Flatmates having friends staying in your flat

flatmate has parents staying, both of them, since Friday and they'll be here until Sunday. Told me 4 days beforehand. I could handle it if they actually ever left the house but her dad sits watching TV (which flatmate doesn't pay any money towards, either the set or the sky) and her mum cooks stuff non stop so the kitchen is out of action too. why are people so fucking weird? anyone with even the tiniest sliver of self awareness wouldn't invite their parents to stay in a shared flat for over a week, and the parents flew from hong kong. what utter tightwads do you have to be to not get a hotel? her mum stayed for 2.5 weeks in august too.

can feel the walls closing in!

My flatmate had some Italian hippy guy who looked liked he'd just wandered out of the sea in her room for three days without telling anyone, he sloped into the kitchen one evening when she was out and scared the shit out of me.

3 days i could handle. it's people staying during the week that fucks me off in a big way, though if it's not someone's parents i wouldn't really mind majorly, and indeed one person obv easier to handle than two. plus like, most people spending a few days in london might actually leave the flat they're staying in both to see stuff and to be polite.

my bro has some girl staying at the flat, a different one to the girl he had up a few weeks ago, so don't know if he's become a player in his old age, she cleaned the kitchen and cooked curry and crumble. she can visit whenever she wants.

Curry crumble sounds interesting...

no no no

i am fairly sure friend's mum will cook a meal for us at some point, and she is a great cook. but it doesn't change the fact it's madly unreasonable to have parents staying for over a week when i was "asked" four days before their arrival on already booked long haul flights.

A week hanging around the flat is pretty hardcore. When I was sharing a house I'd always have 'out of the house' things planned for my family's random visitations, just out of respect for the other housemates who worked odd hours or were home during the day. And cripes, I'd maybe have my family stay 1 night, but a week? that's pretty ott.

yeah two nights or three at a weekend is totally fine imo cos i'd be out and about myself. but yeah a week, and as i say, her mum stayed two and a half weeks in august, meaning nearly a month of having a parent of hers staying.

that's amazing. and is your flatmate there with them the whole time, or..

no she's at work until about 7/8, i work early so i get in about 5 and her dad is camped in living room and mum cooking like crazy. just had linguine with garlic tonight cos the fucking cookathon was so intense i felt like i was intruding into my own kitchen. wouldn't mind but had a bad day and actually cooking is quite relaxing.

i dunno...i can't believe some people. i know anyone can do stupid or mean things but i hate this kind of lack of self awareness stuff.

God yeah, that would be so annoying to me too.

it sounds fucking awful. i'm looking for a new housemate right now for the first time and i dread shit like this so much.

So you haven't been invited to partake of the fruits of the cookathon yet?

i am sure me and other flatmate will be invited at some point. but as i say...it doesn't matter when you never had a say in people staying in the flat you pay rent to live in for 8 days. fact i'm broke doesn't help me to feel great about my home life being cramped either.

is this a bad time to ask how the two other situations upthread eventually panned out?

me and the missus' ex-flatmate had a guy who makes his living as a john cleese lookalike staying with us for a few weeks a while back. having a 50-year-old cleese doppelganger walking around the apartment with no shirt on was not as amusing in practice as it seemed to be in theory for friends of ours who heard about him but didnt have to deal with him or see him in such a scenario. my s/o eventually sent our then flatmate a text message saying something like 'you know i really like having [cleese lookalike] over, but when is he going?' it was a slightly passive-aggressive way of dealing with it, and there was some tension, but i was glad she did it, and that mr cleese pissed off not long afterwards.