University Challenge
Students before Happy Hours were invented
Whiff of vomit about your street this morning? Increased police presence in your town at the weekend? Nagging feeling that one of your children might have grown up and left home?
Yes, it’s Freshers Week all over the country.
One set of students hits home again after graduation, to whine about not knowing what they are going to do with their lives and sponge off their Mum and Dad even though their old room has since been turned into a lilac Laura Ashley guest room (Hi Mum!). And another new set leaves home and discovers the joys of binge drinking, waking up with a complete stranger stuck to them and the occasional bit of learning.
Yesterday, I had the great honour of checking out the new accommodation of an 18 year old chum of the Flying Martinis heading off to University yesterday. And of course, I was reminded of my first student house in Glasgow.
In our student house we had a Senior Resident. This was a student chosen by the Housing Association to effectively snitch on the other residents and stop them from having a good time. Think Orwell’s Thought Crime Division, and you’ll get the idea. Our Senior Resident was called Dave. He was, as befitted the job description for such a post, a wanker of the highest magnitude.
Dave was studying Theology in training to become a minister, but seemed to be more of the Hell and Damnation type than the Love Thy Neighbour kind of bloke. In fact, I think Dave had his own set of commandments.
The Dave Commandments
1. Thou shalt not speak to me unless you are a fine, tight assed, Asian, male, student.
2. Thou shalt not get your possessions back from confiscation because you left a dirty dish in the sink.
3. Thou shalt not come to me with any complaints, suggestions or problems.
4. Thou shalt not expect any degree of courtesy from me.
5. Thou shalt not make any noise after 9pm unless you are one of the fine, tight assed, Asian, male, students knocking on my door in their underwear or a loosely tied dressing gown.
6. Thou shalt not be under the impression that my role is anything other than surveillance and reporting back to the Housing Association.
7. Thou shalt not insinuate that I am un-Christian, just because I hate each and every one of you.
8. Thou shalt not expect to get back into halls next year, as the dossier I have on you is about phone-book thickness.
9. Thou shalt not sneak friends from home into your bedroom as I will wait until you are all asleep and throw them out into the snowy January street with nowhere else to go.
10. Thou shalt not ridicule the passive aggressive notes left by me in the kitchen by writing “Dave is a Cock” on them.
Aaah, bless, Dave LOVED us. I wonder if he ever did move to Vietnam.
Still, no Senior Residents in the hall I was in yesterday. Just gangs of nice friendly people handing out kits with laminated cards with instructions on how to live life away from Mum, free music downloads and a complimentary Pot Noodle. There were even Fresher Teams whose sole responsibility was to force people out of their rooms and into the pub. Nothing like 15 Vodka and Red Bulls and a trip to Casualty to break that ice!
And on quick inspection of our chum’s living quarters, the mattresses are not made out of woven pubic hair anymore. So that’s nice!
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