THE loo roll has run out, the bath looks like it has a forty-a-day habit and screaming red reminders for bills are propping up piles of festering washing up.
THE loo roll has run out, the bath looks like it has a forty-a-day habit and screaming red reminders for bills are propping up piles of festering washing up.
Flatsharing conjures up images that are far from pretty, yet it's something almost four million people in the UK experience on a daily basis.
The wrangling over territory, phone bills and musical choices between typically-young sharers is enough to end in blows but it more often shows itself in the humble note.
It's this note-scrawling phenomenon that has fascinated serial flatsharer turned author and web mistress Oonagh O'Hagan.
"It was one of the reasons I set up the website - was this a British thing?" says the 29-year-old designer, from Glasgow.
"Is it something we do - make small talk in the corridors and then we write these toxic messages?
"I'm a Glaswegian and quite a direct person, so I found it difficult that people would skulk in shadows rather than speak to you."
Oonagh has put her decade of flat-sharing memories into her first book, I Lick My Cheese, recounting the funniest notes gleaned from friends and peers.
Having first put together an art portfolio at Langside College, Oonagh relocated from her South Side home aged 19 to study at the prestigious art school Central St Martins in London.
Graduating with an MA in fashion ("£25,000 in debt"), she worked as a design consultant with labels such as Burberry and Hunter (the welly brand) and now lectures at University College of the Creative Arts.
But the accumulated debt made flat-sharing a necessity. Since living in London, Oonagh has lived in six flats, sharing with more than 20 flatmates.
It was after moving into a mouse-infested flat in South London in 2002 that she encountered her first serial note-leaver.
"It was okay at first - I wasn't doing anything horrific, and then it got more - she had a two-note-a day-habit.
"I thought my very existence seemed to annoy her - she was one of those people who should just live on their own.
"It got to the point where I was keeping them, and it was beginning to make me depressed. But from those little tragedies comes comedy, and I began to think it was quite funny."
On sharing her experiences with friends, Oonagh discovered her domestic torture was commonplace.
"My training is in design, so I look a lot at society and social dynamics.
"I think people like using the written word and their own handwriting - it's quite cathartic and you get it out of your system. It felt like a soap opera."
Oonagh expected her notes to elicit a laugh on the website (http://flatmatesanonymous.
com), but was surprised to find publisher Little, Brown interested.
The book's title came from the same note that was given to her on several different occasions - almost like an urban flatsharing legend.
I Lick My Cheese is broken down into the areas where flat-sharing flare-ups occur: the living room, bathroom, kitchen and bedroom.
Oonagh says: "If you've got a weak stomach you should totally bypass the bathroom section.
"That is what really upsets people. It's one thing sharing space with people, it's another thing sharing any bodily functions."
After almost a decade of co-habiting in London, Oonagh has swapped her domestic woes for bliss, moving into a new home in North London with her boyfriend.
Her arty chronicle of those flat-sharing years could yet pay off the student debts as she has plans for flat-sharing merchandise (a T-shirt of Oonagh's favourite - "washing up is for mugs" - is in the pipeline) and a German publishing house has bought the rights to the book.
Oonagh's own personal flat- sharing bugbear is hygiene issues, but she believes flat-sharing and its note-writing expression of anxiety has wider implications.
"The average age for a first-time buyer is 33 - that's nuts if you think that a few generations ago people would have had three weans and been living in a three-bedroom house by then," says Oonagh.
"I've enjoyed using humour as a vehicle to get a more important social discussion across, which is because of economics and property value, people's lives are changing."
