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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30 comments:
I have a sneaky feeling that I'd have thoroughly enjoyed Uni life, had I ever had the inclination to go. Unfortunately the bright lights of a job in a local foundry and a 1978 Ford Capri (in two-tone metallic blue) were enough to tempt me from the path of further education
I get a little "what if...?" every now and then.
Ah, takes me back. We had a bloke on our corridor in Halls who blew his entire grant on beer and CDs in the first week, not realising it was meant to last the whole term. Happy days.
This made me laugh which is a nice way to start the morning.
I just found your blog by the way.... love it!
The Senior Resident in our student accomodation was a thirty year old balding guy who was chosen to lure as many lonely female freshers into his room with cheap alcoholic beverages and while trying to 'comfort' them often ended up bedding them. Luckily I was not one of his hapless victims!
Here via the Mighty Widget....and loved this post. I reckon I was one smart cookie at university, eschewing halls for a student flat in which we pretty much lived the life of Withnail (with possibly even more alcohol and yet more filth). Ah, sigh, memories......
These dens of fornication really need a chaperone to break a few arms. If you're not prepared to risk injury for sex, what kind of person are you?
Emma, what's wrong with thirty-something balding guys?!
Your answer better be a good one.
The Black Box has led me to your site twice this afternoon. Love it!
I have it on good authority that it's only 1st years that call it Freshers Week, all the older ones call it "See if ye can Fuck-a-Fresher" Week.
I was, as one secondary teacher described me an 'under achiever'
Pig sick he was when I overtook him in my brand new company car (a swanky beige Cortina) when I was 19 as he trundled along in his Renault 5.
I still wish I'd gone to uni.
I stayed at home during my under-graduate degree, and didn't move into a shared house until I did my post-grad. I feel like I missed out, a bit. But all my friends loved the fact they could come to mine on a Sunday for a proper roast dinner. My best friend throughout my degree - who is actually now dead, which still feels so weird to say - practically lived in my parents' house, and my mum used to refer to him as her second son. Meanwhile, I copped off with his flatmate and we had three happy years together. A fair swap.
Oh, for those carefree times. And the days when my mum and I got on brilliantly.
Being reminded of Dave sends a cold shiver up my spine, I wonder where he ended up!! Do you think he is actually a Minister???? I was too innocent back then to even realsies what was going on (or maybe I was just too drunk?) xxx Jo' I was there' Top
Nice to see things are just as much fun in residence on the other side of the pond. That's why most of us lived off campus. Whooo-hooo for off-campus living. It's not so much fun anymore when you get old and start cleaning regularly
black boxed my way here.
loved this post, very funny.
only problem with the whole university thing is you get used to them not being around for three years and they turn back up with no job and no money!!
lol i have done a freshers week one aswell :)
great minds thnk alike :D
x
p.s. blogfather
I have got to go to the UK, every one I have talked to from there (and it is a bunch) sounds like a blast to be around!
I remember my free Pot Noodle. It's nice to know some things are still the same.
Black box sent me! :^)
Hehehe....Black box brought you to me and has now brought me to you...proof that great minds etc etc :-)
LOVED this post!! I'm a Glasgow girl so thankfully managed not to have to do the student house (Well, not through the Uni anyway) but I think I may have been one of the waifs and strays that was booted out at some ungodly hour!!
C
Ps. You are going to have to share with me what part of Thailand your son half inched!!
Oh lordy, memories of Pollock Halls of Residence come flooding back! Literally flooding - there was a tradition of flooding the ground floor every Saturday night so you had to wade out to breakfast (by which of course I mean lunch) on a Sunday. And if you were lucky, it was only water you had to wade through.
Aaah, bringing back happy memories to laugh and cringe at. And then, oh no...
MY daughter's going through this next year!
AACCCKKK!
I wonder where Dave is these days.
Inchy: You did right. I think people still get to where they want to be regardless of what their initial choice was after leaving school. The only thing I’ve ever used my degree for was teaching..and I’m not even doing that anymore.
Kate: Was that not every bloke?
Heidi: Hello and Welcome to the Misssives! I hope you’ll be a regular visitor. I’ll try my best to make you laugh.
Emma: There are guys from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong still in therapy due to our guy.
Exmoorjane: Hello and Welcome to the Misssives! Student flat followed (mainly due to not being allowed back into halls) And that’s a whole raft of posts to come in the future.
Gorilla: It’s lucky some of those Asian guys knew martial arts. That’s all I’m saying.
Jello: Hello and Welcome to the Misssives! Hope you’ll be back. Thanks for the compliment. It’s all nonsense really. True nonsense, but nonsense all the same.
Jaggy: I think I echo the thoughts of the parents of teen girls heading off to Uni this week when I say, “Thanks for that!”
Big Rab: Proving teachers wrong is an excellent pastime but I still echo what I said to Inchy. Uni was OK but not the be-all and end all. But then, maybe one day you will go. I’m certain mature students get a lot more out of it. The ones I knew certainly did.
Cat: My mum wanted me to stay at home. No way, man.
Jo Top: She was there folks, she was! Meet my first Uni flat mate and friend ever since, everybody! Can I be the first to say that you were NEVER innocent, and well you know it!
XUP: Cleaning was not part of my studies. Maybe that’s why I still struggle with it.
Fire byrd: Hello and Welcome to the Misssives! Do what umpteen of my friends’ parents did. Simply move house whilst they are still at Uni.
Suzie: You had me confused there- I thought you were staying on at school. So typical of you to manage to get into Freshers’ Week two years in a row!
Ken: Hello and Welcome to the Misssives! Choose your destination region carefully. Tip: Head North. No.... more North than that.
Kate: But have you still got your free Pot Noodle?
Carol and Chris: Hello and Welcome to the Misssives! Read the post on the sidebar “How Indy got his name”- it’ll explain everything. Apologies to all Buddhists. I'm lucky we weren't holidaying in Iran.
Loth: And why so many fire alarms, that’s what I always wondered?
Susan: Hello and Welcome to the Misssives! On behalf of what Jaggy said, I’m so sorry. It’ll be alright, arm her with a pointed stick.
Oh and I reckon Dave is at his solicitors about now looking into liable laws.
Wow! this takes me back a long, long way...we had a Social Sciences "mature student" (on my floor at Halls of Residence), actually, in her case, only another name for "busybody" - needless to say we all did our best to find digs asap and flee her "snooping" and "meddling" !
I have very fond memories of all the flatshares/houseshares I went on to experience and I'm still friends with most of the guys and gals - we get together every now and then for old times sake..:)
LMFAO!!!! YOu're a crack up woman!!! I laughed so hard the baby is KICKING! xx
Here and everywhere: hello and welcome to the Misssives. You know until I read all these comments I didn't realise that a senior resident was an actual widespread phenomenon. All I know is that all Senior residents are now either working for the Social Security Office or are traffic wardens.
Giggle: Ooh tell the babe to watch that bladder. I was never off the loo with mine. I could have easily been convinced to just strap a bucket down there, to save me the effort.
LMAO!!! Misssy! You're a flamin genious!!!
Now where did I put that bucket...
Giggle: Here, have mine...
Hi, popping by via the black box! This post brought back some great memories of fun times in halls of residence!
Weenie: Hoping to goodness that you are not in actual fact Senior resident Dave! Assuming you are not: Hello and welcome to the Misssives!
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