Eh dear... part two
.. well then.
Fora while we had the spare room empty and all was OK, my other hosemates, Lib and Zbig, were really sound guys and I got on with them well, in fact I think the experience we'd had with the chav had made us better pals than we would otherwise have been. But our landlord, such are the joys of buy-to-let, needed to fill the spare room. And so, we had Phil move in.

Now Phil seemed perfectly ok first time we met him. I'd have objected to someone who seemed like a total nutter or chav, especially after the previous incident (and I'd been to University and had enough nutters to contend with there, and before going to Uni I'd had my own bedsit for a couple of years in one of the most dangerous parts of Huddersfield- I literally watched out of the window one afternoon as a riot went on down the street and a pub got broken into and burnt out). Phil worked in a factory near our house, he didn't want to commute all the way from where he was, especially as he was on night shifts usually, and wanted to get out from under his dad's feet. Seemed like a decent enough guy, we warmed to him, we even took him out clubbing in Leeds. Everything seemed ok.

For about 3 weeks.

One evening I got back from work and Phil was in the front room. He just looked different, as soon as I saw him I knew something was wrong. He started talking about people at work that had been teasing him, calling him homosexual, trying to play jokes on him, talking about him behind his back. Now at first I thought maybe this guy just works with a load of prats, so I listened to him and told him he should get on with it as much as he could, and if things got too much I was sure there'd be someone at his work he could go to. Then I went to my room. Whilst I was getting changed out of my suit, Phil bellowed up the stairs:

"are you havin' a laugh at us"

"i'm sorry, what do you mean?"

"well all the time you were taslking to us just now, you had a smirk on your face, like it was some big joke. They were here today, makin' a load of noise outside my room [we'd had the back patio concreted that day] and the workmen came through my window while I was tryin' to sleep, had a ladder going across my bed. They were laughing their heads off, my dad was here too [wasn't- we never saw him after the one night he and Phil came to look at the house] and he was jokin' about me an' all.... is this some big conspiracy???"

Turns out Phil was a paranoid schizophrenic. His daddio had foisted him on us because he couldn't handle him. Over the next few days we were accused of all sorts- apparently I was levitating outside Phil's window whipering evil through the window, my Zimbabwean housemate was 'a fucker' because he was (1) black, and (2) apparently walked around in a manner that was meant to show how big his dick was, our other (Polish) housemate was 'pure evil' as was his mother who was staying with us for a while having travelled over from Poland to see her own son for a few weeks... our landlord was, apparently, a "scumbag"....

.. this went on for a few weeks. By now we (myself and my other two sentient housemates) were sick of it, the Polish guy Zbig was terrified of Phil as he was placid by nature, living in a strange country and didn't want the risk of the schizo turning on his mother when he was at work, but myself and my other housemate Lib weren't prepared to tolerate it. Phil would come into the living room whilst we were watching football ot whatever and accuse one of us of banging on his door when he was asleep (when we'd all been in the front room for at least an hour), or he'd try and break into our rooms when the rest of us were at work, or he'd play music in his room at stupid o' clock at max volume. You couldn't have a decent conversation with him, as he'd start accusing all the other housemates (he would never acuse you to your face) of being part of some big conspiracy with his work colleagues and his dad and the landlord and the neighbours and everyone else. We were all out to get him.

The landlord came round to have a word, but when that happened Phil was really apologetic, said he wanted to stay. But after a while it was too much, nobody else in the house would speak to Phil, we couldn't care less, we just didn't like him bursting in on us when we were watching Scrubs and telling us he was going to get us because we'd been tapping on his walls and talking about how we were going to get him [when we'd actually al been at work, like normal people]. I was terrified that he would attack Zbig (our Polish housemate), or worse, attack Zbig's mum who was staying with us, didn't speak very good English, and was in the house most of the day.

The schizo dickhead, who we're sure was foisted on us by his dad who couldn't cope and had decided to just send him to someone else rather than find help kill a responsible parent would, decided he couldn't bear living with a bunch of weirdos who were plotting to kill him, and eventually left of his own accord.... THANK GOD. I was by then sleeping with a metal rod next to the bed.

So the next rule has to be stated: NEVER LIVE WITH A PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIC......
(fourplusone, Fri 6 Apr 2007, 0:33, Reply)