PinkyB

Was that Sylvia Young, KK? Did you harbour dreams of West End stardom and a starring role in Rent? (I'd cross Dane Bowyers off that list if I were you, mind)

Did he carry on teaching? It always really annoys me those people who say that it won't change their life, they'll just have a nice little holiday or get some new tyres for the car and then put the rest in the bank. I hope he went into school the next day and told them to stick their job, he was going off to live in Tuscany in a massive villa and sod the lot of them. Or race ride-on lawnmowers around his country estate like "Lottery Lout" Michael Carroll.

Katie "Jordan" Price was two years below me at secondary school, and somewhat more surreally, legendary consumptive filth-mongering fin-de-siecle artist Aubrey Beardsley went to my sixth form college (although it was a boys' grammar school then). Jordan & Aubrey Beardsley, there's a conversation I'd like to listen in on...

You mean biscuit recipes, HS. Or you'll run foul of the people on the Tiny Little Things thread who are raging about creeping Americanisms.* * to be fair, I'm entirely in agreement on that one. Stop using "ass" when you mean "arse", journalists! Gosh, this thread really has strayed far from its original purpose, hasn't it?

What's Aggborough soup when it's at home, Michael P? It sounds rather like a eupemism for something disgusting.

Ooh, Hellosailor, consider your wrists firmly slapped by teacher!

Me: 70% the sea 17% bad puns 8% tea (milk, one sugar) 2% mad curly hair 2% unnecessary swearing 1% interest in Vikings

Ha ha ha! Sorry, shouldn't laugh, but that really is a terrible flatsharing story. poor you! Did remind me though (how could I have forgotten?) of the Aussie bloke I once shared a house with in Bethnal Green who failed to pay the rent for a couple of months, then invited a selection of Aussie mates to stay and crash on our floor, whereupon they used our phone to call home, ate our food, and spent the whole time whinging about how unfriendly and rude the English were, despite that we were putting them up for free in our house. The last straw came on the day they went to the British Museum and accused us personally of being responsible for the stealing of the Elgin marbles from their homeland. ("You English are such bastards!") After two long weeks of putting up with this shit they finally departed for Paris, along with aforementioned flatmate (who still hadn't paid any rent). We then rang his office to find out what day he was due back, only to find out that he didn't actually work there anymore and had been fired under suspicious circumstances several weeks earlier. Clearly he had every intention of buggering off and never paying us the rent. So we a) used a hairpin to break into his room, b) changed the locks on the front door and stacked all his belongings up in the front hall, c) got my flatmate's massive scary-looking brother to come and open the door when Andy the Aussie sponger returned and found that for some mysterious reason his key didn't work, and d) refused to give him any of his belongings back until he gave us cash for the rent he owed us as well as the cost of a new Yale lock for the front door. He cried like a baby, the pathetic little liar. Still, if one good thing came out of the experience, it's that I now know that, if push came to shove, I could open a locked door with a hairpin and a bit of wiggling.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/8065408.stm I particularly like the guy who sounds like Speedy Gonzales. "I tried gel, I tried wax..."

I have lived in... BN3 LE3 LE1 LE1 again LE1 again BN3 again SW17 NW10 E2 EC2 E7 N7 N10 SE23 SE22 SE23 again Most of 'em I wouldn't even fly over in a plane and drop water on if they were on fire.

Excellent news, I'll get out my long lens! Holiday home in Tahiti, here I come...

Everyone I've ever met has equally bad or even worse stories than me - I just figure that it's inevitable in London. Even the ones that start off fine usually go to shit eventually. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that. A friend of mine got so fed up with it she moved to Brighton into a studio flat on her own, whereupon she promptly discovered she was living under a bloke who liked to play Mariah Carey's Christmas album every Saturday night for hours on end. You really can't win!

As a spin-off to my current complaining about a noisy neighbour on the Tiny Little Things... thread, this rather reminded me that the worst neighbours of all are the ones that live inside your house. 15 years of flatsharing in London and elsewhere means I've had more than my fair share of crap flatmates over the years. There was the bloke who attempted to solve a mouse problem by catching a hapless mouse, pouring lighter fuel over it, and setting fire to it. There was the girl who failed to tell me, when I moved in, that the house had a bedbug infestation which would lead, within only 3 months, to me having to throw most of my belongings into a skip and owing the bank ?2,000 which took me nearly two years to pay back. Worst decision I ever made, to move into that flat. There was the bloke in the room directly above mine who played computer games loudly all night and every night and never slept. There was the girl who because it was "her" TV, used to come in from work, and whatever you were watching, grab the remote control and change the channel to what she wanted to watch without even bothering to ask you if you minded. The same girl was obsessed with her new car, and used to stand by the window all bloody evening curtain-twitching and making a running commentary. ("There's some kids playing football. if that gets anywhere near my car I'll bloody smack them one.") There was the girl who used to leave her bank statements lying about so we could see how sensible she was with money compared to us, and also used to define how good an evening she had on how little money she'd spent. ("I only spent ?2.50, it was brilliant!") There was the bloke who had his incredibly thick and annoying girlfriend to stay all weekend every weekend, upon which they would commandeer first the kitchen for mass cooking sessions, and then the front room for snogging, meaning that every one else was basically confined to their room all weekend. There were the 2 girls who were obsessed with the X Files, and used to insist on unplugging the phone, shutting all the curtains and lighting candles ("for atmosphere") every week when the programme was on. If you such much as attempted to boil the kettle to make a cuppa during sacred X Files hour, you'd get yelled at. ("Turn that off! The X Files is on!") Oh, yeah, and there was the bloke with the drum kit. ('nuff said, i think!) There are others as well, i'm sure I'll remember them later on. Any advance on bedbug girl?

Ah, but he keeps coming back. I imagine because both of them are such appalling individuals that no-one else will put up with them. The man-hating whiner probably puts in a late-night booty call and the weak-minded fool comes a-running, guitar in hand. Perhaps she only puts out for a bit of Bob Marley. I don't like to think about it, to be honest. It's clearly a deeply sick and twisted relationship they have going on. And BBW: that was roughly 46736928522895628499999 times better than what I have to listen to.

My dad used to buy Brains faggots about once a week in the early 80s. They weren't very nice, surprisingly. Also: tinned mixed fruit (a solitary-half cherry, some grapes, and a couple of slices of peach and pear) with either condensed milk or powdered custard. The most exotic thing I think I'd ever tasted until I was about 16 was one of those packets of dried curry-flavoured rice with a couple of raisins and dried peppers in it. We used to have it as an extra vegetable. Watery cabbage, generic meat in gravy, a potato, and curry-flavoured rice. Mm-mm.

Tempting to go at her with the hosepipe, KK, but let's face it, if appealing to common decency (and shouting out of the window at her to "shut the fck up, it's half past fcking three!") hasn't make a difference in 5 years, I rather think we are dealing with the kind of person who is liable to throw shit over your fence in response. Did I mention that she is sometimes accompanied in her all-night whinging sessions by a bloke who only knows one song on the guitar ("No Woman No Cry") and insists on playing it ad finitum, despite the fact that his guitar-playing abilities are somewhat akin to a five year old on their first ever lesson, and his singing is not much better. I have a feeling he might be the idiot ex. There is not much worse than being kept awake by someone performing inept reggae in the wee small hours.

The selfish whiney Scottish bitch who, having kept half the neighbourhood awake til gone 1 a.m by sitting in her garden banging on about how crap men are and her idiot ex whilst apparently knocking back most of a bottle of a gin, decides it would be a good idea to continue the discussion at 7.30 on a Sunday morning. This woman is the single reason I dread the summer every year (five fricking years she's been doing this - costing me a fortune in ear plugs and many lost nights sleep) Hurry up and drink yourself to death, you selfish pathetic dullard.

Going on a day trip to the seaside where the weathermen have promised there will definitely be dreadful rain all day, and in fact you get beautiful blue sky, sunshine and scudding clouds... and a 99 on the beach.

Day trips to the seaside! Even today, when it's apparently going to piss down all day. We will just hide in a little seafront caff and drink tea and eat stale buns as the rain lashes the windows, and come home with our skin tasting of salt and our pockets loaded with pebbles...

No problem, and thanks. (although if I could delete the thread I still would, mainly on behalf of the person who posted the original thread). I don't think there ought to be any crossover between this and your thread - this is about shit stuff you like but know you shouldn't, whereas yours is about lovely wonderful stuff and spreading joy throughout the universe. (and I still can't see your link!)

Oh, for f&CUK's sake! I specifically did a forum search as well. Oh, well. I guess there's nothing new in the universe. Should I cancel the thread? Actually, CAN you cancel a thread? Admin, are you still awake? Can I delete this please? Extraneous to purpose! Sigh. Drums fingers. No, I can't think of anything else good, might as well just give up and go to bed with my well-thumbed copy of Harry Potter 6...

Bah, my computer warned me not to open the attachment, and the link doesn't work! Can't you give me a hint?

Stuff you know you probably shouldn't enjoy but secretly do... I am far too old for but secretly enjoy the TV series The Inbetweeners, about four filthy seventeen year old boys at a crappy suburban sixth form college. I will even admit to having a little bit of a crush on Jay, even though I am now officially old enough to be his mum. (damn!) Shipwrecked on T4. Good to watch the beautiful vacuous fools sobbing and wailing in a misery-pond of their own creation. I own and have read all 7 of the Harry Potter books. Book 6 is my favourite. Yes, I actually have a favourite Harry Potter book. Countryfile, with John Craven. Oh, and Come Dine With Me marathons, but I think that's now a universal guilty pleasure.

Nah, tis there merely for comparison purposes. The first one is only such a pleasure because of the numerous times the second one has occurred instead. Wake up, usual sense of mounting dread, turn over - surprise! "free" extra hour and a half in bed! But if you want an unconditional joy, how about when you're lying in bed in the dark, all cosy and warm, and it's raining really hard outside? Oh, and it's the weekend. Not all of my joys are sleep-related, I should say. Quite a lot of them are, though. One of the simplest and greatest of pleasures. And now I'm making myself yawn...

Fine with me, Mick Mac, I live in Honor Oak anyway! (runs away giggling)