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On more than one occasion over the past year, I have found myself reminising about my old student days, particually my time in Halls when I was at bournemouth university. More so recently, because a) thanks to the credit crunch I am now jobless agian, so why not fill my head with sugar coated nostagia to paste over the bleak reality of the frankly depressing state of the job market? and less depressing b) my graduation is coming up in November, the thought of going back to the coast and seeing everyone agian certainly brings back the memories.
I was more than a bit suprised to find out that not everyone who was there when I was, is looking forward to going back (if at all) as much as I am, for some it was an alienating and long-winded frustration, to me it was brilliant! utterly relentlessly brilliant!
Ok, there were some times when it sucked, but thats life! Im talking about the rock & roll element of living in halls and having little to no responceablity, If you wernt going out on the lash 7 nights a week, then you stayed in on the lash at someones houseparty, It was a case of sex, drugs, and occasionly studying. Who wouldnt fancy a bit of that now?
For my first degree I lived at home, at the time I thought I was saving loads of cash, but I came to realise I was missing out on an essentail rights of passage in life, I wanted the full on 'Halls' experience, and the chance came up when I decided to do an MA, In Sepember 2006 I moved into Cranbourne House.
The location was great, Two minutes from the beach, the train station, and the boozer! but somebody had the bright idea of building a halls of residence within spitting distance of a homeless shelter (or visa versa, depending on which one came first) but either way one set of jobless unwashed was living parallel to each other, only difference being that we were paying a hefty sum in tuition fee’s for the privilege.
An open air car park was the only thing that separated our two buildings, a modern day urban ‘no mans land’ which we had to cross if we wanted to go to the local Asda.
One more than one occasion throughout the year, the mixture drunken homeless with drunken students proved explosive, one night while I was on the computer in my room, inventing all kinds of distractions from the essay I was supposed to be typing, I heard raised voices from the car park, I heard a woman shouting ‘Go Fuck ya self ya fucking prick’
Vocally quite an achievement, considering I heard this above the sound of my TV and double glazed UPVC windows. I sat bolt upright, 'sod the essay' I thought, this sounded juicy! A man shouted back ‘the lot of you should get sterilised, do the world a fucking favour! By now I was looking down from my fourth floor window to the car park to see the drama unfold. All I could see was one of the regular female tenants from chez homeless across the road shouting up into fresh air. ‘Go and have a bath you fucking slag’ thundered from one of the windows,
I couldn’t see it, but one of the undergraduate from the centre tower had took it upon himself to wage a brave war of words on one of the passing homeless, bravely from his kitchen window on the sixth floor of a secure cctv monitored building. ‘Come down here and say that I’ll rip your bastard head off!’ by now she was convulsing with rage.
'Go get fucking sterilised ya smelly bitch’ I rolled my eyes ‘already used that one mate, dried up already?’ I whispered to myself ‘come down here and say that’ went up ‘fuck off!’ hurled back, then forward and so on for the next ten minutes, I was craning my neck from left to right so much this was beginning to feel like a foul mouthed version of a game of tennis.
After closing my curtains whist still being on the floor to reduce the risk of her seeing me, I abandoned my plans of going asda for a four pack, just to be on the safe side!
Thankfully, our paths never crossed agian, My second run in with an 'asbo' (as they were dubbed due to them hanging around the subway that led to asda, and them not beling to sociable) came a few days before I had to move out.
I'd gone to Asda to collect some boxes to pack my stuff into, and on the way back one of the Asbo's had passed out in the entrence of the subway, still with a bottle of strawberry wine in one hand, and to add to this attractive picture he'd took his shirt off to bask in the late summer sun, exposing his leathery un-washed sagging skin to the world, off-set nicely by his urine stained combat trousers.
Just as I was passing him, he opened one eye and greeted me by shouting 'Hello Fat boy!' I was slightly taken aback, that a man who'd pissed himself would be so critical of my body image
''Your friendly arnt you?' I responded, not the sharpest of comebacks with hindsight but I didnt care, I just wanted to get home. As I sped-up through the subway he wanted to carry on the conversation 'What do you do at uni then?' Echo'd down the pathway.
'Moving out' I responded, 'Now sod-off!'
The Homeless & The students wernt the only thing Im feeling nostalgic about, It was just an entertaining element, and if Im honest I'm slightly green with Envy that there still there!
Cheers Asbo's, see you agian soon.