Retroactive Blame

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Got an irate call this morning. "I got September's phone bill. There's £90 worth of calls to sex lines on here. That's from when you were staying here, know anything about it?" No. "ARE...YOU...SURE...?" It's especially the last bit that rankles. First of all, truly I'm not responsible, and there were four other people living there at the time, all notorious drunks, but that's not what I'm getting at here. Rather - isn't it difficult enough to not cause too much damage day-to-day, without having to account for stuff that happened months ago? Especially when people keep interrogating you, until you feel like you've lost your mind and might be going around doing things in a fugue state, like sleepwalking or something. It's bad enough being caught out for stuff you actually DID do yonks ago, but what about when you didn't, and people still grill you about it?

― dave q, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

New statute-of-imaginary-limitations answers

― dave q, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

OK, the phone-bill thing has a built-in time-delay factor - but has something of THIS nature ever happened? Somebody you know puts the 'Columbo' on you - "Don't suppose you saw that Discman I keep on the coffee table, did you? I NEVER move it, so obviously someone took it last weekend. Sure you didn't see it?" - and it's somebody you've seen a few times since, so you realise they've been suspicious all along? (This only applies to when you're innocent of blame, of course.)

― dave q, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Nub of problem being - it has to be something that happened so long ago that you can't prove anything either way.

― dave q, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Last week I was accused (via Emma) of stealing our flatmates Walking With Beasts top trump card which was inside the pack of Coco Pops which he bought especially for that purpose.

― Pete, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was just going to mention this incident Pete. In fact you were not accused at all, you were away at your parents' for the weekend and were therefore not considered a suspect whereas I was clearly the culprit what with my great love of animated giant hippos from several million years ago.

― Emma, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

My hegemonical alpha-male tosspot flatmates seem to get pissed off if I leave a dirty saucepan laying about for more than 2 minutes without washing it, yet they leave remains of curries, kebabs and beer cans stinking the place for days. The sink is ALWAYS full of their dirty saucepans, so Wednesday (admittedly also pissed about the Sara thing), I removed all the crap from the sink to do MY washing up and left it in a tray on the floor with their "PLEASE KEEP CLEAR AND CLEAN" notice (which they obv. ignore).

The next day I discover a great long note on my door whining about it, so I go to talk to them and they come up with all this stuff about me and, being tossers, they ignore any of my sound arguments that find faults with them.

Anyway, the weirdest claim was that they'd had to throw away a "jar of mud" they found in my cupboard that was stinking the place out. Huh? The one that said it is Italian, but generally his English is perfect, and none of the English guys would help explain what he was on about. Again, huh?

― Graham, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Leaving notes about the flat = war. Don't do it kids.

WHen I moved into a house of old, the Italian who had left under a clous had left a selection of odd foodstuff in the freezer including a horses penis (which i stewed) and some pigks nipples which went luverly and crackly on the BBQ. So I'm not sure Italians can talk.

Jar of mud = someone else playing a joke on you and crapping in you jam. Joke backfires when

a) you don't eat the jam

b) Jam smells the flat out of poo.

― Pete, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

god yes. some evil BYATCH that i can't recall the name of, wait JANE, in the old houseshare left a HYOWG essay about unwashed dishes taped to the draining board. i ripped it to shreds and threw it away as soon as i worked out what it was. grrrrr. and it wasn't me (natch, it never is) that was to blame for the heap of unwashed smelly plates that had grown.

― Alan Trewartha, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It was not a horse's penis Pete you fibber.

― Emma, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It was a penis of some description, and it was bigger than mine so I had to assume Horse.

― Pete, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I would not allow anyone to keep a penis of any description in my freezer (unless they had chopped it off one of my exes, ho ho).

― Emma, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ah, suddenly the real reason Nick isn't coming to the ILE bash tomorrow.... Scared of Chopper Hamilton.

― Pete, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

You are in so much trouble when I see you Baran, you will be the first victim of my ninja nails.

― Emma, Friday, 7 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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