We started this week off in a very respectable manner with a rather civilised night downstairs in The Parlour. Although it was only a quiet night out, the music was good as was the crowd and we even managed to make it to bed before the early hours.
On Wednesday we visited the Bot once again. It seems no matter how annoyed we are with the bouncers regarding their ID policy on Queen's Student cards, we can't hold back from our weekly visit as the cheesy music and familiar faces always guarantee a good night. On Wednesday night it seems that the bouncers' concern shouldn't have been on the underage, but rather with the over-aged! Now, don't think we're ageist, but really, is there any need for a group of 60+, sleazy men to attend a student night in the Bot? We probably wouldn't have minded if they had kept themselves to themselves, but mingling and trying to woo students with their exotic dance moves is just creepy!
Although we were feeling the effects of Wednesday night, we somehow managed to get ourselves together and head to a friend's 21st birthday, with a house party and then on to Stiff Kitten. The house party was a good night in itself as we met with friends we hadn't seen for ages, but we knew we had to go early to Stiff Kitten, as it was also its birthday celebrations. With DJs Rigsy and Mark Gordon playing their usual Thursday night set, we danced the night away celebrating both birthdays. We also managed to bag a few freebies on entry to the nightclub- free passes and a compilation CD of the DJs on the night.
With a lack of taxis for the journey home, we decided to brave the cold and walk, but a stop-off at the 'soup kitchen' (provided by the local church) soon warmed us up. Their efforts to keep students quiet and cut down on trouble certainly worked, as their soup and biscuits kept us munching the whole way home. And you never know, they may even have injected a bit of religion into us!
With the Christmas holidays fast approaching we are actually looking forward to getting home for once because we've taken just about as much as we can handle of student accommodation and can't wait to lap up the luxury of home comforts. It seems that all we do these days is try to track down our landlord to fix something that is broken or on the verge of breaking.
Here are some of the catastrophes we've encountered this year already:
A broken banister, a broken kitchen table, a broken toilet and a broken front door: Now, a house full of girls are hardly out to purposely wreck the place, so it's quite obvious that the house has been shoddily thrown together and will fall apart at the first sign of wear and tear.
The freeview box: We're all for digital TV, but that little box has caused us more anxiety than anything else this year. We're sick to death of attaching our aerial to lumps of blu-tack and attempting to find one position that picks up all channels. Unfortunately this is NEVER the case, and we find ourselves dancing around like eejits attaching the aerial to specific walls in order to find different stations. If this fails, we have found that taking turns standing holding the aerial at arms reach for the duration of the programme works particularly well.
Our dodgy water supply: A few months ago we had a traumatic experience when our water supply was broken for over a week. Although we contacted our landlord straight away, he did very little to help us, as his idea of a solving the problem was to provide us with two measly bottles of water, intended to do four girls for two weeks. For the duration of the week we were forced to beg friends for the use of their toilets and showers, as well as take advantage of public amenities. In the end we had to find a plumber ourselves, otherwise who knows how long we would have been without water. The plumber then revealed that our water supply isn't even connected to the mains water supply, so we are still terrified to use it.
Lack of heating: We seem to be endlessly feeding money into our gas meter, but have yet to benefit from this. Most of the time this problem can be attributed to the fact that many student houses are old and have high ceilings, but we live in a flat and shouldn't have such problems. But we do; we're constantly shivering and one of us always seems to have a cold. Even taking a shower has become a real dread, as we fear we may catch pneumonia or the likes. We have tried everything but it seems there is no solution to heating our freezer of a house.
No milk, no butter, no toilet roll and endless dirty dishes: We finally understand our mums' complaints that they are constantly washing dishes. It seems that every time we go to eat something we have to wash all the dishes first. Then when we finally get that far we usually discover that we are out of essentials such as milk and butter. This never seems to happen at home, but no matter how many times a day we run to the shop, we never seem to have enough of these essentials. We're beginning to see how the classic pot noodle can be so appealing to many students.
We know these problems are all part of the student experience, but after three years of it we're getting tired and can't think of anything more appealing than curling up with a cuppa in the warmth of our own homes.
