Choose your flatmates carefully

Choose your flatmates carefully.

With holidays ending, universities returning soon, and the year generally getting underway, February tends to be flatmate (or roommate for our US friends) season, a time when people sort out accommodation arrangements for the year ahead.

Flatmates? Oh, the horror…

But slightly worse is the situation I saw develop over a year at the flat of 19-year-old girls. What started off as a peaceful arrangement became a virtual Melrose Place of partner-swapping, a swingers’ party no one knew they were at. By the time the lease was up and the he-said-she-said-she-did-I-didn’t was out of the way, the girls parted ways. Few are on speaking terms these days, about seven years down the track.

I once had a flatmate who frequently had trouble paying her share of the rent (perhaps it was all those Gucci bags she kept buying?) plus the power bill, which was in my other flatmate’s name.

Having told the rest of us she had posted the payment (we’d each write a cheque for our share of the account), she would (routinely, as it happened) clandestinely phone the power company, asking for extensions on the due date, while holding our cheques as she tried to sponge her share from whoever she could.

This came to light one afternoon when power company reps turned up saying they were there to disconnect the electricity, as the account had not been paid. She was effectively shown the door a week later…