Katie Zinser: Week 1

In her first column KATIE introduces you to her strange relationship with trucks.

| UPDATED

I am not a hateful person. I try my best to be patient… ‘Love thy neighbour’, ‘love conquers all’ etc. A large proportion of the hate I do feel is taken up by people with bad hygiene and Miley Cyrus. But across the last week an unexpected addition to the hate list has appeared. I hate trucks.

I have just moved into a lovely little room in the Old Courts of Caius in a beautiful 600 year old building, in only my second year. Lucky shmuck. As a kind friend excitedly reminded me, ‘Think how many people have died in your room!’ The curtain does actually have a suspicious large red-brown stain…a different pal decided that it was probably because a previous tenant was once stabbed in the jugular vein by an intruder whilst doing an essay, causing blood to shoot out all over the drapery. Alas I digress. The point is that I have a great room.

Except for one trucky catch. My room looks over a gate which is, apparently, the delivery entrance to Trinity. It was statistically inevitable I would end up near some land owned by the Augustus Gloop of the Cambridge colleges, and Trinity apparently need a lot of shit delivered on a daily basis. One might even say truck-loads of shit.

Truck after truck after truck piling by my window, inhumanely early, on a street too narrow for even the most reckless delivery rogue to brave a U-turn. Hence each member of the truck parade reverses their way back down with a series of alarmingly loud beeps.

Three silver linings glow dimly on the horizon. Firstly, my chances of making a 9am have marginally improved. Secondly, greed is a sin so I can rest safe in the knowledge that God and Jesus and Allah and Buddha hate the trucks too. Lastly, I have discovered a long-neglected ability to recognise individual trucks purely by ear. For example, the Tuesday 6am-er completes an especially long and elaborate reversing process, and then proceeds to have copious amounts of glass thrown into it. It proves to be a most harrowing and smash-filled wake-up call. Allow single glazing.

Also, it being Freshers’ week and bedtimes being on the later side (lad), truckgate is losing me precious hours of shut-eye. I am getting edgy (as in ‘on edge’, not as in ‘Django-Django-and-yellow-corduroy’) and have started to resent trucks in all environments. It makes me sick that they dare to squeeze down Trinity Street, almost taking out gormless Asian tourists with their wing mirrors.

I have given evils to several stationary lorries. I’m not actually entirely sure how I’ve managed to fill a column with my feeling about trucks. This is the worst first world problem since the scratch on my kindle. V for van-detta.