One of my roommates (a leisurely male of twenty-five who spends his days plaiting his beard) and his silent-but-cute squeeze (a schoolgirl of seventeen) share a very lustful and passionate sex life. I have awoken to my chandelier swing dancing about my room (their bed takes residence above my head), causing turbulent slumbers of a Dali/Freudian nature. I’ve previously stated that the house (a small terrace) doesn’t contain sound very well, and that we hear everything. She gaily skips from the house each morning without any knowledge and his coy smile makes my stomach turn. The time has come. Please, sir, what does one do?

Coco Baracuda, Paddington

Dear Coco Baracuda,

As I lived in one some years ago, I know what it’s like to share the (excessively thin) common walls of a terrace house in the leafy suburb of Paddington. Sure, concrete-rendered brick might have been a great idea in the Nineteenth Century when they were built, but our Victorian friends took an entirely different stance on sex in their day. Everyone was carking it from some ailment or another, therefore the survival of the human race (particularly the British Empire) was paramount: sex was for procreation not enjoyment. Certainly, Queen Victoria’s “close your eyes and think of England” mantra precluded any unlikely emoting during the act, perhaps to the exclusion of the muffled strains of Rule Britannia. What a turn-on! Poor old Vicky G of the House of Hanover might have been able to rule an empire for a considerable time, but I dare say old queeny-poo would be quite flustered should she encounter a vocaliser.

When residing in the terrace house in question, I happened to cohabitate with a character you might be previously acquainted with, Stampy McNasty. For the uninitiated, she was a two-thousand-pound quadruped who would skulk around the house with a face as long as the animal she was emulating; and whose mane of horsehair would clog the shower on a daily basis. Living in a house with noise issues and with my bedroom stationed above the kitchen where most of the activity occurred, I was privy to her stomping around like a fairy elephant each morning, the whispered phone conversations to her drug dealer (presumably for horse tranquiliser), and on occasions her hissy fits to uncompliant friends and relatives. Unfortunately, on the rare occasion that Stampy would ensnare a stallion, I would learn of his presence by extended patterns of her snorts and moans: she was a grunter. The sound would filter from the crack beneath her bedroom door and would float into my adjacent room and fill the silence with a chorus from the coital filly. It was rather unpleasant for all concerned, I assume.

Aside from the glaring fact that your housemate really should be picking on someone his own size, if his libidinous activities are affecting your sleep, then you have every right to have that chat. Explain that they are disturbing you and if he doesn’t comply, well you have a secret weapon – his underage date. Armed with your knowledge of their sexual relationship, it should be enough impetus for them to keep their traps shut if you do the same. What a deliciously colonial way to impede his further sexual conquest – rule Britannia!

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