CAN you no longer walk down the high street without being stuck behind a gaggle of self-important slowly-perambulating freshers ? This is your next ten weeks:
Week one: 18-year-olds arrive, set up rooms to reflect as-yet-unformed personalities, go out to get drunk. Every night for seven nights is a stag do held by children.
Week two: Friends and/or sexual partners identified, lectures begin. Specifically freshers lecturing each other about their favourite films, music and traumas loudly in public places.
Week three: As week two but even louder and shriller to be heard over all the other students doing the same.
Week four: Laptop week. Confronted with essay deadlines, freshers transform town centre coffee shops into places to work, play and bray deafeningly.
Week five: Reading week. Freshers who had never set foot in your town before September confidently guide long-distance partners around its six most obvious attractions like f**king natives.
Week six: Weeding week. Freshers decide, since they are so young and cool, they can smoke skunk while walking through the city centre and even past police. The consequences can be enjoyed as a spectator.
Week seven: Halloween. Like the first week, but even more entitled and wearing outfits which combine wit, poor judgement and a desperation to be noticed. You are privileged to see the cream of the intellectual crop vomit into fountains while dressed as Trans Rights Batman.
Week eight: Drop-out week. Having spent their entire year’s student loan, a number of freshers decide university is not for them. Crowds outside Urban Outfitters clutching vinyl thin a little.
Week nine: Preparation week. Aware they return to their home towns soon, freshers seek to consolidate their new personalities in their clothing, hair and tattoos. Avoid anywhere supplying the above.
Week ten: F**k off week. All students f**k off and the town centre is once again tolerable for ordinary decent local pissheads. The only freshers left are grudgingly pulling your pint.
