Trisha was, without doubt, the worst housemate I’ve ever had. When I think of her, I damn the ludicrously inflated property values that left me at the mercy of this lottery, that force me to share my home with strangers. Sure, I’ve met some great people through houseshares, but mostly it’s been two-legged nightmares wearing human faces like masks. There was the guy who used to get drunk and try and get into my room late at night, the graduate chemist who smoked the place out with homemade fireworks and kept brewing up great reeking batches of something in the bath (I never found out what), the conceptual artist who would ask the kitchen’s Instanator for stuff like fifty-seven blue marzipan cupcakes and two-score mock spare ribs to make some kind of installation, so that it would be tied up for four hours solid and the Deli-Paks were always running out (I mean, I hate Instanator food anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing), the alcoholic who ran up a £700 phone bill and left without paying it, the cokehead who decided to remodel the kitchen with a lump-hammer… and then there was Trisha. Trisha and her toys. Read the rest of this entry »