HELLO CHAPS. Well I didn’t get into Oxford. It turns out that pater familiarse was a little out of pocket during that crucial UCAS period, something about helping out those rotten Labour fellows. Good news though, Daddy’s now a Peer of the Realm which is something to put on my CV along with my gap year charity work supplying a Sudanese village with fishing rods. As Mater says “give a chef a fish and you’ve got a meal for four, give the servants fishing roads and you’ve got a whole lot more”. So to UCL it was, Mater said it was just like Oxford only with “proles”.
One of my first worries upon arriving in ‘halls’, was that there would be none of the great traditions that give the Oxbridge institutions their reputation. But upon expressing my fears the lads soon enlightened me, urieh? The large wet patch on my floor where Florence missed is, even after two weeks, still there and the maid hasn’t arrived to clean it up.
Mega Pint
On my second night, I found myself in The Court, a student watering hole, and obliged to drink the ‘mega pint’, a myriad of vomit, beer, and cigarette ash, which all the others swore they had drunk the previous evening. One night in hospital and a taxi ride later; I was a true UCLian.
One of the stranger traditions was the Spinning Dartboard game in which I was tied to two dartboards, spun round and round and pelted with not only darts, but when these had run out, broken glass and even fists. Another trip to the hospital, a heavy slide of the BUPA card and I was really getting into Father has always affectionately referred to the ‘fresher fillies’; his forays into the Rugby girls’ dorms have become the stuff of family legend and, indeed, the premise for several embarrassing court cases. So I too felt it my duty as a Chuffnel to faire l’amour comme un poisson. On Tuesday night wearing my best Jazz gear (green beret from C.C.F., unbuttoned white school shirt covered in flicked ink, D&G trousers with Doc Martin boots) I bee bopped my way down to the Union like a brother. Here among the sound of clinking glass and the nudist pranks of the medics, I studied my options.
Thrusting manner
With my honed vision I spotted two lovely looking ladies in short mini skirts and nose rings just begging for the son of a Lord the Great Unwashed. Like Zeus, I was to be their metaphorical golden shower. I approached them in my thrusting manner and asked if they wished to partake in a beverage. Unfortunately the music was exceptionally loud and the young dames did not spot me until one of them turned round and dropped her glass in fright. Here was my chance! I apologised profusely for scaring her and I asked if might replace the drink. Yet still the music was too loud and as noisily as I shouted it was to no avail. At last I grinned and produced five pounds from my wallet. I nodded to her in a knowing manner, waving the money in front of her to signal I would recompense her for her spilt beverage. To my sheer dismay, she screamed, I saw a flying fist and I awoke in University College Hospital for the third time that week, with a broken nose and concussion.