Waiting at a pedestrian crossing, I saw a flyer taped to a pole with the fluttery phone numbers to tear off. Someone was looking for a flatmate. The big sell on the ad was that no-one was “sleeping on the balcony or in the living room”. Well there’s a bonus. Fark, imagine bedding down on the balcony each night. Cosy. Another fluttery ad sought someone “social” to share a room with a lovely European girl. Husband thought that sounded more appealing. The whole flatmate thing is pretty weird when you think about it. Especially the sharing with strangers bit. The thought of shuffling myself and my dearest possessions into someone else’s home, let alone someone else’s room … it creeps me out like St Vinnies shoes. I never did it, wasn’t brave enough. I’ve always lived with friends or family. It’s generally worked pretty well. Apart from one time my sister bared her forearm at me and growled, “What do you want from me? Blood?” There was also a little tension when I was unemployed and waved a new pair of boots at my co-habitating friends. Terse words were uttered about extravagance when others were shouldering my burden. But mostly it was pretty harmonious. Husband, on the other hand, came from the country and got his fair share of crazy when answering “flatmate wanted” ads. He turned up to a flat-share interview once and there was a sheet strung across a corner of the lounge room. A middle-aged bloke stuck his head out and gave a cheery “hello!” Husband thought, I’m desperate but I’m not that desperate. And then he met me. I bought a place with a bikie gang clubhouse over the fence, he moved in and got to put up with our brand of crazy instead. Fortunately he’s never woken up in the middle of the night to find me screaming and trying to strangle him (or the bikies wanting to string him up for represented our street at a council meeting to prevent them Fort Knoxing their new premises) because I just can’t take it anymore (like my grandmother did to my grandfather once, my sister and I just lay wide-eyed in the dark listening, quite the dramatic way to spend your school holidays). Mind you, there’s still time.
C’mon, I’ve totally missed out, so tell me your flatmate horror stories …
housegoeshome 
I was always too poor to share – struggling classical musician, the worst kind – actually I’m 36 years old and don’t think I have ever offically moved out of my mum’s house, although I do live in Sweden now…
Did your whole family move there?
No, I was the only stewpid one…
Aaaaah, memories of shared houses! One of the funniest ones was a Toorak maissonette…a classy old 3 storey semi-detached mini-mansion with five bedrooms.
Top floor was home to myself and the lead tenant who was a toupee-wearingTelecom clerk with a Filipina ex-wife that he drove to her escort gigs so she could earn money to pay off the $10K credit card debt she left him with! The other room was occupied by a dope-growing uni student whose crop lived on the back stairs.
The next level down was the living area and kitchen, off which lived the always drunk Hungarian waiter who liked to cook goulash with bulk chilli powder at 2 am! The clerk’s ex-wife arranged a marriage to one of her girlfriends with this guy…for a fee, of course!
In the end, it all got a bit too complicated, and risky for the reputation of a soon-to-be Liquor Licensed Hotel Manager (the dope was a major concern!) so I bailed after 18 months!
There was the old timber terrace in Zaara St, Newcastle East where I had a female housemate who never washed her clothes…they were ankle deep on her bedroom floor and she used to search through them for the “cleanest” things to wear! Then the dishes started to pile up in the kitchen sink. She didn’t last long…
And after that came another female housemate in a Stephenson Place terrace, around the corner from Zaara St, who I introduced to my brother…they ended up married! Apparently, my brother used to climb up the downpipe from the backyard to visit her during the night and I never knew!
Then there was Jacqui, who I shared a house with in Richmond when I first moved to Victoria. We were housemates for a year or more and we were a good team, entertaining and socialising with a large circle of her friends who became mine, as well. After a particularly boozy progressive dinner evening we found ouselves in each others’ arms in the kitchen and ended up getting married! Sadly, we are no longer married but we are still friends.
How about the white witch who had a little altar in her room? All sorts of odd smells and noises would come wafting down the stairs. She used to burn the crap out of my frypans, too (how that worshipped The Mother, I’m yet to figure out!)! I put up with it for a couple of years until I asked her to leave because I wanted to set up a home-office.
Oh, there were many, many more…some other time, perhaps! 🙂
Yay, I can always rely on you Geoff to come through with the goods. That’s all very John Birmingham of you. Almost makes me wish I’d been more adventurous so I had those sort of stories to tell! So would you recommend the hotel manager thing? Do you mean pub or hotel? Keep dreaming about opening a wine bar.
Heheheh…I reckon you’ve had a good life without the excitement, or otherwise, of house-sharing!
I ran several Residential Hotels over the years.
Dunno how you’d fare in a Gunfighters’ Rest scenario!
And BTW, it wasn’t a gay bar in my disco daze…or was it? 🙂
Did you think those guys were just buying you Dingo Danglers because you were a top bloke?