Thee Flatmate Ritual

STN

sou'wester
I like these little rituals that evolve between cohabitants. Me and my old flatmate used to do this thing called flamingo fighting where you hop around shrieking and slapping each other until one of you puts a foot down, losing the fight.

My current one is that we brush our teeth vigorously with Euthymol, then gargle loads of listerine while leaping about and howling to see who can stand it the longest.

I know it's pathetic and I don't care; you can easily call up happy memories by thinking about a flatmate ritual.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
In my last place we had this hilarious routine going where my housemates would not pay any bills or rent and I would think about killing them. It was jokes.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I've alwauys avoided doing rituals with flatmates, it never goes well.

You'll both be standing there, naked, in the middle of a huge circle - trying to invoke gilgamesh. And then they'll start banging on about how you haven't done the washing up and the gas bill is due and their new girlfriend is coming round later to watch a DVD of "Sex In The City" so can you clean that blood off the walls and piss off out down the pub?
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
These semi-historical demi-gods eh? All piss and wind.

When I was living with flatmates the ritual seemed to revolve around the 4PM pot of tea.
 

STN

sou'wester
I had a flatmate who was appalled that I had my teenage copy of the satanic bible in the house on the grounds that it might invoke evil spirits. We didn't do many rituals, though my mate did come to visit and puked on the washing up.
 

mos dan

fact music
flamingo fighting sounds lots of fun.

my new housemates have a ritual of veggie turkish breakfast every sunday morning, which commences as soon as someone's been out to get the hallumi/flatbread/hummus/etc (it's a recreation of z bar's 'set 8' meal) - and, say this is as early as 9am, well, everyone has to get up and eat. there is no choice - even if you just got in from raving at 6. if you are not present at the table after a few friendly shouts up the stairs, you get a full group rendition (probably inaccurate, certainly borderline offensive) of an imam's call to prayer, increasingly loudly until you emerge, hungover and bleary-eyed, to join the festivities.

in my old house we invented this game using the otherwise pointless 'video calling' function on our mobile phones, it was basically a modern day version of 'knightmare'. we strapped one phone to player 1's forehead, facing outwards, and then blindfolded him completely. player 2 and 3 would sit in the living room and 'video call' player 1's phone, then use his 'phone eye' to guide him around the kitchen, picking things up, occasionally deliberately making him walk into doors, and so on.

and yes, we were all about 26 at the time and university educated. whatofit? ;-)
 
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STN

sou'wester
Knightmare was so rad.

Z Bar set 12 is a boss Turkish breakfast.

Me and the other flamingo used to have these elaborate attempts to get one another with ye olde buckette of watere above ye doore trick. We lived with four women at the time and it frequently backfired and caught us a telling-off.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
My old flatmates also used to do this ritual where they would get up 3 hours after I had gone to work, smoke themselves catatonic and then fill up the kitchen sink with washing up.

This is probably for another thread but the quote I remember the most is "oh! Why are you cleaning? Are your parents coming round or something?"

I don't think I'd be able to live with people again if my current situation went tits up...
 

mos dan

fact music
My old flatmates also used to do this ritual where they would get up 3 hours after I had gone to work, smoke themselves catatonic and then fill up the kitchen sink with washing up.

This is probably for another thread but the quote I remember the most is "oh! Why are you cleaning? Are your parents coming round or something?"

I don't think I'd be able to live with people again if my current situation went tits up...

lol/shudder. this is part of the reason i was very happy to spend the first few years post-uni living with christians.. it meant if anyone was going to get fucked/fall over/have mates over being loud and obnoxious til all hours, it was me. what do you mean, selfish?
 

mms

sometimes
My old flatmates also used to do this ritual where they would get up 3 hours after I had gone to work, smoke themselves catatonic and then fill up the kitchen sink with washing up.

This is probably for another thread but the quote I remember the most is "oh! Why are you cleaning? Are your parents coming round or something?"

I don't think I'd be able to live with people again if my current situation went tits up...

I lived in a house with several electronic musicians who woke up in the evening, would work loudly throughout the night and a guy who slept on his sofa in his room, until it got fleas and that. he had two other strange characteristics, coming back from a club and smashing out music until the bloke downstairs came up and tried to kill him, the other hing was walking into the kitchen and literally re-messing it up if anyone cooked anything or kept it clean, he lived on ham and pineapple pizza he ordered in.

The thing that really woke me up was the pigeons under the floor boards, things reached a head with that when bugs started dropping through the light fittings.

The land lady would come round and scream ' i want money i want money' while her 12 year old son would translate her Turkish for her and everyone who didn't get caught in the crossfire would hide upstairs.

The only ritual we had would be to go to inappropriate night clubs for a laugh really, a bunch of scruffy bastards in a local garage club or Brazilian club, we stood out, often being forced to leave when our 'outsider status' became too much for the locals.
 

STN

sou'wester
This morning my flatmate hurled his dirty boxers into my face. Last week he burst into my room and started pulling my clothes out of the wardrobe and hurling them around while dancing and howling 'clothes clothes clothes clothes'. Tomorrow I'm going to coin the bastard in his bed.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
one old flatmate ritual involved one of my old flatmates who would routinely leave the gas cooker on. or leave his dishes in the living room then piss off back to his room. or play D&B fucking loud when it was time to go to sleep. the next ritual, only conducted by me, would involve me taking all his dirty dishes and piling them under his bed. or walking into his room and switching the hi-fi off.

ahh good times. :D
 
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