what is the oddest thing someone has done when you have visited their house?

I used to be a jobbing actress so stayed in 'digs' while away on tours. Stayed in some very weird places.

The one that made me feel most uncomfortable was staying with an older gentleman in a perfectly normal terraced house. There was another actor also stopping there who I never saw and soon found out why.

The house was heaving with very old, dark pieces of furniture and chintz. You had to move several porcelain dolls and overstuffed cushions to just sit down. It was so oppressive....like stepping into somewhere an old lady just died in. I could live with that though...

I could even live with the explicit gay porn pictures subtly displayed between Victorian prints and horse brasses on the walls (although the gay porn fridge magnets nearly finished me off as I had gone to get some sausages out of the fridge. Seeing a picture of an enormous erection put me right off)

What really gave me the heebie jeebies was that this bloke would just appear whenever I ventured out of my room...he would then follow me round to 'clear' up after me. Going so far as to clear away a mug I had taken one sip out of. It was suffocating. He would loom behind me waiting to whisk away any used cutlery, even when I was trying to cook. So I'd put down a spoon used to stir pasta with for example. Then spend 5 mins trying to find it again only for Strange Gentleman to appear from nowhere with now cleaned spoon....stir pasta, repeat.

I also discovered he had been into my room and had remade my bed, folded my pjs and even taken out, folded and put back stuff in my suitcase!!!!!

I'm sure he was just trying to be helpful and hospitable but it was all a bit much...If you are going to have paying guests in your house, you need to give them a bit of space surely. And not rummage around in their stuff. And put your erotica in a more suitable place.

Actually I don't think I've ever had flu.

In the case of bad cold, I may use a nappy sack - OH would get them to the bin.

What about if you have flu and are in bed, with streaming schnozz and a pile of drenched tissues all around you? how do you get them to the bin then?

I said may flush. .

Please be nice, I only realised at 15:09pm that I have a bin deficiency.

flushing tissues, you are going to hell young lady

StealthPolarBear No. If upstairs I may flush tissue. My parents are very lackadaisical about such things and I am clearly still rebelling. OH has always been very tidy.

MinnieBar - cheese sandwiches are great.

Missed apostrophe at 15:42:43. tut

Oooh QueenofPlaids matchstick heads are (technically) poisonous, let alone the spiked drinks - they really didn't like you... [buwink]

Loving this thread. Makes the two [bublush] times I invited mothers' of DS's schoolfriends round for lunch, forgot about it and could only rustle up plain cheese sandwiches quite tame in comparison (yes, I apologised profusely, and I blame baby brain!).

Do you never just find yourself blowing your nose in another room and cba to go and throw the tissue away in the kitchen though/

I am not marshmallowpies friends mum.

Only rubbish in the house is in the kitchen - removed daily. Used nappies etc. go straight in the main bin outside.

Great thread!

Wow, I have a bin in every room. I mean, where are you supposed to put tissues and things? I couldn't cope with just a bin in the kitchen despite DH thinking that is a brilliant idea for some reason but then he just leaves his rubbish all over the place in the hope that some other mug will clear up - I don't

Feel like a bad hostess now - waiting to see myself on here.

We have a food waste bin and that's it - never had bins upstairs.

OOOoo I don't have a bathroom bin and out rubbish in bedroom one!!!

Mind you I still don't understand why my parents don't have a bin in their bathroom.

Quite tempted to buy one for them so I don't keep accidentally leaving sanitary towels (wrapped in loo roll) by the side of the sink . Apparently I am supposed to dispose of such things in the bedroom bin, but at some point I always forget...

Lockdown you've reminded me of a visit I paid to a uni friend's house: her mum had a really pristine house with no clutter or anything, and she didn't have a BIN in the kitchen as she thought they were unhygienic.

Any piece of rubbish, even just a tea bag, got put into a plastic supermarket bag & carried out to the dustbin in the garden. I can't bear to think what that one woman's contribution to plastic bags piling up in landfill was!

Stayed with someone who insisted that every item of rubbish be individually bagged in a clean plastic bag before being binned. Recycling all had to be hand washed. You get the gist.

The bizarre things some people will convince themselves of to justify their own behaviour!

Dh, ds and I went to stay for one night at SIL's house. She lives in a huge conversion all on one level and the bedrooms are at one end of a U shape, the (beautiful) living room and kitchen in the middle and a playroom at the other. I should say we like SIL and her family enormously... but this visit was just odd.

When we arrived we were shown into the playroom. We all sat and made polite chit chat, SIL gave the children something to eat and eventually her dh wandered in and said he'd open some wine. SIL shot him daggers but he went off to get it and when he returned he poured us all a small glass and SIL announced it was DN's bedtime and we'd have dinner after she'd put DN down.

All fine and lovely so far if a little awkward because SIL's dh just got up and wandered off leaving us in the playroom. It got later and later... with only the screams of dn who did not want to go to bed to break the silence. Eventually it got dark - the lights didn't work, neither did the heating and neither SIL nor her husband were to be seen. He eventually turned up looking harassed and said SIL had gone to bed (it was about 8.30pm) but that he was going to serve up the dinner she had made about 2 an hour and a half earlier.

We were then served a bizarre and rather inedible dinner (with no more wine) punctuated only by the odd hissed instruction over the baby monitor to bring more milk or "Just come here" while DN continued to cry.

After dinner we were shown into the cold play room again, but this time SIL's dh went off to find a desk lamp to light it (we sat in the dark waiting for him to come back) where we were instructed to remain until DS was asleep because he might wake DN. That would be DN who was still screaming then

The following morning SIL said nothing other than she would have been around the previous evening if DS had not woken DN (WTF??!) and SIL's husband was nowhere to be found. We got out of there as soon as we could.

I'm loving this thread!

Haven't read all the pages yet, but the wedding ones brought up a memory.

I used to have a friend (we drifted apart) who was getting married in a registry office.

Her dad was such a cheapskate that he refused to fork out for any kind of reception.

My friend had to go home after her wedding and cook for her family...

We used to have one of DH's uni friends as a part time lodger whilst he worked during the week. He was generally a good housemate and would often babysit for an hour or two whilst we went out to dinner etc.

Anyway, one night, we came home to see the lights on in our front room, no curtains drawn, and our friend sitting on the sofa watching telly. As we got closer, we realised he was also masturbating vigourously! We live on quite a busy street, with lots of foot traffic, and have very wide bay windows, so basically EVERYONE who walked past could see EXACTLY what he was doing.

We hovered outside trying to decide what to do, and in the end let ourselves in rather noisily, to alert him to our arrival, to discover him watching Coronation street whilst hastily tucking himself away. And no, the remote control was no where near so he hadn't had time to change the channel!!!!

At ours when a student so a bit of a cheat BUT my then bf (now dh) and I enjoyed the occasional spliff and had a dealer in a nearby flat, we got to know him, his friends and gf, he only dealt weed and was a bit of a geek so not too scary an aquantaince.

Anyway sat in our flat one night when there is a knock at the door, dealers gf and best friend come in saying they came to visit, we were a bit "erm ok" as we didn't know they knew where we lived, they proceeded to walk straight past us and shut themselves in the kitchen to 'talk'. 15 minutes later another knock on the door and dealer bf comes charging in saying we are "covering" for his mate/gf bursts into the kitchen where they are rearranging themselves after clearing having at it on my kitchen table .

Two more "friends" come in girl on gf side boy on dealers side, geek fight ensues, police called, me and dh basically hide in living room until Jeremy Kyle crew are evicted and go on a spliff drought until we leave uni.

The older we get the stranger our parents seem

I assume my ils have issues with monogamous coitus and so Le Queen I see your 29 and raise you 42 years of age. I have known my OH since we were teenagers; have lived together for 15 years and married for 7. They have 3 double bedrooms and only theirs has a double bed.

My Dad is incredulous that I (still) shower at least once every day. They have a lovely bathroom and state of the art column shower.

My lovely sis and BIL are very pfb about both of her DC. When they were toddlers we stayed overnight, at their insistence; we usually stayed at a hotel. At 7pm toddlers went to bed and the TV was turned off, front room was lit by a lamp and we were instructed to not flush the toilet 'under any circumstances'. Sis and I shared a mini bottle of wine and menfolk has a stubby beer each. Long winter nights must fly by.

At my house:

One flatmate lost his father whilst we were living together, and his mother was coming up with a sister to stay at ours whilst her house was redocorated (the father had died at home). My other flatmate announced that she couldn't stay in the house with them, so would stay elsewhere for a few days, so I asked if we could put one of the visitors in her room, to save having to have someone on a sofa. She replied that whilst I was welcome to sleep there, she didn't want any of the grief-stricken people in her room as it would disturb her angels...!

Same flatmate was greeting on the stairs by my sister, three days into my sister's visit, with the words "Oh you do exist, I thought you were a figment of my sister's imagination!" Up to this point my flatmate had been managing to avoid my sister fairly successfully, on my advice, and could see why I'd suggested she kept out her way. During the same visit my sister, at that point in her late 30s, had come into the lounge with a LARGE bar of chocolate, offered me and my mother ONE square each, then stretched out on the floor like a teenager and proceeded to eat the rest of the bar herself. She didn't offer my other flatmate any when he walked in, just ate the whole lot herself. Then, after I used my flatmate's phone to make a pretty important call (I had no credit on mine) she insisted on using his phone also, even though she didn't know the guy, to ring her husband, as her phone was "upstairs". Lazy cow!

Finally, we had friends of my male flatemate staying with us a few days. I'd never met the woman and her daughter before, so was rather put out to be told by the mother, on about the second day here, that she'd gone into my room and taken the washing that was drying in their and put it on the line, smalls and all. Ok, so she had the best intentions at heart, but really, did she have to...?

DitaVonCheese I'm desperate to know which author you're talking about!