I feel like I need to report on something a bit more lighthearted, since I've had a rotten couple of days, so I'm going to tell you all about the Toilet Paper Wars.

As most of you know, I have lived with my boyfriend for the last two years, and before that with two good friends. I lived alone briefly the summer after second year, and as nice as my other housemate situations have been, I adored living alone. I'd heard horror stories from some people about their housemates, but I'd never experienced that myself... I just liked living alone because I like being alone, generally. I've never minded my own company in the least, and I got all the social interaction I needed at work and after with my friends.

So when I moved into the West Hampstead flat in September, I thought to myself, "I like all these people, and I think this is going to work out just fine. If not, it's only three and a half months."

And things did work out just fine, for the majority of the time. Sure, the boys apparently never learned how to wash dishes or change the toilet paper roll, let alone pick up after themselves, but I ain't no Martha Stewart and it's not like my standards are high. This, to me (with the occasional exception of the dishes when they became a health hazard), was just part of normal college-aged boy behaviour.

Now it's the end of the semester, we're all stressed, and minor things we let go before are now causing tensions to reach the boiling point. We've screamed at the boys about leaving their giant shoes on the stairs in the dark, not taking out the stinking garbage, not washing their dishes, you name it, until their ears shut down and they deliberately avoid doing what we asked them nicely to do about a zillion times before the screaming started. Still, things were generally livable in our flat, and we were able to laugh it off.

Until we ran out of toilet paper three days ago.

I was the last one to buy toilet paper, but with ten flatmates all (mostly) using the same bathroom, TP runs out pretty quickly. So we asked one of our housemates, whose name will be omitted to protect his privacy (but it starts with "G" and ends with "eoff") to please go buy some, as it was his turn. This is not difficult. There is a small grocery about two stores down from us that sells TP for 79p a two-pack. Housemate cheerfully agrees.

Day Two. There is no toilet paper. Housemate says, "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to buy it! I'll go today." We wipe our bums with Kleenex and say no more. We could go ourselves, but since we've bought all but one pack of TP since September 6, it is now a matter of principle.

Day Three. There is no toilet paper. We say, "Housemate, we've asked you very nicely several times. There is still no toilet paper. Now get your ass down to the store and buy some goddamn toilet paper!" Housemate does not. At this point, it is apparently a matter of principle on the boys' part as well, because Housemate and the rest of the boys have become openly defiant. They say, "We only use it once every couple of days! Why should we buy something we don't use?" The girls point out that even with this being undisputably the case, sheer mathematics state that since September, the boys have not been buying their proportional share of toilet paper. This argument fails to move them. Everybody gets mad.

Ian knows that our bathroom is decorated with magazine cutouts, one side by the girls with sexy half-naked men, and one side by the boys with sexy half-naked ladies (and, inexplicably, one chimpanzee).

I have had enough. I have had a rotten day and want something to cheer me up. So I go into the bathroom (in which there is still no toilet paper) and carefully take down all the naked ladies. In their place, I put up a sign saying "The naked ladies (and monkey) have been taken hostage until toilet paper is purchased. -The Girls."

Day Four. I wake up to find my sign taped to my bedroom door, smeared with a brown substance that I devoutly hope is peanut butter (after careful inspection, this proves to be the case), and scrawled on it is "Use paper instead!"

There is still no toilet paper. At this point, I think there will be no toilet paper, since the boys are moving out on Friday morning and they are the stubborn sort.

This means war.