Something from September 2011

When people move on, from one stage of life to another or out of my day to day life, I tend to write them something. This isn't always the case but I've noticed that I did this as far back as 2003! That's a whole ruddy decade. This tendency came to light on the 18th of October 2013 when I stumbled over something I wrote for someone when they were off to Uni. The recipient was not my bro, I don't really write anything for him as he would just point out spelling errors, laugh at me etc.

And it started off just like this:

Harp music plays causing and instant sense of nostalgia hopefully making you feel like you did in September 2011, when this was written.

Not entirely sure about the purpose of this but I felt I should share!

I know you must have heard tonnes of advice about what to do and what not to do whilst at Uni so I won’t take that route. This is what I experienced when I made the step into University.

The day I arrived unloaded everything, had lunch and then mum, dad and broski left. I went back to my room and stared vacantly around the place and immediately started to feel down. But I decided not to let that get to me and headed out to the hall bar, seemed like the thing to do! Problem was everyone else had the exact same idea

On the way bumped into Aussie Steve, who would later become one of my best friends. The bar was rammed as you can imagine, 300 students all wanting a drink 8-O. Stared around the place for a while wondering what to do and spotted an empty chair and 2 quiet looking lads.

So a plonked myself down and introduced myself to Andy and I forget the other lads name, oh nope I’ve remembered it, his name is Chris Herbert. Went around with those two for a few hours to the usual intro stuff from the dean. Then it was time for the barn dance, can you imagine me at a barn dance? Me neither, lol.

Spent the rest of my first day jumping into conversations with interjections such as “the killer whale isn’t actually a whale, it’s a dolphin!” X-D I ran into Ben Dixon, an acquaintance from KEVIS who was a second year at Notts.

As time went by I got along with pretty much everyone in my block and beyond. Good times indeed, staying up until 0300 in the morning just to see who won a block poker game, attempting to eat breakfast at all the halls in a single morning at the end of the year, single-handedly ripping a bollard out of the ground! Too many to list…

• Sitting on empty steel kegs around a fire
• Standing in a fire whilst some other folk sit on a sofa they reclaimed from the skip
• Hide and seek
• Walking to lectures with RAV
• The time it was raining in front of us but not on us
• A trip to a brewery
• Bbqs
• Christmas dinners
• PLH getting bottled
• Passing out and waking up in my own bed
• Rediscovering my love of dance, apparently I was quite the dancer as a toddler
• Scaring local street urchins, got in a mood and picked a fight with some local knobheads
• Steakhouse
• Reffing a football match, in jeans.
• Aerosol hot sauce
• Simple mass energy
• Washing up to the mortal kombat theme
• Leaving Pete in Oceana
• Seeing Dimi the night Paul got bottled
• PIZZA, so much pizza
• Diving off stairs, Sreek
• Chinups on stairs, my brachialis!
• Freshers flu
• Staring down a car whilst snapping our fingers like they do in Westside story
•  Mistaking fences for hedges
• Toast as a question
• Hats
• Singing in Ed's lecture
• Making whale noises
• House parties
• Foodtastic
• Banterman
• Fried chocolate bars
• Yard of lager = bad idea
• Away game Haseler
• Inebriated bowling
• Bumping into Dharan in week one unintentionally then now and again in clubs

Changed a lot about the way I think and how I see the world. I can imagine that it may or may not do the same for you.

KEEP IT REAL! X-P

Everything that's in blue I added just now. Drawing on this fantastic memory which lets me relive my glory days and the days that were not so glorious. Just a fraction of what we got up to, there's more so much more!

I'll elaborate on the bollard story as it is one of the better stories that ties several of the occurrences together. It's the tail end of first year, June/July '06. it's been an eventful year. We head of to ISIS a club in on an industrial estate, not the best and it has since been shut down.

What it looks like from the outside during the day.

I don't remember much of what happened that night in the club, it must've been your standard night of debauchery. Upon our return, by our I mean Phil, Sreek, Burak? and me, I ask the obvious question should I pull a bollard out of the ground. The answer that comes back is a rather sarcy "yeah, Ron." So I nonchalantly yank a bollard out of the ground. I'm assuming everone knows what a bollard is. They are pillar like structures that prevent vehicles from accessing certain areas.

Pretty much looked like these.

I'm pretty sure the one I yanked was cast iron, so rather unwieldy as you can imagine. So now we've got this thing what do we do with it...tour! We first drag it to Paul's room, he appears bare of chest and sleepy of eye. He humours us for a while before politely telling us to sod off. So off we sod. Upstairs to Georgie's room. Her door is unlocked so Sreek just strolls straight in and I bring our new friend along too. She's surprised and somewhat alarmed at our unannounced visit. Upon reflection this was probs because it was supposed to a quiet night in with the Cornish...she casually throws us out. So we proceed to deftly thread it through a bathroom window.

Yep that's the end of the bollard saga. But not the end of our night. We proceed to roll some empty steel kegs to what appears to be a fire in the distance. Once there we sit about and shoot the breeze about nothing in particular. Once the fire dies down we try to ride the kegs down the hill, limited to zero success on that endevour.

Ooh breakfast 12, try to eat breakfast at all the halls in one morning. It was around 05:00 when we got back after the keg/fire thing. Once back we decided that it'd be pointless to go to sleep as breakfast is so soon. Myself, Phil and Sreek sit and watch Family Guy...I keep dozing off so we decided to grab a couple hours sleep before heading out. I'm the first to wake and rush about trying to rally the troops. Sreek n Phil are still keep but Burak...he looks at me and then falls asleep again.

We start in Derby, easy enough and walk our way round. Here's the thing had we done this at the beginning of the year we could've blended in. But this is the end of the year and the catering staff have gotten to know who will actually get up for breakfast and who won't. It doesn't help that I have an enormously long beard and something akin to a fro. I stand out like a hairy thumb in an otherwise, relatively hairless, sparsely occupied room of thumbs. We abandon our attempt and return to go to sleep.

Best days of my life? They were good but I'm not into absolutes, when it comes to experiences...

So that's what I'm presenting you with this week. I know your bound to have some fabulous stories of your own to tell. So I sincerely request you to share! Maybe not with me but with someone. Makes me want to read this whopping great book I have on stories and why we tell them.