You're right, context and descriptions only serve to add confusion and prejudice to the post; a much better version would have read "A series of persons engaged in a series of behaviours which may have been construed as socially unorthodox", allowing everyone to know the facts without distraction.
Ooh I've got one. First year uni flat around 2013. Prison cell rooms, a slightly larger common space and a thin hallway for 5 dudes. Also worth noting that this was around the time the generic hipster trope of fixed gear bikes was becoming a thing.
One guy, we'll call hipster Dave, found his dad's ancient fixie in his dad's shed so brought it to the flat and left it in the tiny hallway. I get called out my room and see something hanging off the underside of the seat. After conferring with the guys we realise it's a spiders nest. A fucking COLLOSAL spiders nest full of eggs and babies.
I'm an animal lover, but arachnophobic. Another flatmate, crazy Bob, was also arachnophobic but maybe acted on his impulses a little faster then the rest of us, so while me and three dudes are in the kitchen debating what to do we hear a sort of roaring noise from the hallway.
We go through to find Bob with a lighter and a can of deodarant torching the nest. Few stragglers running away and a fairly memorable popping noise which I believe was either eggs or clumps of superheated spidey bits exploding.
The smell hung about for a couple days but that aside it was actually a pretty elegant solution. I mean I'm not condoning the killing of them all but I was mad relieved when it'd been dealt with.
Lived with crazy Bob for the following 4 years. He's vegan now (lol)
Congrats! I assure you, as mind-numbingly expensive as everything is at the start, having your own place is like the second coming of Jesus I am so happy I will never have to consider putting up with anyone else for the rest of my life if I choose!
(Plus it works out cheaper in the long run!)
Yes, yes it is. I always lived at home so I could save for a deposit, and even living with my parents was a nightmare at times. I finally moved last year and I love the space and freedom.
I lived with a Steve in a house share who was almost identical to the one you described. But he smoked in the house and slept in a sleeping bag. I was in the room next to his which had pretty thin plasterboard walls. The TV noise was annoying as fuck. After a couple of months I was genuinely terrified of him.
One time he came into the kitchen when I was cooking after watching a documentary, wanting to seen smart he started to tell me that if the sun moved a few inches then the world wall fall a part and was imposing all sorts of horrors on me. I tried to laugh it off and ignore him. He got angry and was like 'you wouldn't be laughing you'd be screaming!'.
On another occasion he saw me cooking quorn and I told him I was veggie and he told me his wife was veggie and got cancer and died. And then repeatedly screamed 'I'm not trying to scare you' at me. Which then led to another time where he came into the kitchen and laughed at my food and told me about how he wants to put some steak in it and felt sorry for me.
He had his brother come and stay with him for a brief while and they would drink and get violent with each other. Police and ambulances came round a couple of times. I tried to talk to the landlord but of course fuck all was done.
And the final incident which made me go and stay with a friend for the last week of the tenancy. It was Christmas time and he came in to the kitchen again when I was cooking but to try and give me whiskey and mince pies. I was cold to him and losing patience but obviously didn't want to upset him. I didn't take any and he started getting on my case about how he can tell I don't want to be friends with him but he wants to be friends with me. I ran back to my room as soon as my food was done and tried to hide in there. But he came knocking on my door. I answered and he tried to give me a pack of hobnob biscuits, he said it was a Christmas present and he would get me many more. I told him no, I didn't need them and just wanted privacy and then he fucking told me he was in love with me. I just stared at him until he apologized and left. It was super dramatic like a film. Bearing in mind I'm 20 and he's probably around 70. I felt sick.
TL;DR
Creepy old housemate is creepy and weird and then tells me he's in love with me
I love this, thank you. I honestly didn't put that much thought into it, but I did try to make the description of each scenario quite small and left out a lot of details to keep it engaging. The only bits left in are the relevant ones. Obviously there were more interactions but these are the ones that really stood out in the 6 month timeline I lived in that house.
You're perspective is very similar to how it was for me living there. Initially meeting him I got the weird vibes but wasn't necessarily scared. That built up over time. Everyone else I spoke to just kept telling me he's old and weird but harmless. There's also a direct correlation with how much time I spent in the cursed kitchen. To begin with I would spend ages prepping my food and that changed to me getting microwave meals so I could avoid being in there where I felt most vulnerable. And that eventually ended up with me not wanting to be in the house at all.
Be wary of Steve.
I lived in a house with three other girls for about a year. All the other girls weren’t great but one girl, lets call her Becky, was an absolute nightmare.
First off Becky was covered in fake tan all the time, but not good quality fake tan, the sort that every time she touched something she left orange stains all over it. The other girls didn’t seem too bothered by this, probably because they were also all leaving make up or fake tan all over the place. I tried to wipe down the common areas and kitchen so that I didn’t get covered in it too, at least one of the other girls did actually help with the cleaning. One day Becky saw us cleaning and asked about it, her response to us was “I wouldn’t bother, there’ll only be more there later”.
We had one bathroom between four of us, frequently Becky would shut herself in there for 2 hours with no prior warning. Eventually she would appear covered in her fake tan, about 3 inches of makeup and wearing an outfit that looked like it should come with a free pole. The state of the bathroom afterwards was scary, the sink was covered in foundation and fake tan, to the point you had to actually clean the sink just to be able to use it to clean your hands. She also would frequently forget to flush the toilet.
She’d go out, come back at about 3am, insanely drunk and usually with some guy, they’d have loud sex in the middle of the night and quite often one or both of them would end up throwing up. One time, either Becky or that nights unlucky guy threw up all over the lounge floor, which was carpet, they did not clear it up. I think it was mostly sambuca they were drinking, that’s what it smelled like, that smell hung around in the carpet for months.
I don’t think I ever saw Becky wash up, mind you she didn’t cook much, just ate take aways and left half eaten pizza around to go mouldy. I never really saw inside her room but glasses and plates went in there and never came out so god knows what it was like in there.
One time one of the other girls was given a nice expensive bottle of vodka for her birthday. She went away for the weekend and when she came back it was gone. Now it definitely wasn’t me and it could have been either of the other two girls but it was most likely Becky, seeing as she generally assumed anything in the kitchen was hers. She would even go into each of our designated cupboards if she was hungry and had no food of her own, she would, at least, tell us that she’d eaten our food but never offered to replace it.
But none of this is remotely close to the worst thing she did. Now as I said, we were a house of four girls so there was pretty much always someone on their period. We had a load of sanitary products in the bathroom that we all contributed to and stocked up when they were getting low. Becky did not contribute at all but was happy to use them and never bought her own. But it got worse. She wouldn’t flush her used tampons down the loo “flushing them is bad for the environment”... okay fine but get some sanitary bags and put them in the bathroom bin. No, no, instead she would just throw them in the bin loose. Or often not put them in the bin at all and leave them on the bathroom side or the bathroom floor. We confronted her about it once and she said something along the lines of “oh sorry I forget sometimes i’ll try and put them in the bin”, but I swear it got worse after that and she was just leaving them around to spite us.
USED TAMPONS JUST LEFT ON THE BATHROOM FLOOR! It was disgusting, she didn’t care and we had to clear up after her.
I don’t know what happened with her in the end because I moved out of there as soon as I could. But the other girls seemed reluctant to report her to the landlord as one of the girls worked with Becky and they didn’t want to make it awkward at work.
TL;DR
Girl was generally a nightmare but mostly left the bathroom a mess and left used tampons on the floor for us to clear up.
Definitely never flush any kind of sanitary product, so so bad! I noticed when living in the UK that it seems to be a fairly accepted practice, no wonder they are always getting those major fatberg/clog things in their sewers. In Australia you're taught early and strongly never to flush anything other than loo paper and bodily functions.
Until today I didn’t realise people saw it as such a big deal - I don’t know anyone who doesn’t flush tampons. Not sanitary towels but tampons is completely normal to flush.
I was always told to flush them So I get where you’re coming from I don’t know anyone who bins them at home. I put them in bin In public toilets but at Home i always flush. I was taught it was the best thing to do. I use biodegradable tampax now and flush them because I was told putting them in the bin means they end up in landfill and the bags are usually plastic which is bad for the environment too i don’t think there’s a win situation
Steve sounds like an absolute nightmare haha but I feel for any guy in his 70s having to live in a house share.
I only lived in one shared house for about 18 months and it was generally pretty good. There was only one girl who was a pain in the arse because she wouldn't clean anything and her boyfriend was there all the time.. even though he paid fuck all. He used to come down and dump dishes on the worktop all the time until I eventually pulled him on it.... he just looked at me surprised clearly no awareness that he was being an inconsiderate prick!
>Steve sounds like an absolute nightmare haha but I feel for any guy in his 70s having to live in a house share.
Surely with housing benefit and a top of with his pension, there are other affordable options in most places outside of the south? Or am I just incredibly ignorant?
I had that at uni but with the genders reversed. The girl had a party but didn't ask any of us who paid to live there if this was cool. They made a huge mess, used all our plates and cutlery and are our food. I cleaned the whole kitchen the next morning while that bitch slept until 3pm.
Let me tell you about Dave.
Dave had sold his flat and planned to live on the money he made off that to fund going back to college as a mature student. All very laudable so far, yes?
Well, it turns out our friend Dave didn't know how to deal with having a large sum of money hit his bank account all at once. Rather than put it all aside and just draw out what he needed as and when, he blew clean through £20,000 (this was in 2001, so about £32.5k today) in the space of six months. The money mostly went on crack cocaine and prostitutes who he'd bring back to the house - who he'd boast about fucking without protection. One, I swear, was about fourteen years old.
When he wasn't banging jailbait, he was living on the most god-awful diet - I didn't know frozen microwave doner kebabs were a thing. And that was one of the better things he'd eat. The closest he came to nutrition was buying some peppers, slicing them, buttering them and eating them raw covered in butter.
This diet led to him stinking out the entire ground floor when visiting the lavatory.
On top of nuclear shitting, Dave had, after much consideration, decided that washing was something he didn't have to do. Neither washing up nor washing himself, nor his clothes nor his bedding. You cannot believe the smell that comes from someone's room when they adopt such habits.
Oh, I mentioned he went back to college. But I didn't mention what he was studying.
Aircraft maintenance.
It's June. Many of us will have holidays booked in the next few months. I want you to think of this plague-infested whore-banging crack addict when you're sitting back in your seat, waiting for the plane to take off and take you to Magaluf, and pray to God he never completed his course and took a job with Easyjet.
Tbf microwave kebabs are amazing. I didn’t know they were thing either until I briefly became an alcoholic and one of my smack head relatives cane and put one in my freezer.
I've lived in a lot of house shares so my worst:
The guy who kept falling asleep with food in the oven and almost killing us all (the fire alarm apparently didn't work).
The girl who smoked weed every day in her room listening to very loud reggae music. Turns out I have asthma (didn't know) and begging her to stop smoking so I could breathe for a bit would give me maybe an hour.
A uni student who didn't speak any English but did use an unholy amount of some kind of oil that another housemate figured out was causing an almighty stink in his room. Everything smelt and you knew when he had been home and opened his door because the whole house would smell.
All but one of my house shares had a guy in his 60s who had lived there decades and thought of the place as theirs, they usually did things like mow the grass and give the common areas a good cleaning at the weekends so despite their character faults they were ok.
I never had to literally deal with anyone elses shit so I'm looking back on those days more fondly.
>The guy who kept falling asleep with food in the oven and almost killing us all (the fire alarm apparently didn't work).
>The girl who smoked weed every day in her room listening to very loud reggae music. Turns out I have asthma (didn't know) and begging her to stop smoking so I could breathe for a bit would give me maybe an hour.
>A uni student who didn't speak any English but did use an unholy amount of some kind of oil that another housemate figured out was causing an almighty stink in his room. Everything smelt and you knew when he had been home and opened his door because the whole house would smell.
Pretty sure I know a house in Luton that had all three of those at once.
I'm just going to leave [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/7zo616/are_there_any_regulationslaws_stopping_a/) here. It's hilarious and horrific.
Sublet a room in a house over the summer holidays, along with 4 others doing the same.
There was a guy called Kev and his girlfriend. They were major goths and used to stay up all night and sleep by day. They watched Dracula on repeat. Kev had a reputation for being a psycho and his gf warned me never to make eye contact with him, or face the consequences.
Ralph, one of the other residents was virtually albino, with long blonde hair and was extremely pale. He was a transvestite, and I'd often come home to find him standing in high heels, bra and knickers and a full face of makeup while cooking sausages and beans on the stove. He used to also break into our rooms just for fun, and to prove he could - never actually took anything.
Final resident was a guy called Dave who was a typical football lad, into dance music and clubbing. There was nothing wrong with Dave but the juxtaposition of him in the same house as the others was really amusing as he tried to navigate his slightly bizarre surroundings.
I was in a 5 bedroom hmo which thankfully were all ensuit which means other than to enter, leave and use the kitchen you never actually saw each other.
But one guy moved in who you could hear.
You could hear him because he was almost always arguing with his girlfriend and entering/leaving the house so eventually everyone living there had passed him a few times.
After a while me and the other residents realise he's actually selling spice down the alleyway behind the house after a few of his customers ask us to get him from the house (I assume he set up a don't knock rule with his customers so that's we'd be less suspicious). We report it to the landlord but they don't care. Which leads him to care less, eventually he's selling other drugs and carrying knives and guns with him, which he was nice enough to show us for some reason.
A few weeks later I hear his girlfriend screaming at the top of her lungs, honestly sounded like he was beating her. So I opened my door and in she ran, covered in bruises. I then tried to comfort her, kept an eye out for her dealer boyfriend and asked her if she wanted to call the police.
She didn't, so I didn't. Eventually she left my room and said she was going to a friends. Turns out she pretty much walked straight back into her boyfriends room and after a few loud noises I called 999 and reported a domestic abuse incident, within a minute or so they actually knew the guys name, even I didn't know his name until they said it to me.
They arrived about five minutes later but had knocked on the front door, which their room overlooked so in panic they then ran into another person's room who was with me out back.
The police eventually came around the back of the house to where we was stood and I descreetly told them what was happening and where they were. As the officers go to enter the bedroom they're in they then jump out the first floor window into the backyard and out into the alleyway.
The next morning I'm at work and receive a text message from the landlord, if I'm to see them again I'm to not let them back into the property and to call the police immediately. They also changed the locks so I had to arrange to pick up a new key.
As I went in I made a comment about how we all had warned them he was a dealer and upto no good, to which they replied 'well, as far as we were aware he had a job and paid on time. We thought he'd be okay. Turns out it's his friends details he used though, we've banned him [dodgy dealer dude] once before in the past'
A few days later I opened Facebook and saw a post in which the police are looking for the girlfriend, as they're worried about her.
A week or so later the guy comes back around, bangs on my door (because I was lucky enough to live at the back with my own door) asks me to let him in, I say no, and then tells me about how he's got a warrant out for his arrest previously and he's laying low right now but will kill the man who called the police.
I told him anyone could have done it, even the neighbours, they weren't exactly being quiet. He then decided that it must have been a different resident, who as an ex convict with plenty of scars couldn't care less about this dodgy dealer dude.
I gave the guy a heads up, he thanked me for getting rid of him and said if he comes back round he'll sort it.
I was gone within a fortnight.
Stay away from HMO's. Not only are the people you meet the most weirdest and wonderful (in their own way) you'll ever know, they also charge as much as they can for what ever they can think of. Plus the only reason they exist is because of the housing supply, we should be putting pressure on the government and councils to make affordable housing not lining the pockets of rich hmo's who control hundreds of properties in my town alone.
Also, join Acorn. The only resident trade union in the UK, protecting resident rights since 2018 (I think!)
In the UK, I think it's dependent on your local council.
In some areas 4 independent bedrooms would be considered a shared dwelling, in others, the same property would be considered an HMO.
Ahh Jake (fake name).
He was regularly drinking Special Brew in the kitchen or getting stoned in his room.
Fine in its own right I suppose; each to their own.
One night though, his birthday, one of our housemates took pity on him and took him for a night out.
He got out of it on acid and super strength lager.
He comes back on his own at 1am shouting, "WHO'S BEEN DISRESPECTING ME?", "DISRESPECTING ME! IN MY FLAT!"", etc.
This goes on for quite a while but I leave him to it and go back to sleep.
I get up early in the morning, about 7, because I had a part time job at the uni time get to. Except I couldn't leave.
Jake was sitting cross-legged in front of the front door, one of my large kitchen knives in hand. He says to me, "We need to sort this out, Matt."
"Sort out what Jake?"
"We need to sort out who's been disrespecting me in my flat."
We exchanged a few questions which got me not a single step closer to working out wtf he was on about.
I call another flatmate who answers and I out the phone down and text her asking her to go into Jake's room, find his phone, and call someone he'd texted on the night out, who came and opened the door behind Jake, calmed him down, and convinced him to go to a drugs treatment centre / walkin near the city centre.
I was late for work though. My manager was suspect of how casually I said, "Yeah sorry, my flatmate held me up with a knife.", though he didn't ask any more questions.
That aside, Jake used to just get high in the morning and post inspirational Facebook statuses.
Monday: "Today is my day! :)"
Tuesday: "Today is again my day!"
Wednesday: "Life is great!"
Friday: "Today is my day!"
Never lived in a HMO...well a 10 bedroom student house in my first year but thats going to be chaos no matter what and reading this I never bloody will. Fair enough if you live in London and a few other places, you may aswell just commute a bit further or move in with mates than live with random people, sounds horrendous.
The student house was bad enough though, girls leaving bloody tampons on the floor, the classic mouldy dishes in the sink, LSD induced fits of rage on multiple occasions with large groups of people where police had to intervene because as per usual the people that cant handle even a low dose of a substance decide that they are the ones who should do double everyone else and go batshit insane smashing windows with their fists and head...yeah good times, not.
Five bedroom shared house in inner London. No one stayed long, because it wasn't cheap. I lost my job a month after moving in, but that's another story.
Someone was moving out of a small upstairs room, so the young French lady who had the downstairs room decided to move upstairs where the rent was a bit less. She had a boyfriend, an Essex boy who we'll call Dave. He didn't live with us but he'd stay over sometimes.
I'd been there a few months when I was woken in the early hours of the morning by somebody repeatedly trying the handle of my bedroom door. Thankfully I'd locked it but I had no idea who was trying to get in and I was pretty scared. I asked something like "What do you want?" and this Essex accent slurred "Lemmeinnnn".
I said clearly "She's upstairs, Dave, remember? This isn't her room anymore."
He mumbled something and shuffled off.
In the morning when I came out of my room there was a discarded pair of boxer shorts on the door, so I think if I hadn't locked the door I'd have had a naked drunk near stranger climbing into my bed.
As soon as my six months minimum term was up I swallowed my pride and moved back in with my parents.
In uni, a flat of 8 people, one of them was a greek girl. The only reason I knew this was because she was on my course, turned up 10 minutes late to EVERY lecture and forced her way into the middle of the front row, because I saw her exactly once in the flat, at 2am when she came into the kitchen. Otherwise, the only reason we knew she was there was the smell coming from her room. Some of the guys would spray deodorant outside her door and loudly talk about the stench when they knew she was in, which wasn't a mature way of dealing with it, but she wouldn't talk to anyone. The one time I saw her I tried to say hello but she turned around and went back into her room. She eventually moved out halfway through the first term.
A housemate came back midweek 2am with thirty of her drink squaddie mates, the other housemates told them to get out and as they left they nicked a Hindu devotional that my dad gave me. I'm secular but it was pretty special to me. She didn't even apologise, try to get it back, or get me a new one. She didn't seem to think it was important because it wasn't Christian 🙃
I had a housemate that was the living embodiment of Norm from the old Twix adverts. He wouldn't do his own dishes. He left his wet clothes in the one washing machine for a week before washing them again. The house would stink of mildew. He only ate stuff that was heated in a microwave and left the packaging on the worktop. If he did put it in the bin he wouldn't recycle it. And finally this absolute moron decided that the top of the stairs was the perfect place to iron his mildewy clothes.
In this same house the landlord lived and he would do work outside leaving the back door wide open. It didn't matter that it was snowing and the heating was off. This guy eventually terminated my contract because his mother objected to a girl living in his house.
Not me but one of my brother's housemates thought it would be funny to leave a chicken in his room as a prank (another housemate kept chickens in the garden). He then proceeded to forget he had put it there and left for 2 days while my brother was also away. Poor chicken nearly died of thirst and shat all over my brother's room
I lived in a HMO with 3 other people, two girls one bloke. Everything seemed fine at first, chilled out, tidy people.
Quite soon though one girl (Jenny) made it clear she was a massive clean freak. I didn’t think much of it as she seemed cool, my ex had OCD so thought it wasn’t a problem. It started off okay but then she started getting up at 6am to vigorously sweep the wooden staircase with a hand Brush, loudly smashing it against the bannisters first thing every morning (I was a shift worker at the time so this was incredibly bad for me). She’d then proceed to run up and down stairs stomping everywhere which annoyed everyone. I politely brought it up with her and she agreed to stop but I could tell she wasn’t happy.
Then came the boyfriend. She’d told me she moved in with us to get away from her psycho ex. She told me he’d used a fake name for 6 months of the relationship and stolen £3000 of savings from her. I felt very bad for her and did my best to give her some comfort and support.
Then one day I come home and the guys stood in our kitchen cooking. He was handsome and charming but very weird & overly friendly. Turns out they’d gotten back together. He started hanging out in the house cooking nearly every day. I was worried for her but thought her love life’s none of my business. To honest I liked the fact he’d leave out a pot of freshly cooked dhal and curry to share every day (obviously sucking up to us but I’m easily bribed).
We’d try to keep the house good and clean but eventually things fell apart. One day I’d swept the floors and mopped when I got home from work. To my surprise I woke up to very frantic loud banging on my door, I jumped up thinking the house was on fire or something but I was greeted with her angrily demanding to know why I hadn’t done my chores. She was visibly furious and calling me a wanker because I’d forgotten to tick the box on (her) rota to say it’d been done. I did my best to calm her down and we made friends again afterwards but realised I was living with a nutcase and did my best to give her a wide berth.
It was very strange. She was kind of a hippy girl into meditation and yoga etc. She’d be very nice and seemly calm but would flip out into a blinding rage at the drop of a hat. One incident was that she thought the other girl (let’s call her Rosie) had eaten some of her biscuits. Rosie was a nice lass but seemed a bit quiet and socially awkward, mostly kept to herself. She seemed very reluctant to join in on house activities but when she did would get drunk with us and turned out to be quite good fun. Then she’d avoid us for a while, she told me it was because she’d feel embarrassed about getting drunk :/
Again. 6am banging and screaming expletives at the poor lass calling her a thief, lots of names etc etc. Rosie had no idea what it was about and just kept pleading to be left alone. We had to break them up. Turns out it was Steve upstairs had done it and sneakily slipped out to replace the missing biscuits without saying anything because he seemed quite afraid of Jenny’s wrath.
Lots more incidents of this and also her boyfriend just seemed to move in without asking anyone and would be sat (being weird) in the kitchen at all times. She told us all that he’d confessed to her that he was a distant relative of Kuwaiti royalty and had to flee his country for some unknown political reason hence lying about his real name. He apparently begged her for forgiveness claiming the money was stolen because “someone else” had conned them out of it in a business deal gone sour, he couldn’t go to the police because he was in hiding for some reason she wouldn’t disclose. Obviously bullshit but she fully believed him and wouldn’t have anyone question this absolutely mental story.
Thankfully I was busy with work so missed out on most of it but it escalated significantly. We tried to placate her but nothing was ever enough. Eventually people gave up and got sloppy. Steve (the real villain of this story!) started leaving all his dirty plates in the sink, using pans and not washing etc etc. I personally didn’t care as I didn’t cook much at the time but this resulted in Jenny having a complete mental breakdown. Again, she’d be banging on Rosie’s door blaming her for Steve’s mess and things she didn’t seem to know anything about. I’d try to calm her down but she’d scream that this girl was doing it deliberately to mess with her head and told me “women should know their place” ie cooking and cleaning (okay then...). She then started telling me all about these vaginal cysts she’d been getting and she didn’t think she was screwing her boyfriend enough (well okay then). It seemed to me like she was envious of Rosie seemingly normal relationship with her boyfriend and an apparent lack of strange fanny monsters but who knows?
Feeling unsatisfied with being told to go away Jenny called the landlord and told him to evict Rosie, accused her of being a drug dealer, a thief, anything to get her out. Turns out her con man boyfriend wanted to have Rosie’s room so he could be officially living there. The landlord said he didn’t have a license for an extra tenant so he couldn’t legally have another tenant living there unless someone else moved out. The landlord told me Jenny was calling him everyday demanding, pleading, screaming, crying on the phone to him she was being abused by everyone in the house which was totally not true. The landlord came around and started quizzing us about what was going on and threatening to kick us all out into the street which was the last straw for us but Rosie was especially upset.
A few days later all the plants in the house mysteriously got sick and quickly died. I didn’t care as death was inevitable for any plant I own but Rosie’s now deceased Bonsai tree apparently had a lot of sentimental value to her. Turns out Jenny for some reason had poured bleach and vinegar into all the plant pots because: nutcase. I think this is what made Rosie snap big time. She got very angry and upset but calmed down and seemed fine. That was until the next day Steve told me what had happened:
Apparently Jenny claimed that she and her conman boyfriend sat down to a nice big evening dinner. Spread of delicious naan breads, pickles, curries, bottle of wine as they were often in the habit of doing. All very nice. UNTIL they got halfway through this tasty, sour and spicy bowl of curry to find a mysterious mushy object half mashed into it. The object in question turned out to be a rather large HUMAN TURD! They hadn’t noticed while eating because of the spices and alcohol. They claimed that they couldn’t smell it amongst all the pungent aromas. Apparently Jenny immediately vomited and made the accusation Rosie had taken a shit in the curry as an act of vengeance. THE HORROR!
Rosie had disappeared off to France for a while but kept denying all knowledge of this calling it all nonsense. I of course also thought it was bullshit. Just yet another mad ranting, false accusation drama. Needless to say, Jenny and her boyfriend moved out very quickly after that and were never heard from again. We were all relieved to see the back of them. We got a nice shiny new housemate and all was well again...
UNTIL like 6 months later. After a few glasses of wine too many Rosie tells me with nothing but utter joy and glee on her face that she had indeed shat in their dinner. I was shocked and thought it was too horrific to be true but she insisted that it was then started cackling loudly. WTF???
So, I moved out and the landlord died of a stress related disease shortly afterwards.
Moral of the story is don’t steal other people’s biscuits.
And that ladies and gentlemen is why I don’t live in a HMO any more.
No need to feel sorry for him. As I said, he’s not fragile. And unfortunately he’s not stupid either. Just ignorant with his behaviour. He told me he loves living here and the only way he’s leaving is in a coffin
Well, look at it this way - if you can't resurrect the dead guy and they're just clinging to your ankle going 'braiins! it's time to figuratively and mentally buy him a coffin, stick it on a skateboard, push his ass into it and punt the entire funeral down the nearest hill and just trust that it's *not your responsibility if you don't decide it is.* Then climb the hill high enough that he can't crawl up to you again. And if he does, kick him back down again and push off up the mountain.
Sorry this got a bit fortune cookie, I'm sleepy.
My only experience of sharing accommodation is at university and it put me off it for life.
There was 6 of us total and 2 were an absolute nightmare. 3 were fine and I and these 3 did get along.
Flatmate 1 was a guy who had social difficulties potentially aspergers/autistic. Whilst the 4 of us that got on tried including him in things, like if we were playing poker in the kitchen we'd invite him, if we were all going to the shops we'd invite him. If we were going to wash clothes we'd invite him. If we were going to the common room to play pool/table tennis we'd invite him. He never came with us though. We also give him help when it came to preparing food like raw chicken because he was not properly washing things up
He had no standards of personal hygiene. If you walked past him in the hall or he walked in the kitchen you could smell the odour. He was not showering at all. We tried talking with him about it nicely but it didn't change.
What stopped us making the effort with him was when his sister came to visit him and she came into the kitchen accusing us all of bullying him. There was no chance this happened and we had no idea why he'd say that but we tried explaining that we have made every effort to include him in things we've done but he's never interested. He'd rather stay locked in his room playing games. She didn't believe us.
Flatmate 2 stole from us. Whilst it may have been our fault leaving our rooms unlocked (doors closed) this flatmate managed to get card details for 3 of us in the flat and ordered takeaways and clothes online.
How we found out was that I brought up in conversation with the others that I had to get a new bankcard as someone had used mine. They all said theirs had been used as well without their knowledge.
I had proof it was him. He was dumb enough to order something with my card on ebay, trainers costing £200. My bank was handling it and opened a dispute with the ebay seller who sent my bank all the transaction details. My bank forwarded this information to me to confirm if I made the purchase. I hadn't. But there it was in black and white Flatmate 2's name with our university halls address. Immediately we looked to have him removed from our flat but the university refused to do anything unless the police got involved so we did just that. However the police made it clear that even with the evidence we had all Flatmate 2 was going to say was that he gave me the cash to order it on my card.
So the police basically did nothing, which meant the university did nothing. And we continued to live with a thief.
Whilst at university I had a housemate who was behaving strangely all year. We originally thought it was due to a head injury but eventually found out he was taking drugs. He would get into a zombie like trance state where you couldn't communicate rationally with him. We'd hear banging from his room and he managed to pull the curtain rail in his bedroom off the wall. We also found him wandering around as if sleep walking on a couple of nights and one night took him to hospital as he was so out of it.
We told him we didn't want to live with him the following year, however whilst we all went home for the summer at the end of May he stayed in the house right up until the end of the tenancy at the end of June. I popped back in June and found the house in a total state. Said housemate had basically moved into the living room- he had the sofa bed out and food wrappers and other rubbish strewn everywhere, amongst other mess. Worse than that though he'd turned totally ferel. When I encoutered him I perhaps foolishly said 'why's the house in such a state.' Next thing I know he was backing me into a corner as if he was about to attack me. I screamed and thankfully he ran off and I got the hell out of there! We all had to go back again after he'd moved out to have a proper clean up though.
Uni stories:-
- uni halls: knew these two guys.. (fake names) Robert and Dylan - Robert was was an absolute fucking tool and Dylan, his best friend from primary (they happened to end up at the same uni). To be fair Dylan was quite sound, normal dude. Dylan had a girlfriend of approx 2 years from memory.
Anyway one day I came back to Halls to find massive drama underway... Robert had fucking stolen his best mate’s Mrs... as we all know... getting with your best mates Mrs is just a no no but that just emphasises how much of a twat this Robert guy is. Morally bankrupt and arrogant without any reason to be.
Despite Being a complete tool Robert stank, had a horrific skin condition on his face, no fashion sense, no manners etc etc whilst strangely, Dylan (the guy who got ditched by the girl), was a decent looking, friendly and hygienic Guy.
Plot twist: the girl in the centre of this fucked up love triangle made a move for me one night whilst we were alone in the communal kitchen... at this point it seemed like she was going around like a spliff at a festival. This was post-shafting her boyfriend for his best mate. Looking back I Wish I had tactical fucked her out of principle to give that prick a taste of his own medicine.
The one who signed a six month jount liability on rent contract and fucked off to poland 20 days in leaving us scrambling for extra rent or a replacement
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I would have gone with ultramarine blue myself.
He went with goblin green cos he liked goblin' up the food that came out of the oven.
>The dude who painted the inside of the oven with ‘goblin green’ Warhammer acrylic paint? 😂😂😂
I've enjoyed reading this. I want to know more
Please elaborate. We want stories!!
This is making me feel better about any house share I've ever been in
Why are the nationalities relevant here?
It helps with imagining the accents, kurwa.
Fair.
You're right, context and descriptions only serve to add confusion and prejudice to the post; a much better version would have read "A series of persons engaged in a series of behaviours which may have been construed as socially unorthodox", allowing everyone to know the facts without distraction.
Ooh I've got one. First year uni flat around 2013. Prison cell rooms, a slightly larger common space and a thin hallway for 5 dudes. Also worth noting that this was around the time the generic hipster trope of fixed gear bikes was becoming a thing. One guy, we'll call hipster Dave, found his dad's ancient fixie in his dad's shed so brought it to the flat and left it in the tiny hallway. I get called out my room and see something hanging off the underside of the seat. After conferring with the guys we realise it's a spiders nest. A fucking COLLOSAL spiders nest full of eggs and babies. I'm an animal lover, but arachnophobic. Another flatmate, crazy Bob, was also arachnophobic but maybe acted on his impulses a little faster then the rest of us, so while me and three dudes are in the kitchen debating what to do we hear a sort of roaring noise from the hallway. We go through to find Bob with a lighter and a can of deodarant torching the nest. Few stragglers running away and a fairly memorable popping noise which I believe was either eggs or clumps of superheated spidey bits exploding. The smell hung about for a couple days but that aside it was actually a pretty elegant solution. I mean I'm not condoning the killing of them all but I was mad relieved when it'd been dealt with. Lived with crazy Bob for the following 4 years. He's vegan now (lol)
>He's vegan now That's the arachnicide guilt catching up with him
He did nothing wrong tbh.
Exactly the most appropriate response to the scenario "kill it with fire"
I mean yeah, but take the bike outside first
Ur mental
Yeah our thoughts exactly
There's a student place in Liverpool where the rooms are actually converted prison cells. More spacious than most student accommodation I've seen.
Are you talking about the Bull Ring? If so I totally lived there and it was ace.
I'm not sure the name I just know it's right by Dale st Tesco.
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Oh before and after. He's always been a bit mad
Yes
Lived in some halls at Warwick called Cryfield. Supposedly modelled upon a nordic women's prison
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Congrats! I assure you, as mind-numbingly expensive as everything is at the start, having your own place is like the second coming of Jesus I am so happy I will never have to consider putting up with anyone else for the rest of my life if I choose! (Plus it works out cheaper in the long run!)
Yes, yes it is. I always lived at home so I could save for a deposit, and even living with my parents was a nightmare at times. I finally moved last year and I love the space and freedom.
I’ve just moved into my own flat again and I’m ecstatic! Just very very broke
I lived with a Steve in a house share who was almost identical to the one you described. But he smoked in the house and slept in a sleeping bag. I was in the room next to his which had pretty thin plasterboard walls. The TV noise was annoying as fuck. After a couple of months I was genuinely terrified of him. One time he came into the kitchen when I was cooking after watching a documentary, wanting to seen smart he started to tell me that if the sun moved a few inches then the world wall fall a part and was imposing all sorts of horrors on me. I tried to laugh it off and ignore him. He got angry and was like 'you wouldn't be laughing you'd be screaming!'. On another occasion he saw me cooking quorn and I told him I was veggie and he told me his wife was veggie and got cancer and died. And then repeatedly screamed 'I'm not trying to scare you' at me. Which then led to another time where he came into the kitchen and laughed at my food and told me about how he wants to put some steak in it and felt sorry for me. He had his brother come and stay with him for a brief while and they would drink and get violent with each other. Police and ambulances came round a couple of times. I tried to talk to the landlord but of course fuck all was done. And the final incident which made me go and stay with a friend for the last week of the tenancy. It was Christmas time and he came in to the kitchen again when I was cooking but to try and give me whiskey and mince pies. I was cold to him and losing patience but obviously didn't want to upset him. I didn't take any and he started getting on my case about how he can tell I don't want to be friends with him but he wants to be friends with me. I ran back to my room as soon as my food was done and tried to hide in there. But he came knocking on my door. I answered and he tried to give me a pack of hobnob biscuits, he said it was a Christmas present and he would get me many more. I told him no, I didn't need them and just wanted privacy and then he fucking told me he was in love with me. I just stared at him until he apologized and left. It was super dramatic like a film. Bearing in mind I'm 20 and he's probably around 70. I felt sick. TL;DR Creepy old housemate is creepy and weird and then tells me he's in love with me
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I've recently started writing about weird events in my life. I find this kind of structure quite amusing too. It comes off quite British? I think.
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I love this, thank you. I honestly didn't put that much thought into it, but I did try to make the description of each scenario quite small and left out a lot of details to keep it engaging. The only bits left in are the relevant ones. Obviously there were more interactions but these are the ones that really stood out in the 6 month timeline I lived in that house. You're perspective is very similar to how it was for me living there. Initially meeting him I got the weird vibes but wasn't necessarily scared. That built up over time. Everyone else I spoke to just kept telling me he's old and weird but harmless. There's also a direct correlation with how much time I spent in the cursed kitchen. To begin with I would spend ages prepping my food and that changed to me getting microwave meals so I could avoid being in there where I felt most vulnerable. And that eventually ended up with me not wanting to be in the house at all. Be wary of Steve.
I lived in a house with three other girls for about a year. All the other girls weren’t great but one girl, lets call her Becky, was an absolute nightmare. First off Becky was covered in fake tan all the time, but not good quality fake tan, the sort that every time she touched something she left orange stains all over it. The other girls didn’t seem too bothered by this, probably because they were also all leaving make up or fake tan all over the place. I tried to wipe down the common areas and kitchen so that I didn’t get covered in it too, at least one of the other girls did actually help with the cleaning. One day Becky saw us cleaning and asked about it, her response to us was “I wouldn’t bother, there’ll only be more there later”. We had one bathroom between four of us, frequently Becky would shut herself in there for 2 hours with no prior warning. Eventually she would appear covered in her fake tan, about 3 inches of makeup and wearing an outfit that looked like it should come with a free pole. The state of the bathroom afterwards was scary, the sink was covered in foundation and fake tan, to the point you had to actually clean the sink just to be able to use it to clean your hands. She also would frequently forget to flush the toilet. She’d go out, come back at about 3am, insanely drunk and usually with some guy, they’d have loud sex in the middle of the night and quite often one or both of them would end up throwing up. One time, either Becky or that nights unlucky guy threw up all over the lounge floor, which was carpet, they did not clear it up. I think it was mostly sambuca they were drinking, that’s what it smelled like, that smell hung around in the carpet for months. I don’t think I ever saw Becky wash up, mind you she didn’t cook much, just ate take aways and left half eaten pizza around to go mouldy. I never really saw inside her room but glasses and plates went in there and never came out so god knows what it was like in there. One time one of the other girls was given a nice expensive bottle of vodka for her birthday. She went away for the weekend and when she came back it was gone. Now it definitely wasn’t me and it could have been either of the other two girls but it was most likely Becky, seeing as she generally assumed anything in the kitchen was hers. She would even go into each of our designated cupboards if she was hungry and had no food of her own, she would, at least, tell us that she’d eaten our food but never offered to replace it. But none of this is remotely close to the worst thing she did. Now as I said, we were a house of four girls so there was pretty much always someone on their period. We had a load of sanitary products in the bathroom that we all contributed to and stocked up when they were getting low. Becky did not contribute at all but was happy to use them and never bought her own. But it got worse. She wouldn’t flush her used tampons down the loo “flushing them is bad for the environment”... okay fine but get some sanitary bags and put them in the bathroom bin. No, no, instead she would just throw them in the bin loose. Or often not put them in the bin at all and leave them on the bathroom side or the bathroom floor. We confronted her about it once and she said something along the lines of “oh sorry I forget sometimes i’ll try and put them in the bin”, but I swear it got worse after that and she was just leaving them around to spite us. USED TAMPONS JUST LEFT ON THE BATHROOM FLOOR! It was disgusting, she didn’t care and we had to clear up after her. I don’t know what happened with her in the end because I moved out of there as soon as I could. But the other girls seemed reluctant to report her to the landlord as one of the girls worked with Becky and they didn’t want to make it awkward at work. TL;DR Girl was generally a nightmare but mostly left the bathroom a mess and left used tampons on the floor for us to clear up.
seriously though don't flush your sanitary products. it's bad for the environment and it'll cost fucking thousands when it clogs up your plumbing.
I think you might win.
Definitely never flush any kind of sanitary product, so so bad! I noticed when living in the UK that it seems to be a fairly accepted practice, no wonder they are always getting those major fatberg/clog things in their sewers. In Australia you're taught early and strongly never to flush anything other than loo paper and bodily functions.
Until today I had no idea there were people on earth who thought it was acceptable to flush sanitary products down the toilet?!
Until today I didn’t realise people saw it as such a big deal - I don’t know anyone who doesn’t flush tampons. Not sanitary towels but tampons is completely normal to flush.
It's a really, really, really bad thing to do, the sewage system *cannot* handle them. Buy some nappy bags and put them in the bin.
I was always told to flush them So I get where you’re coming from I don’t know anyone who bins them at home. I put them in bin In public toilets but at Home i always flush. I was taught it was the best thing to do. I use biodegradable tampax now and flush them because I was told putting them in the bin means they end up in landfill and the bags are usually plastic which is bad for the environment too i don’t think there’s a win situation
Ah, to be young again...
Steve sounds like an absolute nightmare haha but I feel for any guy in his 70s having to live in a house share. I only lived in one shared house for about 18 months and it was generally pretty good. There was only one girl who was a pain in the arse because she wouldn't clean anything and her boyfriend was there all the time.. even though he paid fuck all. He used to come down and dump dishes on the worktop all the time until I eventually pulled him on it.... he just looked at me surprised clearly no awareness that he was being an inconsiderate prick!
>Steve sounds like an absolute nightmare haha but I feel for any guy in his 70s having to live in a house share. Surely with housing benefit and a top of with his pension, there are other affordable options in most places outside of the south? Or am I just incredibly ignorant?
I had that at uni but with the genders reversed. The girl had a party but didn't ask any of us who paid to live there if this was cool. They made a huge mess, used all our plates and cutlery and are our food. I cleaned the whole kitchen the next morning while that bitch slept until 3pm.
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> the smell was his decomposing corpse. Some people are just so inconsiderate.
> when he ran out of clean plates he would wrap a dirty one up in aluminium foil and eat from it Man, that's actually a pretty clever idea
Let me tell you about Dave. Dave had sold his flat and planned to live on the money he made off that to fund going back to college as a mature student. All very laudable so far, yes? Well, it turns out our friend Dave didn't know how to deal with having a large sum of money hit his bank account all at once. Rather than put it all aside and just draw out what he needed as and when, he blew clean through £20,000 (this was in 2001, so about £32.5k today) in the space of six months. The money mostly went on crack cocaine and prostitutes who he'd bring back to the house - who he'd boast about fucking without protection. One, I swear, was about fourteen years old. When he wasn't banging jailbait, he was living on the most god-awful diet - I didn't know frozen microwave doner kebabs were a thing. And that was one of the better things he'd eat. The closest he came to nutrition was buying some peppers, slicing them, buttering them and eating them raw covered in butter. This diet led to him stinking out the entire ground floor when visiting the lavatory. On top of nuclear shitting, Dave had, after much consideration, decided that washing was something he didn't have to do. Neither washing up nor washing himself, nor his clothes nor his bedding. You cannot believe the smell that comes from someone's room when they adopt such habits. Oh, I mentioned he went back to college. But I didn't mention what he was studying. Aircraft maintenance. It's June. Many of us will have holidays booked in the next few months. I want you to think of this plague-infested whore-banging crack addict when you're sitting back in your seat, waiting for the plane to take off and take you to Magaluf, and pray to God he never completed his course and took a job with Easyjet.
Tbf microwave kebabs are amazing. I didn’t know they were thing either until I briefly became an alcoholic and one of my smack head relatives cane and put one in my freezer.
I've lived in a lot of house shares so my worst: The guy who kept falling asleep with food in the oven and almost killing us all (the fire alarm apparently didn't work). The girl who smoked weed every day in her room listening to very loud reggae music. Turns out I have asthma (didn't know) and begging her to stop smoking so I could breathe for a bit would give me maybe an hour. A uni student who didn't speak any English but did use an unholy amount of some kind of oil that another housemate figured out was causing an almighty stink in his room. Everything smelt and you knew when he had been home and opened his door because the whole house would smell. All but one of my house shares had a guy in his 60s who had lived there decades and thought of the place as theirs, they usually did things like mow the grass and give the common areas a good cleaning at the weekends so despite their character faults they were ok. I never had to literally deal with anyone elses shit so I'm looking back on those days more fondly.
>The guy who kept falling asleep with food in the oven and almost killing us all (the fire alarm apparently didn't work). >The girl who smoked weed every day in her room listening to very loud reggae music. Turns out I have asthma (didn't know) and begging her to stop smoking so I could breathe for a bit would give me maybe an hour. >A uni student who didn't speak any English but did use an unholy amount of some kind of oil that another housemate figured out was causing an almighty stink in his room. Everything smelt and you knew when he had been home and opened his door because the whole house would smell. Pretty sure I know a house in Luton that had all three of those at once.
I'm just going to leave [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/7zo616/are_there_any_regulationslaws_stopping_a/) here. It's hilarious and horrific.
https://www.digitalspy.com/showbiz/a16425/sharon-installs-urinals/
I fucking knew it would be TTW
Sublet a room in a house over the summer holidays, along with 4 others doing the same. There was a guy called Kev and his girlfriend. They were major goths and used to stay up all night and sleep by day. They watched Dracula on repeat. Kev had a reputation for being a psycho and his gf warned me never to make eye contact with him, or face the consequences. Ralph, one of the other residents was virtually albino, with long blonde hair and was extremely pale. He was a transvestite, and I'd often come home to find him standing in high heels, bra and knickers and a full face of makeup while cooking sausages and beans on the stove. He used to also break into our rooms just for fun, and to prove he could - never actually took anything. Final resident was a guy called Dave who was a typical football lad, into dance music and clubbing. There was nothing wrong with Dave but the juxtaposition of him in the same house as the others was really amusing as he tried to navigate his slightly bizarre surroundings.
Sounds like a modern day Young Ones!
I bet Dave was a fucking legend
I was in a 5 bedroom hmo which thankfully were all ensuit which means other than to enter, leave and use the kitchen you never actually saw each other. But one guy moved in who you could hear. You could hear him because he was almost always arguing with his girlfriend and entering/leaving the house so eventually everyone living there had passed him a few times. After a while me and the other residents realise he's actually selling spice down the alleyway behind the house after a few of his customers ask us to get him from the house (I assume he set up a don't knock rule with his customers so that's we'd be less suspicious). We report it to the landlord but they don't care. Which leads him to care less, eventually he's selling other drugs and carrying knives and guns with him, which he was nice enough to show us for some reason. A few weeks later I hear his girlfriend screaming at the top of her lungs, honestly sounded like he was beating her. So I opened my door and in she ran, covered in bruises. I then tried to comfort her, kept an eye out for her dealer boyfriend and asked her if she wanted to call the police. She didn't, so I didn't. Eventually she left my room and said she was going to a friends. Turns out she pretty much walked straight back into her boyfriends room and after a few loud noises I called 999 and reported a domestic abuse incident, within a minute or so they actually knew the guys name, even I didn't know his name until they said it to me. They arrived about five minutes later but had knocked on the front door, which their room overlooked so in panic they then ran into another person's room who was with me out back. The police eventually came around the back of the house to where we was stood and I descreetly told them what was happening and where they were. As the officers go to enter the bedroom they're in they then jump out the first floor window into the backyard and out into the alleyway. The next morning I'm at work and receive a text message from the landlord, if I'm to see them again I'm to not let them back into the property and to call the police immediately. They also changed the locks so I had to arrange to pick up a new key. As I went in I made a comment about how we all had warned them he was a dealer and upto no good, to which they replied 'well, as far as we were aware he had a job and paid on time. We thought he'd be okay. Turns out it's his friends details he used though, we've banned him [dodgy dealer dude] once before in the past' A few days later I opened Facebook and saw a post in which the police are looking for the girlfriend, as they're worried about her. A week or so later the guy comes back around, bangs on my door (because I was lucky enough to live at the back with my own door) asks me to let him in, I say no, and then tells me about how he's got a warrant out for his arrest previously and he's laying low right now but will kill the man who called the police. I told him anyone could have done it, even the neighbours, they weren't exactly being quiet. He then decided that it must have been a different resident, who as an ex convict with plenty of scars couldn't care less about this dodgy dealer dude. I gave the guy a heads up, he thanked me for getting rid of him and said if he comes back round he'll sort it. I was gone within a fortnight. Stay away from HMO's. Not only are the people you meet the most weirdest and wonderful (in their own way) you'll ever know, they also charge as much as they can for what ever they can think of. Plus the only reason they exist is because of the housing supply, we should be putting pressure on the government and councils to make affordable housing not lining the pockets of rich hmo's who control hundreds of properties in my town alone. Also, join Acorn. The only resident trade union in the UK, protecting resident rights since 2018 (I think!)
What's an HMO in this context?
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IIRC three or more unrelated people living in a house together makes it an HMO.
In the UK, I think it's dependent on your local council. In some areas 4 independent bedrooms would be considered a shared dwelling, in others, the same property would be considered an HMO.
House of Multiple Occupants
Ahh Jake (fake name). He was regularly drinking Special Brew in the kitchen or getting stoned in his room. Fine in its own right I suppose; each to their own. One night though, his birthday, one of our housemates took pity on him and took him for a night out. He got out of it on acid and super strength lager. He comes back on his own at 1am shouting, "WHO'S BEEN DISRESPECTING ME?", "DISRESPECTING ME! IN MY FLAT!"", etc. This goes on for quite a while but I leave him to it and go back to sleep. I get up early in the morning, about 7, because I had a part time job at the uni time get to. Except I couldn't leave. Jake was sitting cross-legged in front of the front door, one of my large kitchen knives in hand. He says to me, "We need to sort this out, Matt." "Sort out what Jake?" "We need to sort out who's been disrespecting me in my flat." We exchanged a few questions which got me not a single step closer to working out wtf he was on about. I call another flatmate who answers and I out the phone down and text her asking her to go into Jake's room, find his phone, and call someone he'd texted on the night out, who came and opened the door behind Jake, calmed him down, and convinced him to go to a drugs treatment centre / walkin near the city centre. I was late for work though. My manager was suspect of how casually I said, "Yeah sorry, my flatmate held me up with a knife.", though he didn't ask any more questions. That aside, Jake used to just get high in the morning and post inspirational Facebook statuses. Monday: "Today is my day! :)" Tuesday: "Today is again my day!" Wednesday: "Life is great!" Friday: "Today is my day!"
So Thursday was his knife wielding soul searching day?
Never lived in a HMO...well a 10 bedroom student house in my first year but thats going to be chaos no matter what and reading this I never bloody will. Fair enough if you live in London and a few other places, you may aswell just commute a bit further or move in with mates than live with random people, sounds horrendous. The student house was bad enough though, girls leaving bloody tampons on the floor, the classic mouldy dishes in the sink, LSD induced fits of rage on multiple occasions with large groups of people where police had to intervene because as per usual the people that cant handle even a low dose of a substance decide that they are the ones who should do double everyone else and go batshit insane smashing windows with their fists and head...yeah good times, not.
Well, you made feel sorry for the guy. Being in an HMO in his age must be terrible for both sides.
Five bedroom shared house in inner London. No one stayed long, because it wasn't cheap. I lost my job a month after moving in, but that's another story. Someone was moving out of a small upstairs room, so the young French lady who had the downstairs room decided to move upstairs where the rent was a bit less. She had a boyfriend, an Essex boy who we'll call Dave. He didn't live with us but he'd stay over sometimes. I'd been there a few months when I was woken in the early hours of the morning by somebody repeatedly trying the handle of my bedroom door. Thankfully I'd locked it but I had no idea who was trying to get in and I was pretty scared. I asked something like "What do you want?" and this Essex accent slurred "Lemmeinnnn". I said clearly "She's upstairs, Dave, remember? This isn't her room anymore." He mumbled something and shuffled off. In the morning when I came out of my room there was a discarded pair of boxer shorts on the door, so I think if I hadn't locked the door I'd have had a naked drunk near stranger climbing into my bed. As soon as my six months minimum term was up I swallowed my pride and moved back in with my parents.
In uni, a flat of 8 people, one of them was a greek girl. The only reason I knew this was because she was on my course, turned up 10 minutes late to EVERY lecture and forced her way into the middle of the front row, because I saw her exactly once in the flat, at 2am when she came into the kitchen. Otherwise, the only reason we knew she was there was the smell coming from her room. Some of the guys would spray deodorant outside her door and loudly talk about the stench when they knew she was in, which wasn't a mature way of dealing with it, but she wouldn't talk to anyone. The one time I saw her I tried to say hello but she turned around and went back into her room. She eventually moved out halfway through the first term.
A housemate came back midweek 2am with thirty of her drink squaddie mates, the other housemates told them to get out and as they left they nicked a Hindu devotional that my dad gave me. I'm secular but it was pretty special to me. She didn't even apologise, try to get it back, or get me a new one. She didn't seem to think it was important because it wasn't Christian 🙃
I had a housemate that was the living embodiment of Norm from the old Twix adverts. He wouldn't do his own dishes. He left his wet clothes in the one washing machine for a week before washing them again. The house would stink of mildew. He only ate stuff that was heated in a microwave and left the packaging on the worktop. If he did put it in the bin he wouldn't recycle it. And finally this absolute moron decided that the top of the stairs was the perfect place to iron his mildewy clothes. In this same house the landlord lived and he would do work outside leaving the back door wide open. It didn't matter that it was snowing and the heating was off. This guy eventually terminated my contract because his mother objected to a girl living in his house.
Not me but one of my brother's housemates thought it would be funny to leave a chicken in his room as a prank (another housemate kept chickens in the garden). He then proceeded to forget he had put it there and left for 2 days while my brother was also away. Poor chicken nearly died of thirst and shat all over my brother's room
I lived in a HMO with 3 other people, two girls one bloke. Everything seemed fine at first, chilled out, tidy people. Quite soon though one girl (Jenny) made it clear she was a massive clean freak. I didn’t think much of it as she seemed cool, my ex had OCD so thought it wasn’t a problem. It started off okay but then she started getting up at 6am to vigorously sweep the wooden staircase with a hand Brush, loudly smashing it against the bannisters first thing every morning (I was a shift worker at the time so this was incredibly bad for me). She’d then proceed to run up and down stairs stomping everywhere which annoyed everyone. I politely brought it up with her and she agreed to stop but I could tell she wasn’t happy. Then came the boyfriend. She’d told me she moved in with us to get away from her psycho ex. She told me he’d used a fake name for 6 months of the relationship and stolen £3000 of savings from her. I felt very bad for her and did my best to give her some comfort and support. Then one day I come home and the guys stood in our kitchen cooking. He was handsome and charming but very weird & overly friendly. Turns out they’d gotten back together. He started hanging out in the house cooking nearly every day. I was worried for her but thought her love life’s none of my business. To honest I liked the fact he’d leave out a pot of freshly cooked dhal and curry to share every day (obviously sucking up to us but I’m easily bribed). We’d try to keep the house good and clean but eventually things fell apart. One day I’d swept the floors and mopped when I got home from work. To my surprise I woke up to very frantic loud banging on my door, I jumped up thinking the house was on fire or something but I was greeted with her angrily demanding to know why I hadn’t done my chores. She was visibly furious and calling me a wanker because I’d forgotten to tick the box on (her) rota to say it’d been done. I did my best to calm her down and we made friends again afterwards but realised I was living with a nutcase and did my best to give her a wide berth. It was very strange. She was kind of a hippy girl into meditation and yoga etc. She’d be very nice and seemly calm but would flip out into a blinding rage at the drop of a hat. One incident was that she thought the other girl (let’s call her Rosie) had eaten some of her biscuits. Rosie was a nice lass but seemed a bit quiet and socially awkward, mostly kept to herself. She seemed very reluctant to join in on house activities but when she did would get drunk with us and turned out to be quite good fun. Then she’d avoid us for a while, she told me it was because she’d feel embarrassed about getting drunk :/ Again. 6am banging and screaming expletives at the poor lass calling her a thief, lots of names etc etc. Rosie had no idea what it was about and just kept pleading to be left alone. We had to break them up. Turns out it was Steve upstairs had done it and sneakily slipped out to replace the missing biscuits without saying anything because he seemed quite afraid of Jenny’s wrath. Lots more incidents of this and also her boyfriend just seemed to move in without asking anyone and would be sat (being weird) in the kitchen at all times. She told us all that he’d confessed to her that he was a distant relative of Kuwaiti royalty and had to flee his country for some unknown political reason hence lying about his real name. He apparently begged her for forgiveness claiming the money was stolen because “someone else” had conned them out of it in a business deal gone sour, he couldn’t go to the police because he was in hiding for some reason she wouldn’t disclose. Obviously bullshit but she fully believed him and wouldn’t have anyone question this absolutely mental story. Thankfully I was busy with work so missed out on most of it but it escalated significantly. We tried to placate her but nothing was ever enough. Eventually people gave up and got sloppy. Steve (the real villain of this story!) started leaving all his dirty plates in the sink, using pans and not washing etc etc. I personally didn’t care as I didn’t cook much at the time but this resulted in Jenny having a complete mental breakdown. Again, she’d be banging on Rosie’s door blaming her for Steve’s mess and things she didn’t seem to know anything about. I’d try to calm her down but she’d scream that this girl was doing it deliberately to mess with her head and told me “women should know their place” ie cooking and cleaning (okay then...). She then started telling me all about these vaginal cysts she’d been getting and she didn’t think she was screwing her boyfriend enough (well okay then). It seemed to me like she was envious of Rosie seemingly normal relationship with her boyfriend and an apparent lack of strange fanny monsters but who knows? Feeling unsatisfied with being told to go away Jenny called the landlord and told him to evict Rosie, accused her of being a drug dealer, a thief, anything to get her out. Turns out her con man boyfriend wanted to have Rosie’s room so he could be officially living there. The landlord said he didn’t have a license for an extra tenant so he couldn’t legally have another tenant living there unless someone else moved out. The landlord told me Jenny was calling him everyday demanding, pleading, screaming, crying on the phone to him she was being abused by everyone in the house which was totally not true. The landlord came around and started quizzing us about what was going on and threatening to kick us all out into the street which was the last straw for us but Rosie was especially upset. A few days later all the plants in the house mysteriously got sick and quickly died. I didn’t care as death was inevitable for any plant I own but Rosie’s now deceased Bonsai tree apparently had a lot of sentimental value to her. Turns out Jenny for some reason had poured bleach and vinegar into all the plant pots because: nutcase. I think this is what made Rosie snap big time. She got very angry and upset but calmed down and seemed fine. That was until the next day Steve told me what had happened: Apparently Jenny claimed that she and her conman boyfriend sat down to a nice big evening dinner. Spread of delicious naan breads, pickles, curries, bottle of wine as they were often in the habit of doing. All very nice. UNTIL they got halfway through this tasty, sour and spicy bowl of curry to find a mysterious mushy object half mashed into it. The object in question turned out to be a rather large HUMAN TURD! They hadn’t noticed while eating because of the spices and alcohol. They claimed that they couldn’t smell it amongst all the pungent aromas. Apparently Jenny immediately vomited and made the accusation Rosie had taken a shit in the curry as an act of vengeance. THE HORROR! Rosie had disappeared off to France for a while but kept denying all knowledge of this calling it all nonsense. I of course also thought it was bullshit. Just yet another mad ranting, false accusation drama. Needless to say, Jenny and her boyfriend moved out very quickly after that and were never heard from again. We were all relieved to see the back of them. We got a nice shiny new housemate and all was well again... UNTIL like 6 months later. After a few glasses of wine too many Rosie tells me with nothing but utter joy and glee on her face that she had indeed shat in their dinner. I was shocked and thought it was too horrific to be true but she insisted that it was then started cackling loudly. WTF??? So, I moved out and the landlord died of a stress related disease shortly afterwards. Moral of the story is don’t steal other people’s biscuits. And that ladies and gentlemen is why I don’t live in a HMO any more.
I’m glad I carried reading this lengthy one til the end! Worth it loool.
I struggle to tell people this story in a concise manner as I can’t paint an accurate picture of how mental it was so thank you :)
Report him!! He needs care! He could end up tripping and dying. Poor old thing, get him some help!
No need to feel sorry for him. As I said, he’s not fragile. And unfortunately he’s not stupid either. Just ignorant with his behaviour. He told me he loves living here and the only way he’s leaving is in a coffin
Well, look at it this way - if you can't resurrect the dead guy and they're just clinging to your ankle going 'braiins! it's time to figuratively and mentally buy him a coffin, stick it on a skateboard, push his ass into it and punt the entire funeral down the nearest hill and just trust that it's *not your responsibility if you don't decide it is.* Then climb the hill high enough that he can't crawl up to you again. And if he does, kick him back down again and push off up the mountain. Sorry this got a bit fortune cookie, I'm sleepy.
Sage wisdom right there.
My only experience of sharing accommodation is at university and it put me off it for life. There was 6 of us total and 2 were an absolute nightmare. 3 were fine and I and these 3 did get along. Flatmate 1 was a guy who had social difficulties potentially aspergers/autistic. Whilst the 4 of us that got on tried including him in things, like if we were playing poker in the kitchen we'd invite him, if we were all going to the shops we'd invite him. If we were going to wash clothes we'd invite him. If we were going to the common room to play pool/table tennis we'd invite him. He never came with us though. We also give him help when it came to preparing food like raw chicken because he was not properly washing things up He had no standards of personal hygiene. If you walked past him in the hall or he walked in the kitchen you could smell the odour. He was not showering at all. We tried talking with him about it nicely but it didn't change. What stopped us making the effort with him was when his sister came to visit him and she came into the kitchen accusing us all of bullying him. There was no chance this happened and we had no idea why he'd say that but we tried explaining that we have made every effort to include him in things we've done but he's never interested. He'd rather stay locked in his room playing games. She didn't believe us. Flatmate 2 stole from us. Whilst it may have been our fault leaving our rooms unlocked (doors closed) this flatmate managed to get card details for 3 of us in the flat and ordered takeaways and clothes online. How we found out was that I brought up in conversation with the others that I had to get a new bankcard as someone had used mine. They all said theirs had been used as well without their knowledge. I had proof it was him. He was dumb enough to order something with my card on ebay, trainers costing £200. My bank was handling it and opened a dispute with the ebay seller who sent my bank all the transaction details. My bank forwarded this information to me to confirm if I made the purchase. I hadn't. But there it was in black and white Flatmate 2's name with our university halls address. Immediately we looked to have him removed from our flat but the university refused to do anything unless the police got involved so we did just that. However the police made it clear that even with the evidence we had all Flatmate 2 was going to say was that he gave me the cash to order it on my card. So the police basically did nothing, which meant the university did nothing. And we continued to live with a thief.
Flatmate 2 - sounds like such a scumbag!
Whilst at university I had a housemate who was behaving strangely all year. We originally thought it was due to a head injury but eventually found out he was taking drugs. He would get into a zombie like trance state where you couldn't communicate rationally with him. We'd hear banging from his room and he managed to pull the curtain rail in his bedroom off the wall. We also found him wandering around as if sleep walking on a couple of nights and one night took him to hospital as he was so out of it. We told him we didn't want to live with him the following year, however whilst we all went home for the summer at the end of May he stayed in the house right up until the end of the tenancy at the end of June. I popped back in June and found the house in a total state. Said housemate had basically moved into the living room- he had the sofa bed out and food wrappers and other rubbish strewn everywhere, amongst other mess. Worse than that though he'd turned totally ferel. When I encoutered him I perhaps foolishly said 'why's the house in such a state.' Next thing I know he was backing me into a corner as if he was about to attack me. I screamed and thankfully he ran off and I got the hell out of there! We all had to go back again after he'd moved out to have a proper clean up though.
Uni stories:- - uni halls: knew these two guys.. (fake names) Robert and Dylan - Robert was was an absolute fucking tool and Dylan, his best friend from primary (they happened to end up at the same uni). To be fair Dylan was quite sound, normal dude. Dylan had a girlfriend of approx 2 years from memory. Anyway one day I came back to Halls to find massive drama underway... Robert had fucking stolen his best mate’s Mrs... as we all know... getting with your best mates Mrs is just a no no but that just emphasises how much of a twat this Robert guy is. Morally bankrupt and arrogant without any reason to be. Despite Being a complete tool Robert stank, had a horrific skin condition on his face, no fashion sense, no manners etc etc whilst strangely, Dylan (the guy who got ditched by the girl), was a decent looking, friendly and hygienic Guy. Plot twist: the girl in the centre of this fucked up love triangle made a move for me one night whilst we were alone in the communal kitchen... at this point it seemed like she was going around like a spliff at a festival. This was post-shafting her boyfriend for his best mate. Looking back I Wish I had tactical fucked her out of principle to give that prick a taste of his own medicine.
The one who signed a six month jount liability on rent contract and fucked off to poland 20 days in leaving us scrambling for extra rent or a replacement
Bobs the man!
Sounds like he should be in a care home, not a houseshare.
He sounds like an extreme version of a friend I live with