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Have you ever come home from holiday and opened you front door on disaster?

166 replies

longearedbat · 10/08/2019 13:02

Or something unexpected? The only time it happened to me was when my electrics went off while I was away. I was hot and tired, it was early evening and I knew there was a cold tin of lager waiting for me in the fridge. Couldn't wait. However, I opened the front door to the most horrendous smell. I would say the freezer had been off for the nearly 2 weeks I had been away. I spent the rest of the evening disposing of rotten food and the pool of mouldering blood and gunk in the bottom of the freezer.
I always think of that (now very old) episode of 'One foot in the grave', where they come back to find their house had burnt down. I always breathe a sigh of relief when I see ours is still in one piece, and can't relax until we've had a good check round. (That might be just me though being a bit of a worrier).

OP posts:
Pipandmum · 11/08/2019 17:38

Opened door and it was obvious my 16 year old had had an unauthorised party. Slashed painting, broken cot, stolen oyster card, broken window... note from neighbour asking for excess payment for their smashed windscreen...

GiggleMcDimples · 11/08/2019 18:00

@Pipandmum Shockhas 16 year old come out of hiding yet!?

GiggleMcDimples · 11/08/2019 18:04

@Cocolapew what was the worst thing she did!?

MitziK · 11/08/2019 18:07

After years of Arsehole ex dumping everything on me and not giving me time to clean ourselves out of the house, I went away with DP for the first time, leaving an immaculate house.

Crawled in at about 1.30am to the most awful stench.

The manky lodger, who had supposedly been away with a Tinder date, had obviously come back for a few days before going away with a different one and prepared various junk foods, including four full pans of pasta. And left them on the hob, on the countertop and in the sink.

Fermenting pasta is not something you want to come home to, especially when she'd left her bedroom door open and the stench of 6 months of unwashed clothes hoarding and leftover food had wafted everywhere over the top of the fermented pasta smell.

I cleaned until 4am.

She rolled in about four days later and 'needed a quiet word'. Apparently, my DP hadn't cleaned up before we left and she'd had to deal with getting the entire house clean. Yeah, right. That was why my bed looked like it had been used, then.

A previous flat, I was away for 5 days and my then neighbour had agreed to feed the cats. Came back to find the then would-be cocklodger had conned her into thinking we'd got back together, attempted to move his stuff in and was passed about in an alcoholic stupor on the living room floor. He was most affronted that I wasn't falling over myself to thank him for valiantly attempting to force his way back into my life.

Wish she'd contacted me to check. I'd have told her to call the police.

They both made the return to my first flat to find an ant infestation a pretty minor thing in comparison.

GiggleMcDimples · 11/08/2019 18:12

My cousin came home from holiday once to find her house flooded, but turned out it was her weird next door neighbour who drilled a hole through his attic wall and put a hose pipe through and filled cousin's house with water. Everything was ruined. All ceilings in upstairs and downstairs had called though. They thought it was a water tank in the attic until they got up there and realised there was no attic. That's when they saw the hole. He blocked the hole up his side. He got prison time for that and other things too. He was very dangerous. Got told since that he wired the Hoover in such a way as to electric shock his now ex wife.

Cocolapew · 11/08/2019 18:13

If need a thread of my own to tell everything Wink
I'm slightly freaking out at the fly stories. When I was a teen we came back from a day out and I shut my window. There was hundreds of flies in the frame and all went bonkers.
We think it was because the field behind us was being burnt, thankfully not a dead body.

willowmelangell · 11/08/2019 18:34

Not quite in the spirit of the thread but...reading it reminded me today to set up contents insurance after years of being too poor to afford it. Up until recently, low hours, mw, just that fingers crossed please-dont-let-anything-happen...so thank your everyone for the push.

TellItLikeItReallyIs · 11/08/2019 19:57

turned out it was her weird next door neighbour who drilled a hole through his attic wall and put a hose pipe through and filled cousin's house with water.

That has got to be the weirdest thing ever. It's like that film Pacific Heights but with water instead of cockroaches.

LittleLongDog · 11/08/2019 20:48

@sanmiguel wtf? What happened?!

sanmiguel · 12/08/2019 05:46

@LittleLongDog

Apparently, grandad walked home from school and tried to get in the house, but all locked and empty. Next door neighbour came out and told him they'd moved so he waited on the doorstep for a while. Another passing neighbour then gave him the approx address of where he had heard they'd moved to and he attempted to go find it himself on foot.

Eventually he did, well into the night! Seemingly after he found his family things settled down to their kind of normal.

This was in the north East, kids in short trousers all through winter kind of family/community with high levels of poverty. Grandad didn't know why no one thought to tell him about the planned move or even collect him from school that day but didn't question it again much growing up. He thought they'd got a council house swap and with few possessions, just went for it with little thought for the rest.

Grandad later met my nannan (now in her 90s) and moved to a thriving mining community further down south (still North), leaving his family behind. They went on to have 4 kids, both worked hard and created a stable and loving environment for the kids and future generations of grandkids and great grandkids. He was a strong and humoured man who tried not To fret too much on the past but it seems the move whilst he was at school was just a general symptom of the neglect experienced throughout his childhood.

No services ever involved, he says it was just the way things were back then in them kinds of communities. Sad hey?Confused

IdrisElbasLeftTesticle · 12/08/2019 06:34

Once came home to a (cat) turd in the bathroom sink, and on another occasion to a terrible smell which turned out to be a dead rat under my bed (suspect cats were the culprits once again).

rodentforce · 12/08/2019 07:20

@sanmiguel What an incredibly sad story. But so glad that your grandad went on to have a good life and grandkids to tell the tale!

Dowser · 12/08/2019 08:16

Wow coco
I had a lovely mil but after a few drinks she was a nightmare and in charge of my children too
Came home early after a night out to find her digging up the garden...kids asleep inside
Many times I’d come back to see she had gone through the laundry basket and had hand washed everything...I had a washer
Another time she brought the weird kid from next door with her who’d brought his ouija board
I said that stays outside and don’t you dare use it in this house
I was round her house once making conversation as you do, saying I wanted to buy a new duvet cover..she went upstairs and pulled off her bed covering and gave it to me...err red candlewick wasn’t quite what I had in mind
She was lovely though

CigarsofthePharoahs · 12/08/2019 18:47

Well we've just got back from a ten day trip and our cat has decided that pooping in a flowerbed is Not Happening. All ten days worth of poop all over the floor.
Took an hour to clean, before we could start unpacking.
I'm now looking at my 16 year old cat and wondering if she's got feline dementia.

LuxuryWoman2018 · 12/08/2019 19:17

I’ve had two occasions of defrosted freezers and god the smell is unbelievable and just what you need after getting in late from traveling. Also came back to a flea infestation once.

Usingmyindoorvoice · 12/08/2019 19:25

Arrived home in a very dramatic thunderstorm, looked out on the back garden to see the scattered remains of our recently departed cat.
He had died just before we went away and we had buried him in the garden, but whilst we were away foxes had dug him up.

GCAcademic · 12/08/2019 21:39

Oh god, that’s just awful, Using. You must have been traumatised. Flowers

catinboots99 · 13/08/2019 04:15

Oh so sorry @Usingmyindoorvoice

Sad
SouthernComforts · 13/08/2019 04:48

I've had the dead bird one. There are so many levels of shitness to it, the first thing I noticed were the feathers, everywhere, quickly followed by the bird shit everywhere, then the smell, then finally the fucking bird. I didn't know where to start with it Envy

ScrewLiterature · 13/08/2019 05:20

No, but I worry about it every hour of every day of every holiday.

SaintEyning · 13/08/2019 08:13

I’m so glad I read this thread as it made me check my house insurance - which ran out when I was on holiday... (i’d been deleting the annoying renewal reminders when we were away!).

My dad was burgled when he went to the USA for a long work trip - he had a huge suitcase and all the curtains were closed in his misguided fashion - apparently the taxi driver was asking loads of questions and dad nearly didn’t go on the trip as he felt so suspicious. Anyway, someone came round the same day as he left and emptied the house.

EleanorReally · 13/08/2019 08:14

dh got made redundant on our way back from holiday Sad

EleanorReally · 13/08/2019 08:15

but, on a lighter note, someone had not flushed a large poo, or it came back up the ubend somehow, to greet us after being away for 2 weeks

Usingmyindoorvoice · 13/08/2019 09:00

It was grim, thankfully the DCs had popped straight round to see friends so didn’t see the carnage.
Note to others: if you decide to bury a cat in the garden, go deep, and cover with a massive slab to form a tomb.

sodrained · 13/08/2019 09:02

I've had the come home to no electricity one walked in and the house just stunk had to remove lots of soggy warm wet food eurgh from the fridge and freezer Blush. In a way was a blessing as I had been meaning to defrost it for ages