Reason 3: Because arson isn’t fun

I was living in London with three guys, two of whom were a couple. Everything was fine in out three bedroom terrace, and we all got along well. We kept out of each other’s way when we needed to, everyone was fairly neat, tidy, polite and considerate. Life was good.

And then the couple broke up.

And all hell broke losse.

There were screaming matches in the kitchen, crying scenes in the loungeroom, even passionate begging to be taken back in the driveway. Life was not so good anymore. And I wasn’t even one part of the ex-couple.

Neither person of the now terrible ex-couple wanted to move out so often the arguments were over things like who was moving, or why they weren’t, or whose friends were allowed to call who and why. You know the deal. I got to the stage where the other non-ex-couple flatmate and I were staying out of the house as long as we could at nights to avoid the two terrors. The local pub would have loved the extra custom it was getting from us each evening as we did what we could to put off going home as long as possible.

One night, I was so tired from all the sleepless nights caused by endless arguments, as well as having to stay out of my own house. It has been three weeks and my flatmate and I had put our foot down – one of these two had to go. We didn’t care who it was. But it had to happen quickly. I retired to my room early with a bowl of pot noodle for my dinner. I was determined to get an early night no matter what.

In my room, I could hear music coming from the floor below (the ex-couple’s room), and I think I could make out that it was a Smiths song. Someone was obviously depressed. I had polished off my pot noodle and was reading in bed when I heard a loud banging noise coming from downstairs. It sounded like someone was slapping the wall or the floor. “Jesus,” I thought to myself, “that’s all I need – a mad flatmate!”

The banging continued for a while, until I decided that I had better go and find out what part of his body he was banging against the wall. I made my way downstairs and saw smoke gently coming from underneath the bedroom door. What the hell?

I pushed open the door to find one of my flatmates using a rolled up pair of jeans to slap at the flames. “What happened?” I yelled as I grabbed the closest thing to me to do the same.

“I don’t know,” came the unbelievable response. “Someone must have come up here and started a fire.”

There wasn’t really time to question the audacity of his response as we worked hard to put out the fire. Then we heard sirens. A fire truck pulled up and helped us, thankfully, extinguish the last of the flames, before the room, and parts of the house were destroyed. Then there was another siren. The police arrived.

In hindsight, my flatmate wasn’t very smart to move all of his possessions out of the room he shared with his now ex-lover. The police were mighty suspicious of the story that a random stranger had broken into the house, run up to the first floor, gathered all of one person’s possessions into a pile, and set fire to it.

Needless to say, I didn’t get an early night. And I moved out the next day.

Reason 2: Because you’re expected to remember the names of their lovers

I lived in a share house with 5 people. Not something I would recommend to any sanity-loving soul, but when you are a poor backpacker, or poor student, or even a poor new-to-the-work-force worker, it’s a means to an end. And this one wasn’t so bad. A couple of guys, a couple of girls, we were all pretty easy to get along with. Especially reason 2. She was very easy to get along with. And she was very easy.

So easy, infact, that she had a number of male companions. Male companions, as my grandmother would call them, lovers/shags/boyfriends, as the rest of us would call them, depending on your moral standards. And when they were there, Reason 2 treated them all like they were the only one in her lives. And she told us to do the same.

One morning, after a particularly heavy night, Reason 2 came downstairs with man A (I couldn’t remember all their names then, I sure as hell can’t remember them all now!). “Good morning, Man A!” was the overwhelming response from the small horde gathered buttering toast in the kitchen.

A day later, Man B came downstairs. “Good morning, Man B!” was heard echoing off the refridgerator and microwave.

The next morning, the same happened with Man C.

Now, we all liked, ALL three men. Like, really, really liked them. And even if we didn’t particularly agree with what Reason 2 was doing, we liked having the individuals around, so went along with it. And this went on for months and months. Months and months and months of us lying for her, telling the boys we didn’t know where she was when she was upstairs with one of the others.. you get the idea..

One morning though, we hit a spot of bother. One of the (mor innattentive) flatmates had had a particularly bad night and when Man A ventured down the stairs to get toast for himself and Reason 2, the flatmate called “G’day Man B, how are you?”

Man B? You mean Man A’s best friend Man B – oh wait, I hadn’t mentioned that A, B and C all knew each other, had I?!?! Nor that the only reason we knew any of them was the way we shouldn’t – that the flatmate kept bringing them home.

Those of us who had had a coffee and were a wee bit more alert, tried desperately to slink out of the room as the gravity of what had happened sunk in. The inept flatmate stammered, “Sorry, Man A, did I say Man B? I meant Man A…”

Man A was quicker than that though.. quicker up the stairs that is.. and within seconds, a screaming match erupted up the stairs.

Long story short, the flatmate’s whole world came crumbling down and before we knew it, she was down stairs, screaming at each and every one of us about how stupid we all were for ruining the good thing she was on. She moved out, boy-less, less than three days later.

Reason 1: The smartest people are sometimes the dumbest

I lived with a doctor. Not a medic, but a guy with a PhD in electro-chemical engineering.. or something. Whatever it was, it sounded impressive.

So Reason 1 was a nice guy. A tall, goodlooking English bloke who was always out, having fun, pulling chicks, running amok as anyone would expect from someone on an overseas holiday. He was nice to have in the flat.

One day, I came home to find Reason 1 bent over the kitchen table, scribbling a note to me before he left for his shift at a local pub. When he saw me, he looked somewhat panicked, and I asked him what was wrong.

“Er..” he stammered, “I.. er.. I broke your vaccuum cleaner.”

OK. My $400 super deluxe vaccuum cleaner. Not happy, but really, not that big a deal. No-one was dead. “How?”

“Well, I was in the shower, and I was drinking a glass of water, and-” I had to interrupt at this point.

“Sorry, what?” Is it just me, or did this sound a teensy, weensy bit odd? I figured I should let this slide as I wanted to get to the vaccuum cleaner bit.

“Well, I was in shower, drinking a glass of water. And I dropped the glass. So I tried to vaccuum it up. And the vaccuum, I don’t know, exploded?”

Right.. “So, you took a vaccuum with a live, powerful-enough-to-kill-you electrical current into the shower to vaccuum up.. water? No surprises it exploded. “

“Oh, I never thought of that. Wow, I could have killed myself.”

“Um. Yeah.”

And with that he left for work. I never got my vaccuum cleaner replaced. But hey, I guess I didn’t have a dead flatmate on my hands.