The Adventures of Matt (in Leeds!)

Monday was my first Introduction To Programming lecture. It consisted of several stereotypical geeks teaching, who didn’t do anything beside discuss timetable issues. We left after half an hour and I did nothing until my English lecture at 4 beside sit in the canteen and read the Independent, and then met up with Ben and James for a drink and snack before the lecture. The lecture itself was our first Language, Text and Context one, and made me very glad I had taken English Language at AS (special thanks to Railene and John for their skills!). It was actually a little simple, but I figure it’ll pick up as the year goes on. It was in a big lecture hall, packed full of people, and afterwards we checked out Leeds itself for the first real time, albeit briefly.

After some snacks at home, Ben, James and I began the first of what I expect will be many computer game sessions together, and chose to stay in tonight instead of going to a pub with the others. As I type this I’m being messaged by some of the girls across the flat corridor, who apparently have cake, so I’m off!

Sunday we top up on shopping and halfheartedly attempt the Otley run, a local pub crawl down all the pubs on the Otley road, 15 in total. We get three pubs down and the guys get bored and come home to do some adventurous cooking. To pad this out a little, here’s a photo of our binbag wall mural:

Note the elephant, self portraits, and stars.

Saturday was a slow day, we didn’t do much. The main thing of note was ordering our first takeaways. The girls came over to our flat and ordered four 16″ pizzas which were far more than they bargained for. As everyone gradually filtered to bed I got talking to Sarah who lives in the opposite flat, and we ended up chatting till 4am in the kitchen about everything.. I need those kind of talks every now and again.

Friday comes and it’s up early to get down to the uni for a welcome lecture for English that introduces Seminars. We get given times, and are told to check in the School Of English hall for our intro appointments. Mine is at 1:30, and it is 12:20 as James and I find this out. James’ appointment is at 1, so we decide to just wait till 1:30 together. We sit on the seats in the School for the entire time, just being stupid until the time came for us to go. We go to our respective meeting rooms. I meet a guy outside who seems really cool, and as appears to be the trend, plays guitar too and likes a lot of the bands I do. Before he arrived I walked into the meeting room accidentally and made my presence aware to my tutor, Jane Grogan, a youngish Irish/Scots (I couldn’t tell for sure) woman. We wait outside for no avail, until we nervously make ourselves known to her again, and she lets us in. She gives us our English handbook and explains some of the concepts. After this, I decide to desparately check my bank balance.

I’m rewarded beyond belief when I see BALANCE: £1067 rather than £7.50. I immediately draw out a £20 and go round the societies fair in the hall and sign up to several; including:

• Live Music Appreciation Society
• Student Film-Making
• Record Library
• RESPECT Student Forum

I then go outside to get my bus pass and find I need a passport photo first, which I duly get. I return and spend £89 on a term bus pass that saves me fumbling with change all day. Feeling great (it’s amazing how money makes you feel) I get the bus home.

That night we’re off down to the Student Union again. The plan was initially to go to Fruity, a dance/r&b/hiphop night which I wasn’t particularly relishing, but we end up in the Old Bar downstairs. The music is much better in there, and I find it much easier to kick back and relax, and we have a great night. We end up upstairs in the Terrace bar and five of us stay till almost 2am, which will no doubt cause my sister Katie’s jaw to drop when she reads this.

We arrive back at the flat to find that the flat below us had made a COFFIN for poor dead Fred, as well as a wife for him. We were touched by this display of generosity, and promptly forgave their eggcup stealing.

After a while though, Fred and his wife began to smell, so we threw them too outside the window, in a poorly aimed shot the girl’s flat opposite ours.

Thursday comes and money does not arrive in my account. I luckily remember the £140 Asda card my mum imparted me with before she left, and Ben and I take his car and find our way there, with thanks to a random old man who points us in the correct direction. Bizarrely, the place is situated in the middle of a residential area. The first thing I do is check that I can pay with the card now (it says ‘Christmas Gift Card’ on it..), to ensure I don’t fill a trolley I can’t actually pay for.

Shopping is surprisingly fun, we try to outdo each other with the bargains we can find, until I come across a huge lamb joint probably the size of my head, for a princely £1.70 (since it was due to go out of date very soon). I snap it up, reasoning that at that price, I couldn’t not buy it. We stock up on vegetables of all things, and I buy a caesar salad knowing my mother would be proud/amazed.

Both Ben’s and my own shopping comes to just under £20, not bad for what we bought. We pack it all in and feel like complete badasses for doing our own shopping and bringing it back to the flat. We pack it away eagerly, and I make tortilla wraps for lunch. The excitement never ends in M Block.

The excitement really begins when Ben and I get bored and conspire various methods to annoy the flat below us. I suggest tying a spoon to a string and tapping on their window. Ben loves this and we improvise; we end up with the following:

The spiral contraptions are the amazing eggcups that were included in my kitchen set. Previously these had been used as something of a Flat 21 initiation test; they had to be placed on the Wilko’s spatula and flipped over and caught again. After tying them securely to the chain of bags Ben made, we dangled them out of the window and tapped for a few minutes on the below flat’s windows. We get bored and just leave the bag tied up and dangling over their kitchen window.

A half hour later we come back to the kitchen to find that the flat below us had filled the eggcups.. with eggs! We eagerly haul them back up, and hit upon the idea of hard boiling the eggs and painting them. We boil them for about 5 minutes and then draw faces on them with highlighter pens:

We carefully put the newly christened eggs (Fred, the elaborately decorated one) into the eggcups and lower them back down carefully. This time, the window opens, and Lee, the guy pictured below, carefully pulls in the basket.

NO! DISASTER STRIKES!! Clumsy Lee sends Fred plummeting to a messy death on the grass below. He pulls in the other egg quickly to cries of “MURDERER!” from Ben. Another hand comes out and pulls the entire eggcup contraption inside the kitchen, snapping the plastic bag chain. Alanna then arrives, and gets her tomatoes from the fridge and begins raining them down on the flat below. They shut the window, and we feel guilty.

Alanna then fills a container with water and pours it on their closed window to wash away the seeds. This half works, so she grabs the mop and begins mopping their window clean. She then drops the mop by accident and carries on with the floor brush. We get no more response, so we leave for the time being.

Hours later, we’re all in the kitchen and realise that the below flat had stolen two of our eggcups! There’s no other choice but to infiltrate their flat by means of a cunning plan, which I (with some help from the others), produce:

The plan gets stupid and in the end, culminates in this, which fails to wash off for several days:

In the end, Alanna takes the plan downstairs and shows someone in the flat, who hands over a mop bucket which apparently contains our eggcups. I was a little annoyed at this, since the water was horrible grey and murky mop water, so we sieve the eggcups out and throw their bucket out of the window. We retire to bed plotting revenge.