A friend Joe and his girlfriend
once moved into a council house in one of the more vibrant parts of the city. It came with quite a large, yet not the most salubrious garden which looked like it had been neglected for a long long time. The sort of morass where you joke about Japanese soldiers living in there who don't know the war is over. Because they were busy making the inside of the house habitable, the garden was relegated to the bottom of the to-do list.

One day they received a letter from the council telling them to get the garden sorted pronto as it was making the area look bad. Which is a bit like saying Peter Sutcliffe makes the inmates of Broadmoor look bad. Apart from opening the back door when they first got the keys, they hadn't ventured out there at all.

About a week after the letter arrived, they were woken early one morning by a knock at the back door. Joe went downstairs, opened up and was greeted by some scruffy bloke.

Joe: "Yeah?"
Scruff: "Just letting you know that I'm moving back in with me mam."
Joe: "What's that got to do with me?"
Scruff: "I just wanted to say thanks for letting me stay for a while."
Joe (perplexed): "I don't know what you're on about."
Scruff: "I'm just saying thanks for not kicking me out from me box. I'll take it wi' me and sling it in me mam's wheelie-bin if you want"
Joe: "Er.." and then it dawned on him. At the back of the garden was a large cardboard box, the sort that a fridge comes in, which had been there since they moved in. This scruffy, yet oddly polite and seemingly grateful vagrant had been living in there for who knows how long and had assumed that my friend knew and let him stay.

The scruffbag cleared off, taking the box with him. After Joe related the story to his girlfriend, she dragged him out there and they spent 3 days clearing everything out, chopping down the weeds and grass and getting a cheap temporary fence up.

So, if your housemates are excessively untidy and never wash up, clean the cooker etc, get a down-and-out to live in the cupboard under the sink.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 15:06, 4 replies)

From September until December of 1998 I lived in a student flat with three other men.
Whilst I could just let you use your imaginations, I will elaborate. The truth may even be more disgusting than what your terrifying brains can conjure. But I'm willing to be proved wrong :-)

Our story revolves around two pints of milk in a plastic container thingy (what are they called anyway? They're not cartons. Cartons are made of cardboard) which quite literally sat in our kitchen, unclaimed, from September to late November. Our kitchen was, as you might expect, fucking disgusting. There were four of us, so it took about a week to get to the point where if you wanted to cook, or eat off a plate instead of out of takeaway wrappings (rare), or drink beer from a glass instead of from the can (Guinness nights only), you HAD to wash up. But none of us ever washed up more than what we needed right there and then. So two pints of milk just blended into the general carnage until it visibly solidified under the plastic.

I never knew milk could turn black.

A bit of background. Being a boys' flat we were not big on originality. We played Tekken 3, a lot, watched films, drank beer and wound each other up. This last point is especially pertinent to the story. When first I moved in I drove up from Nottingham with a carful of stuff, none of which I still own since I came to discover DVD players/a modicum of fashion sense/a more attractive woman than my then-girlfriend. The others had already moved in and informed me in advance that they would be in the pub when I arrived. Steve said he'd leave a key inside the bathroom window, so I just needed to pop round the back and reach through, then let myself in.

Steve failed to mention the full condom he would enclose the key in for "security" purposes.

The bathroom window was one of those frosted affairs so I was reaching in blind. Imagine the horror. I was expecting something hard and metallic; instead my fingers found a prophylactic filled with a suspicious cloudy white liquid. Try to guess how it feels to work out what you're holding as you drag it back through the window.

So I did what I'm confident any one of you would have done; I let myself into the flat, washed my hands incredibly thoroughly, was a bit sick, unpacked the car, marched over to the pub, bought a pint, downed it, bought another pint and walked into the bar where my flatmates were playing pool, loudly referring to Steve as a disgusting cunt. After they'd finished laughing, by which time I needed another pint, Steve assured me that the worrying substance my key had been swimming in was garlic sauce.

"Don't believe me? Smell your fingers"

Nice. My revenge was a long time coming - not because I believed it was a dish best served cold or anything (spaff is usually quite warm in my experience) but because creativity abandoned me in my stereotypically bombed student mindset. Until I asked, for the hundreth time, whose fucking milk was turning black in the fucking kitchen you disgusting fuckers. And then I had an idea.

Many of you will have worked out where I'm going with this. Bear with me, it was fucking funny.

Steve was, and still is to my knowledge, I don't know, I haven't seen him in years, look him up on Facebook if you really want to know, cyber-stalking is so easy these days, seeing a lovely girl called Donna. We all liked her, and I almost feel sorry for how much she had to suffer as part of my hideous prank. I timed it for when they had a weekend away at her parents'. I took a bowl from the kitchen - picked one which had curry smears around the rim for extra "eeewww, fuuuuckk" factor - and decanted as much of the substance formerly known as milk into it. This remains one of the most hideous experiences of my life. The stench of three-month-old milk is ungodly. It rates somewhere between "Rancor" and "Gillian McKeith" on my patented disgustingness scale.

I then placed this bowl under Steve's bed.

Alongside a box of tissues...

...and a borrowed (honest) copy of "Red Hot 60+" magazine.

I then closed the doors and windows of Steve's room and forgot all about it until the Sunday night, when Steve and Donna returned to our flat for a night of "oh thank god we're out from under the parents' watchful gaze let's have lots of sex" sex.

Myself and the other lads were watching TV in the front room until we heard a frankly inhuman noise coming from Steve's room next door. I muted the TV and sit upright in alert, gleeful anticipation. With hindsight, this may have identified me as the culprit. After a series of half-choked exclamations were crescendo'd with a very, very loud "WHAT THE HOLY FUCK?!!", Steve stormed into the next room demanding to know who had sucked the air out of his room and replaced it with camembert in a gaseous state.

I wish I could tell you I said something witty about garlic sauce, or smelling his fingers, but I was laughing so hard that witty repartee was even further from my grasp than normal. Again, not helping any claims I may have laid to innocence. Steve was proper angry. Apparently the stench and the discovery that her boyfriend was rubbing one out over grannies then keeping the produce of said self-flagellation in a bowl under his bed for long enough for it to turn black and solidify like some hideous splunge Star Trek villain (think of the episode where Tasha Yar dies) was a right turn-off for Donna.

I calmed down long enough to assure him that I'd planned for this eventuality and he could keep the mag for as long as was necessary.

And then he hit me.

Totally worth it.

Length... three months, in a warm kitchen, before it was unleashed into a hot room. Think about it. SO proud of myself.
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 14:59, 11 replies)

There's a rat in my bathroom (what am I gonna do)
OK, I'll be up front and admit that this isn't my story but is a re-telling of a story of one of my friends who we shall call V (for that is the initial of his name) from the halcyon days of my University in the mid-90's.

In our second year, we had all had to face the trauma and excitement of leaving halls of residence and moving into our very own student houses. V, along with a large group of lads had taken up residence in a house on Edgbaston road in Birmingham. Now this house, like many student places, was not the pinnacle of designer chic, but when they moved in had been big enough, and clean enough for their purposes. The only weird thing was that the kitchen had a fridge in it. And so did the downstairs loo. Anyway, over a period of 6 months of parties and returning from bars and clubs in variously mangled states the house began to take on that special student odour of putrifying kebab, which in itself is no big deal when you are 19 or 20, male and perpetually drunk.

Anyway, the days turned to weeks, the weeks turned to months, and terms and holidays slid past. Fast forward to the Easter holiday....

Easter had been a gloriously warm spring break. The various members of the house had all returned to bask in the warm embrace of their families for 4 weeks of home cooking and motherly love. I can only imagine that for V this made what was to come all the more traumatic. As the holidays came to an end and students began to return to university, V found himself standing outside his front door, key in hand and the first one to return to the house. He opened the door. V recounts that he noticed the smell the second he crossed the threshold; the high, sweet, sickly odour of death beneath the floor. Now V knew that they had had issues with mice and set about the unenviable task of trying to find the corpse, hoping that it would be under a kitchen cabinet or behind a sofa. Using his nose he began to sniff, terrier like, around the house to find the offending detritus. After a few minutes of work he found the smell was concentrated in the downstairs loo...this was odd. The pan, while filthy, was not a dead mouse. The strange toilet-fridge was closed, working and smelt as acceptable as student fridges can...but the odour was definitely emanating from the room. Thinking that perhaps the mouse was behind the fridge he decided to wheel the fridge out of the room to inspect underneath it.

It was at this point V puked for the first time. As the fridge was wheeled forward there was a sloshing noise of water spilling and a wave of putresence filled the house. Gagging, V looked around the back of the fridge. Now for those of you that clean behind your fridge you'll know that there is a bucket thing where all of the water that condenses in the fridge drains to. This bucket is normally sat near the pump and heat exchanger so that the warmth from these parts of the fridge help the drained water evaporate. This is a fine piece of design. Unless a rat has become stuck in that bucket and drowned. At this point the warmth and wetness becomes a machine for creating rotting rat soup. Despite the stench V knew he had to remove the contents of the bucket and thinking fast he armed himself with a stick and a bin liner. Using the stick he planned to fish the rat out, dump it in the binliner and run from the house to the bin. He had not, however, accounted for the reduced structural integrity of the rat. The stick went through the rate like a laser through butter. This in turn filled the water with an even headier combination of rat and maggots . Finally realising the power of cleaning products he decided the smart thing to do was to dump a bottle of bleach in the bucket and retire from the house for a therapeutic pint before having to scoop the flesh from the bowl with a (gloved) hand.

V still has a touch of thousand yard stare about his eyes 15 years later.

YAY! That was my first QOTW answer.
(Kitcar memeless in a meme filled world, Tue 30 Mar 2010, 10:09, 8 replies)

sobs
I may have mentioned this before but I own a couple of properties that I let out and have a number of tales that are worth telling this week. I have my fair share of tenants that I have booted out due to them growing weed/ threatening to stab the neighbours etc etc but this weeks QOTW is about filthy places and so I thought that I would share to you the tale of S.

I had invested in a decent little place based in a very picturesque place. The place had a lovely view of the mountains and was located near to a number of rivers and was also a short walk away from the local forest. The place itself was a tip when I bought it but after a bit of work with the house itself and improving the garden walls it looked pretty decent.

As the place was in a decent area the rent was also more costly the only potential tenants I had were all a tad older and either professional types or old geezers that had retired and were trying to spend whatever money they had before shuffling off the mortal coil. The first one to take a keen interest in the place was S. He was a semi retired bloke that was still working despite his age. He loved the place and the location and paid the deposit straight away. I should have been pretty suspicious of a bloke paying me cash in hand straight away but to be honest a few other things were on my mind that day (tenant at another property had just been caught growing drugs in their attic 5 mins before S turned up).

Anywhoo as S was a bit older I thought that I would not be calling round to check up on things like I did with the other lower cost properties with dodgier tenants and would only turn up to the property if there was any problems or if they had not paid. S always made sure I was paid each month so I really had no need to visit him until one morning early March a couple of years later when a concerned neighbour rang me to let me know there was a disturbance coming from my property. I called round the next day to see what was wrong and immediately realised that I should have been keeping track of this place a bit better. Bloody hell.

The front gate, a pretty sturdy thing I had paid a bit of money to install had been totally ripped off its hinges and most of the front wall was also partially knocked down. I realised that this probably wasn’t going to be the end of the damage and headed up to the main property muttering to myself about the cost of a good repair bloke.

Nothing could prepare me for the main building though. The whole place was flooded. I don’t mean none of this namby pamby “oh no a roof has caved in because of the water” kind of flooding I mean a large puddle of water had actually surrounded the place, causing a mini moat effect that had also flooded the nearby pit that S had dug himself during his spare time (Lord knows what the hell he was doing but I mentioned he had to let me know of any building improvements etc so that also pissed me off).

I was angry now as this old bloke had fucked up the lawn, planted a number of trees in the place and ruined a good property. S was gone with no forwarding address and I was left to foot the bill for repairs and removal of the crap he left in his place. The whole thing needed refurbishing from top to bottom and amongst the litter and piles of various animal bones I found several giant rats, these things were hairless and looked pretty fucking scary despite being dead and covered in pieces of fallen tree.

I still haven’t had a chance to get my money back from the old twat and I don’t actually know why I have decided to censor his name throughout this reply as a user of B3ta may take him on as a tenant or may even live wth him now. For any of you that know Saruman or may bump into him tell the old sod that he owes me a shitload in repair and maintenance bills (you should see the cost for disposing of dead orcs these days) .

This post has overrun a bit, sorry for that.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 11:42, 12 replies)

oh!! I have one.
A long time ago, I woke up one morning late for work after a big night out. I pulled on my clothes and ran for the train.

It was a packed train, and half way down, I felt something weird on my back. I reached up into my shirt to see what it was... it was my skin peeling off! I was terrified, I took a corner and pulled it gently, pulled a bit more... this massive chunk of skin was peeling off, but I didn't feel any pain. finally the whole slice came off.

I had a look - in front of this whole carriage of commuters - and it was a bit of doner kebab I had fallen asleep on the night before, stuck to my back with ketchup.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 30 Mar 2010, 14:39, Reply)

The tale of Rob and his paper bag
Apologies for length in advance, this is going to be pretty long but it is one of the incidents that has happened to me that I have been waiting to use in a QOTW.

I have mentioned my old housemate Rob a few times before on this site, this is the story that everyone who knows him will bring it up every so often and happened when he was still at my place (He rented a room off of me).

The house was never the cleanest place, we were a couple of young free and single blokes that only wanted to go out, get drunk and have a laugh. As time passed I met a rather hot young woman who I started dating and eventually moved into the place with us (Referred to as C), Rob was getting pretty serious with a woman himself and he had been seeing on and off for a while and eventually decided to take the plunge and move in with her instead.

Rob sorted out a moving van and both me and C decided to offer our help clearing out his room, a place I had not been in since we decorated it prior to him moving in. Oh.Dear.God.

The first thing we realised was that you could not see the carpet. It was covered in a layer of dirty clothes that Rob had placed in appropriate zones for each occasion. The side of his bed was the part he labelled football shirts for playing 5 a side footy each week, the foot of the bed was his going out clothes and the far end of the room was where he kept his (Rather mouldy looking) Kwik Save uniforms.
My other half chipped in

C: Erm Rob why don’t you wash this stuff, I always ask you if you needed anything when I was doing a load?
Rob: I didn’t want you to spend your time washing my stuff in the sink or bath, If I get it really filthy I can do it myself
C: Rob we have a washing machine downstairs in the kitchen
Rob: Where?
Me: That big white thing as you go in the kitchen, you cant miss it mate I showed it to you when you moved in, and you cant help but hear it when its on every couple of days
Rob: Oh yeah…..Never mind maybe later they still have a few more wears in them
Me: Rob what about the smell of sweat you can see the dried sweat patches under the arms of this one
Rob: That’s what the air fresheners I bought are for (Douses air with a peach air freshener). Noone is bothered when you go out anyway
(Me and C give each other a worried look)

Eventually we cleared the floor and moved the clothing bags out to his car (6 bin bags full of sweaty clothing that he admitted had been hardly washed in the 3 years he had been living with me). Worse was yet to come. During the cleanup operation we also found a number of yogurts Rob had decided to eat in bed and had left them on the floor after eating them, never taking the empty pots or cutlery downstairs with him, the result was a number of spoon totally unusable as the spoons had welded themselves to the plastic pot thanks to the small amount of leftover yogurt in the bottom. At this point I was wondering how the hell I hadn’t noticed the smell until I was interrupted by C screaming. She had picked up a paper bag from the side of Robs bed and looked into it to see if there was anything in it before throwing it away.

She had found condoms. Used ones that were rather fragrant from the look of it. I knew that Robs other half had not been over since last weekend.

Me: Rob, Why the hell do you have a bag of used johnny’s? I know it can be a bit of a chore getting rid of the thing after sex but try and throw it the morning after, your missuis hasn't been here since last Saturday.
Rob: Oh that’s not from one nights effort. Thats my shag bag, I’ve been keeping it since I moved in to see how many times I’ve fucked someone
Me:So that bags got 3 years worth of used condoms in
Rob: Yup, well the ones that I had to use protection with anyway, any others I decided to go au natural with I made a biro mark on the side of the bag
C (in-between gipping from the nose full of crusty jizz tainted air she just got from opening the bag): Why the hell would anyone do that?
Rob: Urm… to show your mates?
Me: Seriously mate keep notes in a diary or something that’s wrong. (Who the hell would want to see this?)
Rob: Sod that, women would think you were weird writing stuff in a book after doing them
C: And keeping all the used condoms isn’t?

Despite our protests Rob still took the bag with him. I have missed a lot of the other basic food related crap we found but the post was starting to look a bit epic and a reminder of the condom bag left me feeling a little off. Thank god he was too lazy to make a scrap book.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 11:09, 5 replies)

My folks house is clean but.......
when I was young they had a few cats. As we lived in the country the cats would often catch animals from crows down to shrews.
As is the way with cats they wouldn't just kill them, no they wanted to bring them in the house and show them off, still alive. Often they would end up losing them and then 'hunt the mouse' would ensue.

Anyways, we started to notice a funny smell coming from the fridge. We figured it was inside as the smell got much worse every time the fridge door was opened. The fridge was emptied out and scrubbed down. However the smell got worse.
Eventually the fridge freezer was moved to see if something had died behind it, and this was when we realised what had happened.

Under the fridge was a rat; not just dead, but cooked.

It seems that one of the cats had brought in the rat, which had then escaped.
It had taken refuge under the fridge freezer and, as rats are wont to do, had chewed it's way though a power cable and electrocuted itself.
This cable was somehow connected to the light in the fridge. The teeth of the rat still completed the circuit and everytime the door opened the light came on and the rat heated up!
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sat 27 Mar 2010, 14:39, 4 replies)

She's done WHAT???
When I first left home, I moved in with a colleague's family which was nearer to work. This didn't really count as 'moving out' as I still had everything washed and cooked for me. The next place however, was different. I had a room in a shared house, shared kitchen, bathroom etc. The people seemed nice; I hardly ever saw Wayne upstairs but heard his bed threatening to fall through my ceiling every time his poor girlfriend visited. The couple downstairs; Steve & Dave were nice and always friendly, especially when I brought my mate round, who they had a soft spot for. It was the weekend I first moved in that was the problem. I'd brought one load of stuff round on the Friday and was coming back with another on the Sunday when Steve and Dave met me at the door.
"We're really sorry, there's been a bit of a problem," they said.
"Oh?" I replied, getting slightly worried.
"It was last night and you'd left your door open."
"Uh huh?"
"Well, we've had to clean your duvet" they said, shame faced. "Not just the cover, the whole thing. It's in the launderette now."
"Oh Jesus" I thought. Here I was, fresh from the countryside into the big city. What could the camp guys from downstairs have been doing in MY bedroom on a Saturday night that would require my duvet to be cleaned?
"It's Britt" they said. This was their enormous bull terrier, the world's ugliest dog. "She pushed your door open with her nose and...."
"And what?"
"Had six puppies on your nice warm bed. We're so sorry."
To tell you the truth, I was quite relieved.
(Mr McKenzie Mr McKenzie, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 12:41, 2 replies)

Vaguely related
As a kid I used to go fishing with my Dad every Sunday, until I started growing pubes and finding other more exciting things to do.

One Saturday, my Dad mentioned going fishing the next day as usual and was about to get the gear out of the shed. I showed my lack of interest and he realised that as I didn't want to go, and he didn't want to go alone, the Dad/Son fishing relationship was over.

Fast forward to around 8 years later - and my Mum is nagging my Dad to clear out the shed. I help out and take out the dusty old cobwebby fishing gear.

I notice the litre icecream tub we used to keep maggots in was not empty.

Curiousity got the better of me and I opened it - to be met with the sight of thousands of mummified flies, all packed in there in a solid mass like an enormous eccles cake from hell.
( Michael Ellis contributes nothing, Sat 27 Mar 2010, 10:59, 4 replies)

Passive-Agressive notes
A graduate student friend of mine moved into a house with two friends. They needed a fourth so asked someone who they knew and thought was alright to join them. Unfortunately he had neglected to tell them about his OCD. The first three were all tidy people and pretty clean, and since they were grad students it wasn't as though they were partying constantly. A week after they had moved in, the notes starting appearing.

If washing up was left to dry on the side, a note would appear asking for it to be put away. If the cooker started getting a bit dirty, again a note would appear. If he was confronted he would get shirty, and claim he did all the work, although his 'work' was going and doing everything again because it wasn't done to his standards. He bought two hundred pounds worth of cleaning fluids etc and insisted the flat share the cost (he was told where to stuff that) and the note placing became ever worse. Every thing in the kitchen ended up with a post-it note on it, in tight terse writing. However the absolute limit was when my friend knocked rice on the floor, and since she was entertaining decided to sweep it up later. She dealt with most of it quickly and left a couple of handfuls worth on the floor.

When the night was finished, she remembered to clean it up and went back into the kitchen. And there on the floor were thirty five post-it notes (she counted) each with an arrow pointing to a grain of rice.
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Sat 27 Mar 2010, 18:07, 9 replies)

My house is dirty.
Yesterday i caught it fingering a kestrel
(vv STONED vv is also my Xbox live gamertag, Thu 25 Mar 2010, 13:45, 4 replies)

When I was young, I did a bit of housework...

So long ago now. It was 1982 and I'd just finished my A Levels, it was still mid-June and I had a whole summer ahead of me with nothing to do. I'd got a place at Leeds University waiting for me (with a bit of luck) and I had really itchy feet.

I needed to get away from home - being the eldest of four kids in a three bedroom terrace was a strain. I went to an agency and got myself a position as an au pair for a family in Nice. My mother didn't seem to mind too much, probably glad to get me off her hands for a bit. I have to admit that I'd become fairly difficult to live with, but looking back, I put it down to exam stress and hormones. Going to an all girls school in Stratford meant FAR too many hormones and no boys to unleash them on. Well, not for me anyway.

I didn't really have much of a social life at school. The West Indian girls that ruled the roost almost accepted me, except my father was Nigerian, not West Indian, and my mother was (is) Scottish. I didn't put up a post when it was 'Gingers' as the whole subject is far too painful for me. The fact that I had to share a small room with my half-sister meant I had an excuse not to have a mirror in our room - my wiry dark hair with a red tinge, my almost black eyes, flat nose and freckles. I used to cry myself to sleep and hide my developing body under loose blouses and long coats.

So, back to the story. It was time for me to get out of East London, stretch my wings, leave behind the hurt and the pain. I bought my train ticket to Nice, packed a few things and set off. Each mile the train got from London towards the south coast; each mile the ferry got from those white cliffs, each mile of track the train ate up as it headed to, then out of Paris - with each of those miles, my heart grew lighter. At first I was quiet and kept to myself, but after a couple of lager and limes on the ferry I felt more relaxed and began to chat to fellow travellers. By the time the train was nearing Nice, I was chatting happily with the others in the compartment (French was one of my A Levels) and feeling like a new girl - or was that woman?

The heat of the South had been building all day in the train, but stepping out of the station at Nice into the full sun was like nothing I'd ever experienced. It was like stepping through a cinema screen - the heat, the shade, the bustle of that busy French street, the tourists and back-packers milling around looking for taxis or buses. M. and Mme Boudet met me at the station as planned and I was soon being flung around in the back of their Citroen, as M. Boudet alternately slammed the accelerator to the floor or hit the brakes and the horn at the same time while waving his arm out of the window and letting forth a string of words that weren't on the A Level syllabus. Soon, we were heading out of the centre of town up into the surrounding hills. Round hair-pin bends I got my first view of the sea and the rest of Nice spread out below like an Henri Matisse landscape.

Their house was amazing. A solid metal gate and a high wall protected the garden of palm trees, lemon trees and rosemary. The house over-looked the amazing view back down the valley to the city and the sea. It was beautifully cool inside, white plaster and red floor tiles, dark furniture and shutters at the windows. I met the children: Jean-Luc, Monique and Therese who were thirteen, ten and five and could properly meet M and Mme Boudet who seemed ancient to me, but must have been in their late thirties. She was elegant: slim, wavy bobbed hair, wide skirt, white blouse, high heels; he was all charm: tall, tanned, a small beard around his mouth, open necked shirt and a jumper over his shoulders, pale trousers, deck shoes.

My room was pure heaven - just mine. A little bed, a wardrobe, chest of drawers, a chair and a full length mirror. They left me alone to unpack and I opened the windows, threw back the shutters and breathed deeply, then laughed aloud and fell onto the bed.

Reality bit after dinner, when madame showed me what I'd be doing: cleaning, washing, ironing, getting the children ready for school, taking and picking the little ones up from school, supervising their homework. Madame would do the shopping and cooking, but I would help her. Sundays - after I'd got the children ready for church, was my day off and I could do what I liked - if I wasn't exhausted by all the cleaning. I found that the work wasn't really that bad. It was an easy house to keep clean as all the floors were tiled, and once I'd given everything a good clean, it was fairly simple to maintain. Washing wasn't too bad either, as they had a decent washing machine and hanging the clothes out on the line to dry was actually really nice compared with stringing stuff along radiators or hanging it up in front of a two-bar electric fire.

I was pretty naive for an 18 year old, but I knew what the sticky tissues under Jean-Luc's bed were and he wasn't that good at hiding his dog-eared porn mags under the mattress either. He was a bit full of himself and a messy boy, but dropping hints about his nocturnal habits kept him in line. The girls were lovely and helped me out when they weren't playing or at school. It was hilarious to me how this five year old could have such a good command of French and a perfect accent, while my French was - I quickly realised - really, very poor.

M. Boudet was an architect and Mme Boudet was a lady of leisure. She spent most mornings with friends or shopping or getting her hair done while I got on with the chores. On Sundays, I'd go into town or wander along the Promenade des Anglais, occasionally climbing down to the beach to sit on the cobbles or paddle in the waves lazily breaking on the beach. I wasn't confident enough to put on the one-piece bathing suit I'd bought back home, but the heat had forced me to abandon my coat and wear my coolest clothes. Surrounded by sun-bathers - many topless - I began to loosen up a little and relax. I was eating well, sitting in the sun, working hard, walking a lot and I suppose I started to bloom.

Mme 'took me in hand' after a couple of weeks. She treated me to a haircut and bought me some summer clothes - a light cotton dress, a skirt, some tee-shirts. She boosted my confidence and made me look not too bad. I started looking at myself in the mirror - when the house was empty - naked, and clothed. I began to think that there was potential there, and when the boys hooted the horns on their silly little scooters at me as I walked the kids to school, I'd sashay a little (or that's what I thought I was doing). Yes, I began to notice boys everywhere and, I discovered, they thought I had a delightful English accent when I spoke French. Soon, I became a regular at the local bar, popping in for a Coke after dinner when the kids were spending time with their parents or doing homework.

One Sunday evening in early August, I was sitting at a bar with a couple of friends after a day at the beach, when a group of English lads came in and sat at a nearby table. They clearly thought everyone else in the place was French, as the people I was with were pretty noisy and very French. I suppose it was a bit naughty of me, but it was actually ages since I'd spoken English and I felt like listening in. Oh boy - there were four of them and three were trying to egg the other one on to ask me out. I casually looked over at them and held the gaze of the boy that apparently fancied me, before turning back to my friends and letting forth with a burst of high-speed French. My trap was set, and the 'victim' was actually pretty good looking and seemed nice enough from what I could hear. I got up and walked right over to him and, in my best French-accented English asked him:

"Wezzer e ad un piece de cinqe Franc pour le juke-box?"

"Errr. Wee. Je ave un cinque Franc. Ici, dons mon poche."

That wasn't all he had in his pocket as I could see as he half rose to fish around in his jeans. He pulled out a handful of change and held it out. I gently took his fingertips and extracted a 5 Franc piece. "Merci. Tu es tres gentil". He re-pocketed his change as I walked away, I paused, turned and beckoned to him: "Viens"

* * *

Ten minutes later we were walking hand-in-hand along a rapidly darkening beach, heading for a spot I knew.

"Shall we go for a bathe?" I asked.

"OK."

We were in a secluded spot, well away from prying eyes and I flung myself at him and landed a kiss hard on his lips. He clasped me round my waist and we stayed glued to each other for ages. I could feel his hard cock pressing against me and I moved gently to agitate it. He reached lower and stroked my bum, grabbing it gently in his hands and pressing me to him. I broke our kiss and whispered in his ear: "Do you have a...you know?" He knew alright. In seconds we were grabbing at each others clothes and pawing at each others bodies. I was fascinated with his cock and knelt down in front of him, exploring it with my hands, rubbing it, feeling his balls, stroking it against my cheek.

"Oh no" he moaned, as I could feel it begin to jerk, then erupt in my hand. He grabbed it and pointed it away from me at the last second and I watched, amazed as a spurt of cum went flying through the air, and another, and another; ten feet it must have flown easily. I gently took his cock again and licked the last drips from the tip, salty and slimy and warm and then his whole cock was in my mouth and I was licking and sucking and it was harder than ever and I was rubbing myself too and I was wet and hot and I lay back on the pile of clothes on the stony beach and beckoned to him once more, "Viens. Viens"

And wow. He licked me until I was screaming before he dug out his johnnie and rolled it on and then we fucked.

After, I lay there, snuggled against him and started giggling. I was so tempted to break the spell and come out with my best East London: "Fuck me that was good." But I didn't. I kept up the pretence, we swapped names and addresses (false in my case) and I never saw him again.

I kept house all summer, staying until the holidaymakers had all gone home then made my way to university, via home, a much wiser and saner woman.
(K.W.A. Knickers With Attitude, Tue 30 Mar 2010, 13:56, 23 replies)

I've been living down in Bournemouth for seven years, now.
Unfortunately, that time has been spent as a student. After the first three years my flatmates were no longer students, but the places I've lived in haven't really noticed the difference.

This sorry tale actually hearkens back to my first year of uni, and takes place in the autumn of 2003. Fuck me, I've been in this town too long.

I was living in a uni-let property, a skinny pink monstrosity three floors tall and two rooms wide in both directions. This was actually my second house of the year, the first having been hurriedly vacated when my flatmates turned out to be mentals of the best kind (for reference, lurking somewhere in my profile is the story of a previous flatmate's brother taking a shit on a chair, then in the bin. I'll repost it in replies if required).

The people I lived with there weren't all that bad, and one of them I still actually share a flat with today. Possibly because he's the only one insane enough to still stay in this town, but I digress; they were good people. Well, alright, one was a complete slapper whose idea of safe sex was a pearl necklace, and another was a drug abuser with attention-deficit hyperactive disorder. The girl left and the replacement flatmate that the uni assigned could merit a story in his own right -- but this story is about the guy.

The first, the poor bastard with ADHD. In his calmer moments, he could be a lovely guy. His calmer moments usually involved him having smoked enough to stun a small pony. Whilst not a stranger to said smokeables, I once shared a joint with him and consequently took the best part of fifteen minutes struggling to open a door. He packed away the best part of an ounce a day on such days. One of his more manic days caused "the incident", however.

There was a brief time, I believe, when a legal loophole allowed the sale of magic mushrooms in a certain form. He took full advantage of this and snatched up a rather large amount. His intention had been to sell it on to his friends. Instead, he brewed up the full £30's worth into a rather potent tea. Which he drank in a single mighty draught.

I believe "fucked out of his tiny little mind" is the next accurate phrase to describe him. We put up with a gibbering idiot tearing around the house for approximately five minutes before we forcibly locked him in his room. Unbeknownst to us, we'd locked him in there with a stoner friend of his. The flatmate apparently spent a fair while convinced that there was a Leprechaun talking to him from the foot of his bed.

We ignored his screams (as was normal), and decided that the best course of action was to go to the pub. As we walked down the road away from the house, the flatmate's upper body suddenly protruded from a window. The bathroom window, a window on a different floor to his bedroom. The bathroom in question was one infrequently used by the house, given its location; personally, I was surprised he even knew it existed, given there was a different one immediately near his own room. Momentarily perplexed as to how he'd escaped his room, we stared at him. He stared back, then with his wide eyes threatening to escape his skull, he shouted at us.

"I'VE JUST DONE A MASSIVE SHIT," he informed us, then vanished inside again.

We thought nothing of it, though it was decided that we shouldn't return to the flat until it was dark and all threat of mushroom-man had dissipated into unconsciousness. When we did roll back into the place, all was dark and quiet, and there was no sign of said massive shit.

When we went to move out six or so months later, we found out in the course of cleaning the house down that the "massive shit" he'd done on that fateful day hadn't reached the toilet.

He'd shat in the toilet brush holder.
( gone, Sun 28 Mar 2010, 3:57, 3 replies)

Experiments...
Over the years, I've lived with some pretty grotty people - ranging from the pillock in halls who got drunk and shat in the showers, to the Mexican in Golders Green who decided to keep a kilo of weird cheese in a carrier bag in the cupboard under the stairs. There was the student house in Bounds Green where one flatmate gradually went mad and refused to do any cleaning - she bought plug-in cooking utensils (rice cooker, toaster etc) and did all her cooking in her room, and then left early at the end of the year leaving us to clean everything. There was the strange Scot in Camberwell who lived entirely off boiled chicken legs, who smelt faintly of windowlene and despair.

The tale that springs to mind, however, regards your humble servant: moi. As a young child, I was possessed of an enquiring mind, and I used to carry out experiments; my parents were pretty ok about this - my mother let me fill up hummus pots with bread and grow mould*, and keep them in the cellar.

As academics, they positively encouraged my inquisitiveness... to the point where I graduated from mould...to MEAT!
One day a bird had got into the thatch and then fallen into the loo and drowned, so I buried it. A week later, I dug it up again, then re-buried it. A week later, I exhumed it once more - so on and so forth for 3 months, until it was completely decomposed.
Obviously, I was very interested (morbidly so) in the decomposition process, and wondered how it might work if a dead animal were not in the ground; fortunately, the cats caught a woodpigeon and left it on the doormat, so I put it in a baking tray and put it in the cellar with the mouldpots.

Then, fickle as a child's mind is, I forgot about it (I was probably distracted by the rumour that the caves in the nearby quarry were caused by giant dinosaur turds which then dissolved leaving the space around it - officially the coolest thing EVER to my friends and I).

I only remembered about it a few months later, when my mother went into the cellar for something, and screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
And then ran upstairs and screamed some more - mostly at me.

The cellar had to be fumigated, and I had to do my experiments at the bottom of the garden after that.



* Results:
Bread + milk = green.
Bread + water = black.
Bread + orange juice = oooh pretty colours!
Bread + some good-quality single malt from my parents' alcohol cupboard = a sound thrashing.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 11:41, Reply)

Time Delayed Cum Shot
Whilst at Uni in London, my friend Paul moved in to the recently vacated spare room at another mate’s house.

Before he could move his stuff in, he had to clear out the detritus the previous guy had left behind.

Whilst emptying the contents of the wardrobe into black bags, he found a rubber fanny wrapped up in a carrier bag.
Being the curious fellow he is, instead of instantly discarding it in the bin like a normal person, he decided to unwrap it and have a good look at it and to see how it works.

Whilst holding it up to the light to see how the vibrating mechanism was sited, a thick globule of old jizz rolled out of the rubber minge and dropped onto his face.

He claims not to have tried using it.
( Dervel OTBC, Thu 25 Mar 2010, 14:25, 4 replies)

Animal
I used to live with a complete animal. Think I may have posted this before.

He was a born again Christian with the belief that nothing would harm him unless it was God's will, and if it was God's will, then it couldn't be avoided anyway and was his due. He didn't see the point in the most basic of human hygiene as "illness was punishment from God".

So he didn't wash. Ever. Neither himself, not his clothes but more crucially for this story, the dishes. He was a mental. A really smelly mental.

In the kitchen on the side was his "washing up bowl". A washing up bowl filled with water on the first day of term, with a lid, in which he'd periodically "soak" his plates for an hour or two to remove any food detritus. He'd then wipe his plates on his t-shirt and re-use them.

Our flat started to smell like fungal growth on a tramps' bell end, so naturally, something had to be done.

When I prised the lid off this bowl (having drawn straws and lost), I was faced with a gloopy, layered and coloured substance that looked like the rings of Saturn. Except with more carrots. I was immediately sick into the bowl, as was my housemate.

We managed to carry the bowl outside, periodically vomiting on ourselves as we went, then left it outside with a note on the lid saying "do not open".

We then spent the rest of the afternoon watching curious passers by open the lid to look inside, with about a 50/50 vomit to non-vomit ratio.

Happy days.
( rofl harris, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 10:59, 3 replies)

I'm a well behaved gal these days (pearost alert)
A Proper Relationship can do that to you. But this was not always the case. Like most teenagers, my bedroom was my haven. A germ filled, cluttered haven. Schoolwork on top of CDs on top of uncleaned clothes on top of forgotten plates covered in greenish grey fur. I had purple carpet I hadn't seen in months - don't let a 13 year old pick their room colours. It's only going to go badly (although my brother's orange and leopard print theme would have put Graham Norton to shame, so I wasn't the worst one. Promise.)

Anyhoo, my mother, despite being a commune-minded hippy in a Gen X world (to this day she still takes people in who she thinks needs a bit of care, and partakes in smoking green stuff in her generally awesome way) kept the rest of the house spotless. We did the kitchen daily and some hoovering, so we did help, but the rest was all her.

One day, I spot some movement in the carpet. Well, I trod on something squishy - spotting would have been difficult. It's a cockroach! I'm terrified of all bugs and creepy crawlies, let alone the idea of a cockroach. I'll say that again: I'm terrified of all bugs. If you ever spot a wasp, I'll be heading onto a train to Cornwall to get a headstart on avoiding the fucker. After jumping and shrieking like the banshee-flid I am, I call my mum into the room.
Me: "Mum. Bug. What is it?"
Mum: "ahhh, that's a cockroach."
Me "Arrrggghhhhhhhhhhh" More banshee-flid freaking out. I'm imagining the cockroaches at night, climbing onto my legs, my face, waking up with a jolt after one climbs into my snoring gob.
Mum: "They can get everywhere, they can lay eggs anywhere y'know. I'll have to call the council."
Me: (fearing some local paper showing my room) "nooooooooooooooooooooooo"

So I clean. I chuck almost *everything* out. Most of my clothes, save 1-2 loads. My mattress (imaging hatching cockroach eggs in my mattress made me squirm), my bed (I had a divan. It's fabric, so eggs go there too). I couldn't bring myself to chuck my books, thankfully. My bedlinen was cleaned at 90C with a lot of bleach thrown in. Everything gets covered in neat bleach. The gap between the floor boards and the skirting board gets bleach poured in all the way round my room.

Eventually, I was left with a bare shell of a room. I had no bed. I had barely any clothes. My throat hurt from the fumes of unwisely mixing cleaning chemicals together. But there were no bugs. I was an accomplished arthmelow. I calmed down a bit. Well, at least for a few hours. The next day I spotted white residue on my toolbox (yay! lego!), went "ARGH EGGS", and poured more bleach on. Took me a while and a few goes to work out it was the dried up bleach, not more cockroach eggs. After about 6 months of sleeping on the floor, I stole my brother's old mattress, and about 4 years or so after that, I managed to purchase a bed along with some new flooring. Not too long after that, we move and I move out.

A few years along the line, I bring it up in conversation. My mum cracks up laughing
"It was a water beetle. There's a nest under the house. We only said it so you'd tidy up your room."
"So you let me go without a bed for 4 years because you wanted me to tidy my room?"
"Well, it worked, didn't it?"

The woman is a mental. But thinking back, it *did* work...
Which woman was the mental one I'll leave up to you.
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Thu 25 Mar 2010, 15:12, 1 reply)

Cillit bang
I wonder if any dyslexic women have ever bought this product and ended up being very disappointed
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Tue 30 Mar 2010, 14:04, 2 replies)

I thought I had expunged these memories...
...and yet, they return to haunt me, thirty years, and three continents, later.

Cue wavy lines.

October 1980, and I presented myself, bright-eyed and bushy-bollocked, at Imperial College, to read engineering. Four of us white guys had struck up a friendship during our year out working, and so we ended up renting rooms above a travel agents on Wandsworth Bridge Road. Renting the two other rooms were two Hong Kong Chinese guys, studying at Chelsea College.

I liked them well enough, and we all seemed to get on ok. They'd often lapse into high-speed Cantonese, occasionally throwing out English words, like "tea towel" or "emitter follower." But holy mackerel, when they got going with the wok a fine mist of cooking oil vapour would cover every horizontal surface as well as the vertical surfaces adjacent to the stove. At the end of the year, they just buggered off, and we impoverished British guys (not having everything paid for by our government) had to strip to the waist and expend vast quantities of elbow grease and no little amount of noxious chemicals in order to get back our security deposit.

But the event I want to describe to you is the Pancake Party we held one Shrove Tuesday. Now we were (and remain) far from observant in any religion, but it seemed like a great excuse - as if we needed one - for a gathering at which we'd eat pancakes and quaff gallons of ale. Wags that we were, pancake batter was prepared, divided into different containers, and coloured with food dye. A roaring success, everyone ate and drank huge amounts, and we called time somewhere between 2 and 3, as 9:30 lectures were looming large.

At 5am the travel agent's alarm went off, dragging us back into consciousness. One of us saw the criminal leg it down Wandsworth Bridge Road, so we called the rozzers (none of us were in a particularly cogent frame of mind at the time), and two of London's finest dutifully turned up. We invited them into the kitchen, a scene of utter devastation; frying pans, half-emptied pancake batter containers, empty beer cans, scotch bottles, paper plates bearing bizarrely-coloured pancake remnants, and overflowing big black garbage bags. I'm reminded of the Spike Milligan line in one of his books about a place looking "like it had been bombed by unemptied Arab dustbins." And yes I've lived and traveled in the Middle East. It was Armageddon in that kitchen.

I still remember the senior of the two coppers looking around, licking the end of his pencil and saying in a very understated way, "so, students are we, lads?"

Thank heavens they never went beyond the kitchen. Passed out on the upstairs landing was a guest (hi Mike!) who had drunk of his fill, and passed out while urinating, falling backwards out of the tiny toilet, landing face-up and continuing to urinate, all over himself and the hall carpet. And sitting in the toilet bowl was something that I had been too proud to flush, fecal matter so brightly coloured (think neon green and bright yellow in equal measure) that I wanted to share it with all in the house.

And that place was nowhere near as bad as Philbeach Gardens, our home during our second year. A damp, rat-infested basement in Earls Court, land of murders (two in our year there), Australians, prostitutes and homosexuals. I'm still not sure which were the worst.


Long-time reader. First time contributor. Be gentle.
(IHaveComeAmongThee__Twice Tissues on the left. Self-esteem on the right., Tue 30 Mar 2010, 5:38, 1 reply)

For god's sake woman, don't do it!
Blah student blah ten boys in the house etc etc etc

My girlfriend stayed over most nights, and was suitably exasperated by the grotty fetidness us cock-sporters seemed happy to nest in.

Most of all though, she hated the shower.

It didn't seem too bad to the men of the house. A tiny room with a tiled floor, and a raised, pitted square to stand in and shower. No mats or rugs to worry about. The problem, though, was that after several months living there the water wasn't draining down the plughole. So by the end of your wash you'd be ankle deep in tepid water. My girlfriend found this repulsive, and resolved to fix it. How?

"I'll use a fork."

I'm actually starting to boke right now, remembering this.
A handful of us man-children crowded round the open doorway as my girlfriend, bright as a button and clad in marigolds, got down on her knees (steady ...), and confidently jabbed a dinner fork down the plughole. After a few inches it met resistance, so she pushed harder (just stop it, you filthy buggers), and whatever was down there slowly yielded to the prongs. My housemates and I just stared wordlessly, waiting. With grim determination, she started to twist the fork round and round, and if you listened, you could hear something happening – like a tiny wellington boot lifting itself out of some mud.

twist, squelch, twiiiiist, squeeeeelch ...

"Right, that should do it," she finally announced, and with us looking on silent with anxiety, she pulled on the fork. It started sliding up slowly at first, then all too quickly, it burst out with a plop, and my poor, helpful girlfriend was left squatting there holding ... something. It's still hard to compute to this day. Afterwards, over strong coffee and spliffs, we referred to it as "the Devil's pasta". It was definitely grey, and glistening. It was as though someone had put a large, rotting rat corpse through a mincer, then spent a good hour spitting snot over it, before helpfully forcing it into our plumbing and sealing it in with week-old spunk. It certainly smelt like this was the case.

That was the first and only time that I've seen an inanimate object make a grown-up puke. God bless her though, she went back and bagged it up. Us men couldn't help. We were hiding in our rooms within 30 seconds of that fucking thing seeing the light of day.
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 10:35, 4 replies)

My old flatmate is a lovely fella.
His approach to hygiene was, however, variously questionable and I often found myself having to remind him just what the basic expectations were.

Having grown tired of telling him and not wishing to linger in the bathroom in order to ensure he couldn't forget, I employed some help in my quest to guarantee a suitably flushed toilet was always to be awaiting my various waste.

Thus Mr. T became the guardian of our cistern, in poster form at least:



I needed never ask again.
( Moey, Tue 30 Mar 2010, 16:01, Reply)

My sister and step-sister...
...surreptitiously write the date in the dust on top of cabinets, under tables, etc. when they visit each other's houses, and then check up on them at their next visit.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Tue 30 Mar 2010, 12:17, 13 replies)

I'm not the cleanest of people but....
I'm generally ok with mess. Clothes on the floor, books and mags strune around the place, fine. I'm not quite so good with food mess. You know, crusty left overs with a cigarette stubed out in pool of glazed ketchup. No thank you.

Some of student friends, however, didn't share my values.

I went round to the house (let's call it the Palace as that, in their beautifully ironic wisdom, was what the 11 inhabitants called it) of some of my friends and it was a shithole. I mean really disgusting. 11 lads living in an old house with mould, mice and all manner of insects. With 9 of them being smokers and the windows not openable the place stank of stale smoke.

They also never wash up. Ever. The kitchin was huge yet the worksurfaces were completely crammed with old plates, saucepans, etc.
To begin with they just kept buying new plates, but as room was running out/the cost got too high they moved on to buying paper plates.

This particular time that I visited, however was right at the end of term and loans were all but gone. I was asked if I wanted some toast, and, having said yes was duly bought a plate of headed bread munchables.

Yet it wasn't a paper plate, oh no. They had gone for a much cheaper option. My toast was delivered to me on a plate covered in the remains of some ancient meal: crusts half dipped in harden sauces; mushrooms, srivelled and leaking foul juices; and mould. the whole plate was covered in white and blue mould. I may have been happy about that if I was discovering penacillin, but as I just want toast....

All that seperated my food from this monstrosity was a layer of cling film. Yes. They had reached that point where every meal was eaten on a layer of cling film separateing it from the merky remains of meals past. God knows how they cut their food with out piercing the film. I never asked. I didn't want to know.

I also never ate round their house again.
(ab1kenobe, Mon 29 Mar 2010, 12:06, 4 replies)

this is the tip of the iceberg.
my housemate/landlord/buddy finally tracked down the cause of the sporadic small puddle in the middle of the upstairs bathroom floor- a slight drip from the cold water inlet pipe to the cistern.
he decided to sort it out, man-style with molegrips. when this precipitated a more insistent drip, he wrapped an old towel round it, and said nothing, instead opting to come out to london with us.

upon returning home to my downstairs bedroom, at 4 am, wanting bed, i was unable to get the light to turn on. assuming a blwon bulb i stepped into the room, to hear a squelch.
as it transpired, the water had been pissing through the ceiling for some time, rendering some, ooh, let me see, six or seven YEARS worth of design work in portfolios under the bed and sketchbook and negatives and prints and stuff TOTALLY FUCKED. also taking a hit for the team- my mattress, bedding, curtains, carpet, etc.
the house insurers EVENTUALLY fixed it, however, for a year, i had a ceiling that looked like a tramp's gusset, and clumps of fungus growing out of it.
my favourite one looked remarkably like the ear they grew on a mouse some years back.
click if you think i should punch him in the cock.
(UppityDamnPrimate LET'S OPEN THIS F*CKING PIT UP, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 17:34, Reply)

U bend mushrooms
Back in the days of our student flat hygiene was an optional quality.

One day we noticed a mushroom growing on the U-bend coming out the back of the toilet.

Rather than clean up we named him "Horace" and would water him with warm water to keep him alive. Was still there when we moved out a year later :)
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 11:13, 2 replies)

Wipe your feet on the way out...
I'd driven for hours to meet up with a journalist, covering a story in deepest, darkest back end of nowhere. It was late, the rain was hammering down and it was looking like I was facing a night in a b&b.

I was only there on 'standby.' The way it generally works is this: Journo knocks the door and asks for an interview/quote. I was there to take pics if they agreed, and copy any pictures relevant that might be to the story. Stereotypical tabloid journalism.
Very often it ends up in a polite no thanks and a door firmly shut in the face. Usually journo gets a quick quote, but nothing in depth and I just sit there picking my nose. Sometimes you get invited in and get the story, pictures, coffee etc...

We got the last scenario.

The house was cluttered, obviously well lived in, but generally tidy. A dog was barking in another room and I was being given death stares by the slightly neanderthal looking teenage son of the woman being interviewed. I made myself look busy, putting camera gear together as the interview was wrapped up. I was slightly worried about another possible scenario. The one where you get locked in someones house and get your head kicked in...

...interview got finished. Things got handed over to me. All I could think about was not getting a kicking closely followed by finding a pub... I got on with my thing...

"Sit there. *click* Look at me. *clickclick* Hands like this. Hands like that. *click* Now stand there. *clickclickclick* Cross your legs. That's it, keep looking at me. *clickclick* Fold your arms. Hang on, I just need to change my lens..."

...And as I took the two paces over to my bag, I slipped. The unmistakable slip I remember from being eight years old and walking to school. The kind of slip that usually ended in me being called 'pooshoe' for the eternity that was a schoolday. A full on, foot long, skidmark on carpet inducing, balance destroying slip.

I looked down at my foe. On either side of the greasy brown smear stood what remained of possibly the biggest dog egg I had ever seen. A considerable amount still clung to my shoe, and now the 'skin' was broken the smell hit. The room went quiet for a second, only to be broken by my colleague starting to retch.

"Big dog you've got then?" was all I could think of to say...
( TheMattInAHat has a particular... odour..., Thu 25 Mar 2010, 22:10, 1 reply)

so there...
so there we all were, playing some wii,
reclining and relaxed, students all three.
"I'm parched, am I" said G to me,
as she reached for the mug that she could see.
The mug was on the 'sill right by the bed,
that place each night where G laid her head.

mug went to lips, but fell just as quick
as the jaw on the girl; "she's gonna be sick".
With hand over lips and eye's open wide,
we all crowded round to look inside.
I can never unsee that thing I did see,
a mouse doing breaststroke in a mug of cold tea.
(gr33npeace, Tue 30 Mar 2010, 11:43, 2 replies)

as a letting agent, which i was during uni and for a bit afterwards,
you get to see some truly horrendous things. the way some people choose to live is beyond baffling. for sheer simplicity, my favourite was the three brothers in fallowfield who didn't take kindly to being turfed out at the end of their lease because their landlady was moving back in. she rang me in tears the next day. the dirty bastards had all shat on the floor and wiped their arses on the curtains. which is unspeakably vile. but the worst thing was that our inventory checker had put "house clean and tidy throughout"... try explaining that away...

in the days before digital cameras, we would have about 20 films a week to develop. boots must have thought we were seriously dull because there would be about 10 photos of a carpet burn, 5 photos of a cracked worktop, etc. so one day i was in manchester county court doing my first ever residential possession hearing. the tenants were a pair of druggies that made trainspotting look restrained. their flat was so unbelievably foul that we actually had to get environmental health to clear it when they went. i was very nervous as it was my first ever court hearing (and this was back in the days when i was an idealistic english student who was never ever going to sell her soul to the law for filthy cash... sigh...) but all went well.

however, on the way out of the court, i was still a bit shaky with nerves. those county court judges can be total twats sometimes (like the one who announced to me in full hearing of a public possession hearing "miss swipe. stop for the love of everything. YOU are an express train. and neither i, nor i suspect any of this court, am on board." or the one who said, "well that means miss swipe will be working overnight tonight then, doesn't it? a matter of supreme indifference to this court". i could go on. the upshot is, they are often horrible to you!) the most gorgeous guy in manchester held the door open for me as i left the court. he was like my very own mills and boon perfect hero, all stubble and dark hair and piercing blue eyes. our eyes met. he smiled. i swooned. and dropped my file.

"oh, allow me," he said, dropping chivalrously to his knees. and picking up my scattered photos. glancing idly at them as he picked them up. and finding himself staring right at the business end of a toilet that was actually hairy with sticky pubes and glistening with a mountain of effluent that rose way above the seat height. the shower photo was almost worse. prince charming practically threw the file back in my face and shot through the courtroom doors like the greasiest of greasy weasels. never saw that one again!

we also had a complete stoner who banned us from carrying out viewings at his flat, despite having been given the relevant 24 hours' contractual notice. he rang me and said, "you can't come in. i am out, but i have barricaded the front door. so you can cancel those people." "oh," i said politely. "mind my asking how you got out?" "yeah," he replied, "i just went out the back door." when the viewing staff got in (through the back door, naturally), he was growing marijuana in the lounge, and clearly had never ever washed up a single thing in his entire 12 month tenancy. there was also a shit encrusted vibrator lying in the kitchen sink.

i do miss that job sometimes!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Sat 27 Mar 2010, 14:37, 1 reply)

Vacuuming.
My house is reasonably clean but I hate vacuuming with a passion, I always have and I always will. It’s noisy and stressful and I always think I can hear the phone ringing or somebody calling my name, so I stop to investigate but it’s always just my brain messing with me. To do it properly you have to move all the furniture and go around the edges with that horrible bendy hose attachment thing that sucks itself to the carpet and devours any curtains foolish enough to get in the way…and that’s just one room done, you have to do upstairs…oh god the stairs…more horrible bendy attachment thing that makes the pfffut-pfffut-pfuttt noise because it wants to eat the carpet not clean it and is that my mobile ringing? Need to stop and check but I can’t find the damn thing because I’ve turned the living room upside-down vacuuming and nothings where it should be.

And that’s vacuuming.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 25 Mar 2010, 15:05, 7 replies)

Clean house? Honestly, living with my girlfriend is like living with Howard Hughes
Not that the house is particularly clean. She just poos in jars and never cuts her hair or nails. She also built the world's biggest plane out of wood once. The mad bastard that she is.
(Crayola Oblongata Is it Monday?, Thu 25 Mar 2010, 15:05, 1 reply)