Be Excellent To Each Other

Here is Beex' latest spin-off! A thread about weird housemates, rubbish accommodation, etc.

Stories, people.

I'll kick off: in my first year at uni, I lived in student accommodation which had damp in various rooms, when it rained the drains would block and we would have a pool of sewage outside our kitchen and only extrance/exit (bar the fire escape). The building was apparently billed as not fit for humans to live in, but the uni must have thought, "well, they are only students". It was knocked down a few years later.

I just got rid of my flatmate. He was a cunt who failed more than once to pay his bills and rent on time. Since all bills come out of my account he just left me out of pocket. He was a fucking mess, thought scraping his shit onto the floor was being 'tidy'. Took over all the cutlery cupboards by inexplicably storing his food in there. Totally took over the fridge/freezer with his shit. Came home in the early hours on weeknights with noisy friends/slappers that woke me up. I got back from holiday a few months ago to find that two random friends of his had moved in (while he'd gone on holiday himself) and they ended up staying for 5 fucking weeks, paying no rent and subletting is outwith the terms of our agreement anyway. The fucker had to go.

Of course, he didn't want to go, because my flat is pretty awesome, but it was a joint lease which meant I couldn't tell him to leave, because he'd refuse and it'd be a stalemate.

However.

At the start of this month the tenancy was up for renewal, so I just told the agent he was a bastard, and that if he didn't go, I would, and I was a lot more reliable than he was. They agreed to withdraw the renewal for the existing lease and sign a new one in my sole name. The agent then colluded with me to pretend that the landlord had simply decided to move back in and that we *both* had to move out.

So for the last couple of months I've been making a very good show of preparing to move out, whilst actually never intending to go anywhere. Come moving day the flatmate moved out, cleaned everything properly (the only time he's done so), and left. I'd packed all my shit up from the communal areas and stacked it temporarily in my room until he left. Then I changed the locks and moved my stuff back into the lounge and kitchen.

I now have my flat to myself, and it's clean, and lovely. Of course, I could have just told him I wasn't going anywhere, but there was a risk he'd have dug his heels in and refused to move, resulting in much unpleasantness.

Not in the same league as any of the other stories that will come up...

But, I lived in a house with a guy once who refused to sleep in his room. He pretty much lived on the sofa even though he had a perfectly good bed upstairs.

That was freaky.

FTFY

For those who don't visit 'Bits and Bobs' that often, here is my earlier anecdote:

Someone I knew at uni once shared uni accommodation with a girl who refused to use the lavatory. Presumably she peed in the sink in her room. When she moved out, several dozen carrier bags were left under her bed, containing her excrement.

It turned out that I was staying in the very same room a few years later.

I used to live in a ground floor flat in a large semi-detached house in Stretford. There was another bedsit on the ground floor and in the two years that I lived there I think I only ever saw the occupant once, and almost never heard any noise from him. However, there was a Scottish girl who lived on the first floor and she was a classic wailer. Her bf used to visit two or three times a week and fuck her mercilessly. Her bed used to bang against the wall and she would scream as though she was being murdered. And the damn guy had LOTS of stamina, the racket could go on for the best part of an hour. It was pretty obvious that I could hear her, as my living room was right below her bedroom, but she never seemed to be embarrassed whenever we met up in the hall way. Luckily, their bedroom exertions never took place late at night, so she never kept me awake.

Nothing really to add, aside from one guy who proclaimed to us in German that he wanted to have sexy fun times would a boeing plane, and another which had very loud sexy fun time, and got into the loud sex war with his immediate neihbour. Who was gay. An neighboured me. So I got loud man grunting as collateral damage.

I response by leaving his herbal sleeping pills open, leaving his room uninhabitable and forcing him to grunt elsewhete.

I lived with a guy who was such a slob that the only clear space in his room was a little patch by the door. He'd open the door, step into the clear spot and then leap into bed, over the piles of clothes and junk and old plates that covered the entire floor. He was pretty neat and tidy outside his room, but inside it was a total bombsite.

The aforementioned "shower webcam expulsion":

I didn't realise we lived together...

I avoided becoming housemates with a guy who believed in Jesus. He was cool about it, and didn't try to convert you or anything, but he casually mentioned one day how because I didn't believe in a higher power, it was his firm conviction that I would burn in the fires of hell.

I didn't fancy living with someone who would look down on you like that.

I made sure I didn't live with freaks at Uni and was lucky to share houses with pretty close mates who had studied at ND level with. There was a freaky Danish guy who lived with us though who gradually became more a pain in the arse as time went on. He liked to wear Tae-kwon-do gear and eat mostly noodles with ketchup. In the last term he decided to spunk all his money on a classic Norton bike and keep it in our small kitchen as he didn't want it outside. Cunt.

Love this! Bet it felt great!

I haven't lived with any real weirdos. The strangest one was a gay medicine student who's room as a absolute pig sty, dirty mouldy food things lying around all the time, we had to have a couple of exhibitions to his room to fetch cutlery some times when the kitchen was out, the worst thing was he had a smelly towel which he never washed and left lying around the house, it stank. And for a medicine student! That was the most disturbing thing!

Where was the Cutlery? Behind the Picasso?

Did he always prescribe Arsepirin, Cockodomol & Peniscillin?

yes.

Just the aforementioned stinky guy I wrote about in B&B. He didn't wash for the entire year we were in Halls in Manchester. He reeked horrifically, mostly of ammonia.

We found out the lock on his door was identical to that on another door in our area, so we went into his room, nicked one of his model owls (he was obsessed with owls) and put it into the shower. He never found it.

He was also into being part of the charities society, presumably because the other people working there were hardly likely to quit just because he stank. They used to get on a coach to go to different places each week to go and beg for money, and ebfore getting on each time they sprayed him with cans of deodorant.

He still, somehow, didn't really get it.

I wish you'd slowly moved his entire room contents in there bit by bit.

In a different student house, I found some syringes, latex/rubber gloves and what looked like an enema kit buried in a wardrobe. The former resident wasn't a medical student and, to the best of our knowledge, had no medical use for a syringe. His parents were really rich, though - in case that is related.

Some of the other chaps left air fresheners in there occasionally. He never mentioned it, but they were fighting a losing battle anyway.

You know, I can understand having pongy days, when you overslept and skipped a shower and then the air-conditioning packed in, but how people can be oblivious to the fact that they reek of stale piss for an entire year I don't get.

I know of a chap who stinks and is usually wearing the same clothes every day. He rummages in litter bins and drinks the dregs from bottles and bits of sandwiches found therein, etc. It has to be some kind of mental illness - why would you decide one day to just not wash and to wear the same clothes?

He used to work in a hospital (as a porter, I think), so he couldn't have been like that back then. He owns a house and presumably gets a pension, so it isn't as if he is homeless or skint.

It's quite sad, really.

You must get used to it, in the same way you get used to the smell of smoke, or your pets.

You smell people with stale B.O elsewhere in life as well, and they obviously are oblivious to it.

Yes. The council folk who unblock drains, etc get used to the smell after a while.

Could be a medical condition.

Ooh, sewage farm workers or binmen as well.

So basically, we need to start a smelly person web site. People log on to search and check if they've been mentioned by name/locality, and all mentions are totally anonymous. Submitters would leave a name, description, and small story about each smell-ee and why they need to take a bath, and the smellsters might actually get the hint.

I'm pretty sure he was talking about me.

Yeah, cock rot.

I did feel somewhat like an evil genius, I must admit

Manchester:

House 1:

My missus and I were moving up from Coventry, she went up first, got a house share, I came up a few weeks later, to stay with her while I got a place. The next day, we split up.

House 2:

Moved in with three young professionals, being skint I couldn't go out with them much really, the (ex) was blowing hot and cold, I ended up getting a job at Barclaycard and quickly sunk into a bit of a state. They asked me to leave on the basis of 'it not working out' - some months later, one of them confessed to a mutual acquaintance that I was 'too unhappy'. So, thanks guys.

House 3:

Lovely place, living with a guy, his often-there missus and their mate, who was a suicidal bipolar coke/ket/pillhead mess of a girl. We all got on alright, but she moved out and I moved an old mate in who was a nice guy but had a man-crush on me. I could do no wrong, despite being as much of a bitter dick as I could during these tender years. Six months of that house later, the couple bought a place so me and old mate couldn't meet the rent. He wanted a batchelor pad flat with me, I agreed. We ended up running out of time to find one and got a place in...

House 4:

Jesus. When I moved in, there was angry girl, who fancied herself as house matriarch and gave me a bollocking for everyone else's washing up as I came downstairs on my FIRST MORNING having never used the kitchen, gay indie guy, who I initially got on with really well, vague bloke, who had bought a Mac with a view to making a website for someone or other, he wasn't sure yet, lighting enineer guy, who said virtually nothing to me the whole time he lived there.

After a week, I lost my job and angry girl tried to have a word with the landlady (her mate) to say I'd never had a job in the first place. Not an issue as I got one the next week. Then she and sound engineer bloke moved into the landlady's place round the corner, freeing up two rooms. Old mate hooked up with the girl who'd moved out of the room he got, who was best mates with landlady and gay indie guy. And then...

All I can think of was that Old Mate's new missus didn't like his unswerving loyalty to me. I wasn't 100% about it either, but what can you do? Anyway, Gay indie guy started getting REALLY bitchy, at one point totally flipping out and seething at me in front of everyone when I got a job in a bank, as I wasn't suitable to be looking after people's money. I'd be asked by Old Mate to attend the house he was now always at, to fix his new PC... and when I hopped off the bus to do just that one evening after work as hers was on the way home, all was well during the visit but when I got home I had a call from Old Mate - apparently his missus doesn't like "just anyone" coming round unannounced. Pfffft.

Then the girls moved in... two of them, one a sulky French 'photographer' (benefits claimant) and the other one a sulky 'alternative type' (benefits claimant) who were friends of gay indie bloke. I didn't like either of them.

At Xmas, I returned to Lincolnshire and on Xmas eve I got the call - the place had been robbed, and what had gone? My mountain bike, my Sega, the TV and Video from Radio Rentals in My name. Of course, RR wanted them both paid for in full immediately. The two new girls wanted to pay me a fiver a week for the next thousand years to cover their share. I think I lost the last of my goodwill when I insisted they gave me their chunk in full like everyone else. Interestingly there were no signs of forced entry and only grumpy alternative girl and gay indie bloke were in at the time. I have my suspicions. Hilariously when delivering the replacement TV and video, the radio rentals van got robbed.

Anyway, Old Mate got engaged, moved out and booked his wedding for a Friday. I asked work for it off and as was the case with Lloyds in those days, if someone you've never met on some other team in the building had it booked and no other cover was available (very spurious system) you had to ask them. I was told who I needed to ask, and that I could not as they were on long term sick. Eventually, about a month before the big day, found out I wasn't getting the day off. Let him know, and that's the last we ever spoke.

At that time as well, the landlady had had a gutsfull and decided to give us all notice so she could spruce the place and rent it out for more. I found somewhere else and remember having moved going back to clean my room and some others hadn't lifted a finger to get anywhere. She was despairing of them.

The thing with this place was- I was indeed a total prick in those days, but so were they all, and we were all on as many chemicals as we could get our hands on. Seems odd really there was never in all honesty anything for anyone to fall out over.

Then I went to...
House 5:

Gorgeous place, me and 2 girls, one a French teacher and one a graphic designer. Sunday mornings they'd pile into bed with me to watch Hollyoaks then one of them would do breakfast. Happy days. Good house at last. French teacher's mate met me and screwed the living shit out of me for a few weeks, but stopped seeing me when my best mate came over for a couple of nights, I invited her out with us and she claimed it was 'getting too serious'. Fair play, love, whatever makes you comfortable. A few weeks alter I was in pub with french teacher and her mate apparently had said she was considering giving me a 'booty call' - french teacher then explained she'd told her mate that I wouldn't appreciate meing used as a piece of meat and not to bother.

<simmer>

Five months into this relatively brilliant home, we got notice, the landlord was selling up, so I moved into a flat by myself. Turns out, having spotted french teacher driving up the cul de sac to the place we moved out of one day that she'd bought the fucker and not told us. Some people, eh?

House 6:

Was my flat in an old house on Wilbraham road. Cold, dark and fantastic. Neighbours included the girl next door whose boyfreind ignored her on friday nights to play tennis. We had better games to play. The angry hippy couple on the top floor, the socially inept car windscreen shop manager who kept filling his pc with porn diallers and paying me 6 cans of stalla a fortnight for the better part of 6 months to remove them all, his predecessor the modern dancer virgin with the whisper quiet voice whose virginity I didn't have the heart to take, racist salt of the earth van driver man, eastern european taxi guy/Mario impersonator and the nondescript hipster couple on the first floor the rest of us ignored because they were hipsters. And Danny the professional skateboarder. I only moved out to come to Hull and get married.

GovernmentYard wins this thread.

Just around the corner from me.

Moved in with this bloke who was a 'graphic artist', after pretending we had professional jobs. Turns out he just worked in a shop selling batman dolls. He had a friend who came around a fair amount. He was quite nice, but had a slightly odd side to him. Anyways, downstairs was an artist who behaved terribly oddly, his pictures weren't too good either, but then you'd here these gutteral roars and he'd appear later looking pleased. I think he was only ever happy when he was angry, if you get me. Upstairs was the landlady and her teenage daughter. I don't think they got on terribly well. We certainly never saw her. After the daughter legged it, flatmate's friend moved in with the landlady.

Evident Spaced reference. Try harder Mali.

Well, there was that time when I ran away from my wedding and found an old school friend I'd lost contact with. We moved in together straight after, and I got a waiting job. Oh, the crazy japes we had! 10 long, long years of whimsical adventures and on-off romances!

I worked in a bookshop in London, flatmate was Welsh, blah blah blah famous actor blah blah blah win!

And why... why are you the WOMAN?

Lol, good point!

For reference: viewtopic.php?p=73946#p73946

Same. A friend of mine did something similar a year or two ago, to get rid of some people who were becuntening his life up. He's a very decent man and normally feels terrible for the slightest dishonesty, but I could tell even before he said anything that when it was all over, he was loving it.

This also might be me. Kitchen = clean and tidy. Bathroom = clean and tidy. Bedroom = I HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF WHERE DOES IT COME FROM ARGH.

Not lately though, as I've thrown away tonnes of it, and the worst actual dirt is a mug of tea and maybe a plate now and then.

On the plus side, having a messy room makes telling when someone's been going through it while you're at work a lot easier, because they typically don't bother trying to put it back the way it was, thinking you won't notice.


My favourite 'mess' story is probably still the housemate whose room was a mess and smelled manky, but he was often away for weeks at a time, staying with is girlfriend. We eventually quarantined his room until she came in one day and hoovered up the hundreds of oddly lethargic bees that had taken residence there.

Also the "10 takeaways in 14 days" couple, but I think I've done them already.

Edit: Found it! Archivist power deactivated!

Word of the week. Even better than Cibrushsille.

Man, before I kicked the booze and sorted my life out, I shared the scummiest flat in London with a total wanker. Thought he was god's gift to women even though the closest he'd been to fanny was checking the mannequins in the Anne Summers window for camel-toe. Anyway, I was in a terrible state, living my life in an alcoholic haze, and we'd end up arguing over the silliest things. And then things would turn violent. By the end, not a day would go by without us fighting. I'm amazed we didn't end up in hospital, or dead. I don't even know why I stayed. I guess I didn't have anywhere else to go.

I'm just glad that period of my life is over. I think what brought it home to me was when we were nearly caught stealing gas from the psycho next door, and nearly ended up murdering the gas man.

Wow. Can we get the full story there Pundy? I'm sure I'm not the only one that wants to hear more.

You'll never get to the bottom of it.

[quote="Longines Symphonette"]Wow. Can we get the full story there Pundy? I'm sure I'm not the only one that wants to hear more.

Oh, Russell.

Not really freaky, more disturbing really, my girlfriend used to share a flat with a 30-something "professional" who had a hedonistic lifestyle and active sex life. By active I mean at least four men, including her boss, on some kind of rota system. (The florists directly below the flat's main bedroom complained all the time about the noise, and eventually went out of business.) There was also the coke habit issue, which made living there "interesting" (i.e. terrible). If something had white powder encrusted on it, such as a CD you had lent, then, yeah, it'd been coked off (coked on?). Cokehead wouldn't be an exaggeration – getting on hands and knees licking and sniffing spilt cocaine off the living room rug, or stealing her 9 year old son's saving box and Christmas money to buy more coke in a hurry, that was her. Yes, Cokehead had a son. He spent more much time with my g.f. whilst she lived there than with his own mother. My g.f. had many parental-type responsibilities dumped on her: Having to take the child 'to the park' suddenly to keep the flat empty for when Cokehead wanted to have a random male round for a shag, for example. Having to drop everything to collect the child from school, after child had attempted suicide by trying to jump out of a second floor building, whilst Cokehead was uncontactable, that was another. Child is now in a boarding school, last time my g.f. had heard. Neither my g.f. or I want to contemplate how Cokehead is paying for that, seeing as she barely made 30 grand a year. In her legitimate day job, anyway.

I remember one ocassion my g.f. and I both checked Cokehead's bedroom for illicit substances and material. All we found was a pink suitcase hidden under Cokehead's bed filled with some Ann Summers paraphernalia; nothing exotic, just a PVC maid costume and some restraining chains. More embarrassing than blackmail fodder, frankly. We expected to find more, judging by all the extreme noise heard from Cokehead's bedroom at times. Even when sitting in the living room at the opposite end of the flat.

Cokehead was a typical wannabe 'aspirational' Tory type, incidentally; the sort that doesn't have high income or social status, let alone realistic means of acquiring either, but pretends to be as posh as possible whilst being constantly overdrawn to pa to keep up the facade. In between dodging bailiffs and CCJs. Odd, as Cokehead used to be a anarchist squatter in London during her twenties, as well as a hardcore hunt saboteur, animal rights activist type.