We’ve had some problems recently with an antisocial flatmate. I’m working at counteracting my naturally aggressive response to his behaviour by trying to see the funny side. And actually, there have been some mildly hilarious moments.

We lived until recently fairly peacefully, with thirteen or so people in a large ex-farmhouse. Some are students, but most are working; several have night shifts or early morning weekend work, so we’re generally pretty careful about not making too much noise late at night (the farmhouse was clearly created in the era when hearing what the teenagers are getting up to through the paper-thin walls was considered a Good Thing).

Joe is not so concerned though (that’s not his name, by the way). He likes his music loud, and with lots of bass. And he likes to play it until six in the morning. He also has a fairly rowdy crowd of friends, prone to wrestling and throwing furniture around in his room, or staging screaming arguments in the hallway. At six in the morning. The same friends also take a fairly liberal view of the notion of ownership of property, at least when said property is alcoholic and in one of our fridges. (Apparently also, and rather inexplicably, a bath towel.)

We got sick enough of this recently to hold a household meeting and lay down the law. The agreement was, no more visits from that group of friends, no more thievery, no more loud music after 11pm, and no more parties for Joe. Tough, but fair: what makes his behaviour antisocial, and not just irritating, is that when he’s partying he refuses to quiet down when asked, so this is a “preemptive shush.”

Predictably enough, despite assurances that “It won’t happen again” we were again kept up all Friday night. First it was music, until about 3am. Since I don’t have to work Saturdays, I’m not so strongly opposed to Friday night celebrations. (It is a little worrying, though, to hear three guys enthusiastically singing along to the refrain “First we rape, then we rob.”) Anyway, I didn’t make any complaint, but Marcel (who lives directly under Joe) and Mathieu (who has an early-morning post run on Saturdays) both made their feelings clear and were ignored.

It was about three, though, that things really started getting out of hand. That’s when the wrestling started, and the throwing of furniture. At one point someone was thrown against my wall, which bulged visibly under the impact. (I got up hastily and moved a painting to the other side of the room.) At another point, I would swear that someone upended a bucket full of AA batteries on the floor; I can’t think of anything else that would make that sound. There were the usual screaming fits and swearing (after my several hours of enforced eavesdropping I could tell you the names these folk go by, but they’re unprintable). They finally left around six, by which time it was so light that I could barely get to sleep anyway.

So the next morning we called the landlord, and gathered in the kitchen for a grumble session. It gradually became apparent that Joe had actually said some pretty funny things, which also give some interesting insight into his mental state.

It seems, for example, that when Marcel went for the third time to complain about the crashing and banging over his head, Joe told him that he would call the landlord himself in the morning. It’s still not clear to us if he intended to turn himself in like a good fellow, or if he wanted to register a complaint about Marcel’s antisocial objection to his friends throwing chairs around his room.

The next clanger came when Joe himself walked in a little later, apparently still coming down from the evening’s entertainment. (He had one of our tea-towels wrapped around his forearm as a makeshift bandage, which may or may not be related to the broken pane of glass in the front door, but which is surely an indictment of his standards of hygiene.) I told him (reasonably politely, but also firmly) that I had been kept awake all night by his little party, and that I thought I recalled an agreement being made that this was not to happen any more. His explanation was as follows: some friends of his had indeed come here, but only briefly on their way into town. It was, however, possible that they had mistakenly left the radio on when they left, for which he apologised.

This really took me aback. I realise now that he was certainly drunk, likely also stoned or otherwise high, and just as sleep-deprived as I was, so this was probably the best excuse he could come up with at crunch time. All I could focus on was that he apparently expected us to accept this story, and to be satisfied thereby. I got pretty angry. In fact, I must confess, I screamed at him a little. I pointed out the unlikelihood of radio programming consisting almost entirely of obscenities, and unoriginal and repetitive obscenities at that. I questioned the apparent abilities of his radio to throw furniture, and to produce alarming bulges in my wall. And so on.

His response to this was another beauty: he went on the attack. It seems that I am in fact guilty of antisocial behaviour. Namely, I walk too heavily around in my room. Which wakes him up. You can imagine, I guess, the depth of my sympathy.

The best of the one-liners, though, wasn’t one of Joe’s. The landlord actually came by, to have a brief chat with us and (unsuccessfully) to try and catch Joe in his den. During that conversation, the reason for the chair-throwing was revealed: it seems to have been intended as reprisal against Marcel, for asking them to quiet down. At least, it started after he made his fourth or so visit, and was accompanied by shouts of “You’re not my bloody landlord.” Our landlord is a good guy, with a slightly wicked sense of humour. I saw his eyes crinkle up in evil anticipation, and he smiled like his teeth were filed to points.

“No,” he said, “but I am.”

(Postscript: so far as we know, Joe will have to move out this week. I’m leaving myself, so in any case it’s no longer my problem. But for the sake of my other flatmates, I hope that there are no further developments to this story.)