I knew the title would get your attention!
A couple of years ago when I lived in Ivy house in Burley - just before Lucy moved in, my housemate, a civil engineer and myself had to find a replacement for another guy who had moved out to live with his girlfriend.
We went through the painful process of advertising on easyroommate.com in order to find a suitable replacement. We got a large number of responses, largely due to how good the house looked (once we tidied it up and took photos) and how ridiculously cheap the rent was (the landlord not having upped the rent in the previous seven years).
A few people looked around. Some we didn't like the look of (such as the guy who came round in the "I hate girls" t-shirt), and some didn't like the look of us. One of the primary considerations for selecting a new housemate had to be that said person was agreeable to our respective partners and their respective jealousies (one being worse than the other!).
This is why when we had a subdued, kind of geeky looking teacher come and look round, slightly ill as she was just recovering from tonsilitis at the time - we thought ... perfect, there is no way there can be any jealousies about this one!
So she moved into our spare room. And this is where things began to get a little strange.
Our new housemate seemed pretty chatty and nice at first, though our girlfriends developed a dislike to her instantly as she almost refused to talk to other females.
It was in the summer holidays at the time and our new housemate wasn't going to work. She seemed to go out quite a bit partying at the time and she would leave the house (with some anonymous bloke picking her up in an old bashed up red saloon) at around 11pm running out the door with nobody seeing her - not to return until around 5 in the morning. When we asked if whe had a good night and where she went, she would reply 'oh I just went for a few drinks in the Marriot' or 'I went to meet a friend at the Jury's Inn'.
This struck us as a little strange as in Leeds it is not common to go for a night out in a hotel bar, particularly the Jurys Inn which is a fair walk out of the city centre . What struck us as a little more strange was that when we finally spotted her leaving the house we noticed that our normally short haired housemate would go out wearing the longest hair extensions you have ever seen. These things were literally about a metre long! And fishnet stockings.
Ok, so she had a dubious dress sense, but we were fairly open minded people.
Then there were the photos. At first they were just enlarged glamour shots that she had decided to put up all around her bedroom. Glamour shots of herself in her underwear or some such atire.
Ok, so she like to look at photos of herself. We could live with it. Ok, so she also had post-it notes printed up with photos of herself in varoius states of undress in her handbag for handing out ... she wants to be a model - no problem with that.
My civil engineer housemate did, however feel a little uncomfortable when she asked his opinion on topless photos of herself and which ones should go into her portfolio. Not because he was embarassed, but more because his girlfriend would have ripped his head off if she had found out.
When the penny finally dropped was after a month or so, when our new housemate began to use the civil engineers computer to go on the internet. Ever a resourceful guy, the engineer would look at his history and find out where she had been. Aside from a few websites I would rather not mention, she had been looking in the main at one of her own design.
It was a profile page - it wasn't her name on the profile, but we clearly recognised one of the photos, with a blurred out face from those which adorned her bedroom wall. the page was filled with satisfied comments from previous 'customers'.
The most surprising thing was the cost. £850 per night!
She wasnt even very attractive (I wouldn't have paid more than a couple of quid - but I am a Yorkshireman).
Anyway I think the civil engineer's girlfriend eventually drove her out with a campaign of hostility. She only lasted a couple of months in the house and then made some excuse about going to London to join the civil service.
17th September 1983 Part Two
8 months ago
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1 comment:
you really had some weird times in your life.
Strangest thing I can remember is when I wanted to contact committee member of mine and wouldn't be able to contact him by phone or e-mail and ringing at his house, his house mates would tell me the hardly ever saw him at all and didn't know where he was at. Never found out what happened.
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