Urinating on tables and eating around mould: Freshers’ most rancid halls stories 2020

Covid has confined us all to our houses and halls with not much to do apart from dreading online seminars, procrastinating from writing that essay and scrolling aimlessly on TikTok in hopes to find some entertainment to brighten up our day. With so much time spent indoors due to lockdown, freshers have had to deal with a lot more than they signed up for.

It is difficult for freshers to bond with the strangers in which you are forced to live with, and as covid prevents you from leaving the flat, when a flatmate leaves gone-off milk on the side, there truly is no escape. Here are the most grotesque, horrifying and rancid hall stories from Lancs freshers this year.

‘This makes the kitchen smell of death’

Grace, an English student from Fylde*, told the Lancaster Tab that a boy in her flat “fills the sink with a bowl of dirty water then pours it out making the sink smell. This makes the kitchen smell of death.” While many of us are trapped within our flats due to self-isolation, the smell of death is the last thing we want suffocating the kitchen. Quick, get the window open! A smelly kitchen is just as welcome as covid in a fresher’s flat. 

Grace went onto to say that: “[We] had the porters round twice trying to fix it.” It’s just not ideal, is it? If the porters can’t fix it, is there any hope?

‘It was thick and gloopy it wouldn’t go down the sink’

Molly, a history student from Grizedale*, had a horrific ordeal with a bottle of champagne and a bottle of rose and “a few” shots which ended rather badly, to say the least. When she realised she was going to be sick, Molly “ran to the bathroom feeling dizzy and ended up being sick in the sink.” 

Nobody wants to see their Sultan’s come back up, especially not in the sink. Could you not make it to the toilet? How big is your bathroom? Molly continued to say: “There was so much there it was vile, it had food lumps and everything in it. It was so thick and gloopy that it wouldn’t go down the sink and so I decided to gather it in my hands and transfer it into the toilet.” Not the afterparty you intended.

Molly said that this went on for half an hour and in the morning she woke up wondering why there were lumps of peppers in the sink. Definitely not the best way to make a good impression on your flatmates. 

‘It was nearly a week out of date’

Joe, an engineering student from Cartmel, didn’t realise he’d been drinking milk that was “nearly a week out of date” as he “can’t smell or taste anything at the minute” since he “has coronavirus.”

“Much to the disgust of the rest of his flat,” he poured himself a glass of the out of date dairy, that “smelt horrendous” to his flatmates. Surely gone off milk is a cereal killer? Joe only realised, after drinking it for a few days, that the milk had gone off  when he “noticed the lumps in it.”

‘He was eating around the mould’

Hasina, a psychology student from Cartmel, still doesn’t know to this day what one of her “flatmates last year left” on the counter (was it bread or some type of cake?) for weeks going “really mouldy.” 

The flatmate didn’t “throw it away” after they told him and he seemed to be “eating around the mould” as there “was chunks missing” even once it became “visibly mouldy”. Another flatmate ended up binning it eventually because it looked “disgusting”, according to the tally they kept “it was about four weeks before it was binned.”

Mould is a silent killer. You go to pick up a slice of bread, put it in the toaster and only notice the black corner seconds before you go to take a bite. It’s happened to the best of us, but next time maybe just bin it and buy another loaf. I know we are all students, but I bet forking out 80p is better than eating mould.

‘All over my dishes (probably whilst singing Oasis)’

Our next tale of the unexpected comes from Jean-Luc, a marketing student from Bowland. Having an exam that next day, Jean-Luc took the sensible, rarely-seen option of not going out the night before, presumably hoping to avoid any student-based shenanigans on the eve of his test. Unfortunately for him, one of his flatmates did not share that view.

He was greeted the next morning by the culprit who was “smirking and giggling”, being quite insistent that the kitchen should not be entered. Jean-Luc ignored this and opened the door to find a grotesque scene that would be enough to make the most seasoned student sesh-gremlin’s stomach turn. To his horror, he found a tsunami’s worth of urine now adorned the majority of the items in the kitchen, many of them his. Jean-Luc eventually learned that his flatmate had “stood on the table and urinated all over it, all over and all over my dishes (probably whilst singing Oasis).” 

Even prized possessions like an 18th birthday mug were not safe from the massacre. To date, this has still not been replaced by the offender. It is arguable that justice was not done in this particular case, as while the whole kitchen was bleached under Jean-Luc’s careful supervision, he lamented that “no amount of bleach could get me to eat off things he’d wee’d on.” 

‘We all woke up to an absolute stench in the kitchen’

County College is no stranger to an unsavoury halls story and indeed it is the college of our next survivor, a law student called Elle. Her story involves drunkenness, a fridge and a two-day old casserole. 

The casserole in question had been left out on the counter for several days by a flatmate of Elle’s when it was noticed by another flatmate who, while under the influence, did the seemingly sensible thing and “put it in the middle fridge”. Regrettably, this was not the end of the ordeal as the next day, the flat was awoken to “an absolute stench”, with the casserole proving to be the guilty party. In a turn of events akin to a David Cronenburg horror film, the once-nourishing meal “had leaked onto the shelf and made some sort of jelly sheet”, which had in the space of a night turned irretrievably mouldy and worst of all, condemned Elle’s shelf (which was two shelves down), to an early death. 

The whole bitter affair has written off one third of their fridges for good and there is now “a post-it note on the middle fridge warning people not to open it”. The fridge and its former patrons have our condolences.

Defrosting meat in the cutlery drawer

Emily, a modern languages student from Fylde, said that her flatmate “would take his chicken fillets out of the freezer (keeping them in the plastic packaging) and simply place it in his cutlery drawer to defrost.” Is everyone ok? Does your kitchen not have enough counter tops to defrost meat on the side? Do you live with a passionate vegetarian who refuses to even see raw meat so the flatmate is forced to hide it away out of sight? This is rather strange.

She added that the reason he does this is because they told him off for “defrosting it uncovered on the worktop.” This is worse. But the cutlery drawer, really? Is that completely necessary?

*Names have been changed for students who wish to remain anonymous.

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