cancel it.

...I invited friends back and we drank his £100 bottle of whisky.

...I left the front door open for an entire weekend.

...I threw an apple out of my bedroom window at some noisy drunks, missed and dented his porche.

...after a night at the pub, he realised he'd lost his keys and went back to look for them. I promptly passed out on the sofa and he couldn't get in. For three hours.

...spilt a full bottle of red wine across the middle of his carpet.



After the end of the year, I took him to the pub and told him that I needed to move out.


I have never seen a man so relieved in his life...

Luckily I have grown up a lot, we're still close friends.

But he never tires to remind me that we wouldn't be if he'd had to put up with me for a single day longer, he estimated that, taking into account I only paid him 9 months rent, and the money he spent after I moved out replacing things, that I cost him around £6,000.

I promise, truly promise, that I am a much more careful, considerate and all round nicer person now than I was at 22.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 14:51, 3 replies)

I have had a few
I don't consider myself the best housemate in the world. This year i have yet to pay for toilet paper or cleaning products. But i do do the washing up if there is any there, i do keep my mess to my room, which i clean/tidy once a week. And i am aware have housemates so keep the noise down.

I have however left my window open on a few occasions. My room is at the front on the ground floor.

All in all i don't think i am that bad.

Housemates i have lived;

E. That year was fun, he is a great friend of mine and love him to bits, in a mannly way. BUT he did smoke a LOT of weed/dope. He bought half a bar of soap as it worked out cheaper. Even tho he was a chef he was the worst person in the kitchen,. he would use every single item in there and then leave it. The two best things were when he put the empty pizza boxes back in the freezer and he has a weird thing about leaving cupboards open. I was chatting to him, leaning against the door frame (very small kitchen) and watched him make a sandwich. He opened a few cupboards etc etc and left, i called him back and pointed out what he had done. He huffed at me and stormed off. My other housemate of the time T, informed me he once heard E using the kitchen and then a short while later goes back in. Starts muttering about the cupboards being open and slams the shut. T hadn't been in the kitchen and i was away all that day. Still a good friend.

Gordy, who had the worst habits like;

Putting his wet clothes to dry on top of the already wet clothes which meant his room stank. One weekend we aired his room for 2 days, within seconds of closing the window the smell was back.

Using a glass, to take a drink of water, the rinse the rim, wipe with his hand and put it back.

Get drunk and do silly things. Example. I came home from a weekend back home to find the map o had put up in the hall way was burnt on one corner. On asked flatmates what had happened, Gordy said "Oh i thought it was you, must have been me then".

Janny, Greek and clueless. A gentle soul who got a first. But lacked common sense. We did a group deep clean and he was mopping the front room floor. He tried, TWICE, to used fabric softener.

Tobi, german. I like the guy and over all a good housemate. But when we moved into this place and teh kitchen's ceiling had fallen down and needed replace thus leaving the kitchen filthy he was more interested in replacing the toilet seat and installing a loo roll holder than getting the kitchen fit for human use. Actually that is his only real fault, oh and not being able to do concise sentences.

Oh and a current housemate who thinking rinsing the mugs is washing them....
(StyX is staring at you, yes YOU!!!, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 14:49, Reply)

Would be a pearoast, but someone used all my veg.
There's a lot I hate about human behaviour. Sure, there's that nice majority of people out there who love thy neighbour, honour thy father and whatnot, but every now and then you get the real cunt coming along with a vendetta against you for no reason. The people next door who throw a house party until 5am but file a complaint if you hoover your house at 11 the next morning. The housemate who offers you a lift to the shop but charges you a fiver for fuel afterwards. The bastard who keeps using my milk. The list goes on.

I suppose my existence has concluded that the stem of this all is a characteristic flaw many share; nothing is ever our own fault or responsibility. If you fall at work, you sue your workplace rather than raise your hands to the air and confess you should spend less time walking around on the phone and more time noticing large yellow wet floor signs, but no, no-win no-fee culture tells you the blame can be offloaded.

This is the foundation of my life as a student; disaster from one and responsibility upon myself.

My story has been told in parts here before. During my second year of university I had the unbridled joy of residing with a group of people who after a few weeks turned out to be utter fuckwits. Rather than start a war between them, I decide to call our differences and work on the mutual ignoring process of one another. The night before my largest exam of the term, I'm awoken by the all too common sound of drunks crawling out of a taxi. After waking up the entire street with Chelsea football anthems, fuckwit and fuckwitetta decide to abandon the 30 second wait for me to get out of bed by throwing a fist through the front door and breaking the lock. Landlord is phoned the next morning to be told they've just come back from holiday to find vandals have broken in, and as they weren't around they should be exempt from penalties

The landlord felt something was a bit fishy, as no student can go to Cyrpus for 2 weeks - especially during exam season - so calls us to find out what's going on. Fuckwit and Fuckwitetta are swiftly referred to as 'devious shites' and the full story is repeated to them in true Crimewatch precision.

For our 'defection', the fuckwits decide to withold £800 of rent (a cheque from their parents) until they receive an apology and a new front door. This lasted all of 45 minutes, when two heavies kicked the already defeated door to the floor and strode into my room.

'Are you Mr. Fuckwit? Where's our money? Boss tells us all you and the other wankers are witholding rent.'
'No, I'm one of the other wankers. Fuckwits are upstairs and very hungover. God forbid you should shout at them. I'll put the kettle on.'

Have you ever had someone do a complete 180 turn of personality in a nanosecond? I have. Heavy 1 and Heavy 2 whispered a quick thanks and their preferences of milk and sugar before marching up the stairs in extra stompy style.

I couldn't concentrate throughout my exam. Visions of brutal justice flooded my mind endlessly. The idea of two hungover wastes of society on their hands and knees, tonguing broken glass off the floor to impress their bulky oppressors. I knew deep down the worst they'd get is a stern talking too, but it kept me awake enough to hand in the forms and board the bus home.

I'd obviously gotten off at the wrong stop and arrived at post-war Hiroshima. Every item of value of the fuckwits from photos to football shirts were stapled together as a makeshift door panel. A true collage of justice as the heavies handed me a copy of my housemate's eviction notice to sign and date. I could've hugged them, but they might've gotten emotional and fractured my skull.

Did it work? Of course not. Fuckwits coughed up the cash and stole every penny back off me in food and utlities before I showed myself the door.

Sorry for the disappointment.
(FoxyBadger (try saying it backwards), Thu 26 Feb 2009, 14:33, Reply)

Wrong, wrong, wrong
OK. I'm psyching myself up to tell this story cos it brings back so many bad memories....

I was struggling a bit with the mortgage after my boyf moved out, so I thought I'd get a lodger. I'd advertised in a few places online, and made sure that potential housemates knew I was a gay guy - thought I'd get that bridge crossed and eliminate potential homophobes first off.

After speaking to a few people, I started chatting to an interesting guy called James (name changed cos I can't even bring myself to say his name) He was a professional guy, worked in a university as a lecturer and research scientist, polite etc etc.

He came round for a look at the room I was renting out, and he seemed really nice. A bit stand-offish, but ok. He wasn't an axe murderer or anything (I actually asked him if he was) and was gay too. Not my type at all, btw, and I was sort of seeing someone at the time anyway.

So - he moved in, and things were fine for a couple of months. He kept himself to himself, did his share of the housework etc etc - all perfect.

During this time, my new boyfriend was spending a fair bit of time round the house, and prob stayed there three nights a week or so.

For some reason, this started to piss James off, and weird things started happening. First off, one morning I went to the bathroom and found a 'soiled' full body rubber catsuit with rubber knee high boots hanging over the shower rail (http://www.libidex.com/images/garmentimages/large/extreme%20cat1a%20move.JPG - similar to this)
Oh-kay. Well, we're all into different stuff, so I let it go. Wasn't particularly keen about it hanging over the bath with god knows what dripping off it, but hey - I'm quite an easy going guy.

A couple of nights later, James was out for the evening. Me and the boyf were watching TV downstairs, and decided to get a DVD out. Going through our collection, we found one of James' DVDs. Porn... Well - we did what any other red-blooded male would've done and stuck it in the player.

Oh my god.

Scat porn.

Home made scat porn.

Home made scat porn made in my house.



We gave him a very wide berth after that - what could we do? Then it got weirder. We found all of his scat-porn accoutrements that started appearing in the bathroom (including a professionally made toilet seat that was on legs so that someone could lie underneath it whilst someone else sat on it), more rubber suits and waders, dildos and so on.

The final straw came when me and the boyf had been away for the weekend. We came back, and the coffee table was permanently marked. With the outline of a base of a dildo so large it'd make an elephant cry. This dirty bastard had been rogering himself silly on top of my coffee table with a monster dildo stuck to the surface.

We got rid soon after that, so he's gone (but the dildo mark remains - nothing will shift that bugger)

Now that was cathartic - needed to get that out of my system!
(coderboi, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 14:31, 3 replies)

The Room...
My housemate from my last house never left his room, except to go outside for a fag (after we insisted he stop smoking in his room), there was always an odd smell coming from his room so one day whilst he was at work we took a peek into his room, I wish we hadn't, there were stacks of pizza boxes and chinese cartons some with food semi decomposed hanging off the edge, in almost a year of living with him he'd ever done a wash load 4 times, and none of them were bed sheets, his sheets (which i assume were once white) were a horrible yellowish brown colour with various dark red, yellow and white stains scattered around, he didn't even have a quilt cover.
The smell was something else. i don't know what skunks smell like but i imagine it would smell much the same mixed with the lingering smell of cannabis. This smell would spread through the entire house if his door was ever open for more then 3 minutes...

The housemate himself was a dirty looking fellow, greasy hair, always smelt of fags, alcohol and B.O and wore the same T-shirt for weeks at a time... The strang thing is he showered every night as if he was aware of hygine but couldn't grasp the fact the putting on the same filthy clothes and returning a pit of disease that he called his bed would make the whole washing process redundent.
(That Random Guy, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 14:24, 1 reply)