Crescent Peasant Halls are the cheapest, but by far the best

Being the cheapest halls at Brookes, Crescent gets a bad name. It looks like a council estate, is pretty far from everything and is in a slightly dodgy area. It’s where people go to live who can’t afford en-suites, and I was one of them.

No one actually wants to live there, but there are so many great things about being a Crescent Peasant the average Cheney wanker won’t realise.

No en-suites here

The wardens

They are absolute babes, not to mention one of them has a cat. The wardens replaced my parents at Crescent Hall, teaching me the cruel reality of living away from home. They taught me how to do my own washing, which was pretty much the biggest thing I learnt in first year. They are the real reason my Topshop dresses haven’t shrunk or been accidentally dyed bright orange yet. Mark, the warden, even helped me revise for one of my exams.

The flat parties went off

Drunk Twister is the one

One of the wardens has been known to venture out to ATIK and Warehouse with us, usually sporting a suit. He’s also a pretty good wingman too. He celebrated my 20^th birthday with me on a night out and we serenaded each other along to the Grease soundtrack. He lent us his own drinking game equipment for a few months, but not before getting us completely trollied off it first.

One of my favourite things about them was they were always waiting for us when we came back after a night out. The security guard was always around to shout at us for being too loud and write our names on his naughty list. Although slightly annoying, this made me feel pretty safe. I have fond memories of myself falling out of the taxi and offering him a bite of a chicken nugget. Got to keep ‘em happy.

The bus route

It might be a bitch to get around campus, but you’re pretty much guaranteed a seat on the U5 each morning. As Crescent is quite far out, hardly anyone gets on the bus before your stop. This is ideal for those Thursday 9am lectures when you’re regretting downing so many Jägerbombs at Fuzz the night before. It also means you can silently laugh at the students queuing up at Slade Park bus stop for a ride before the driver tells them it’s full.

The local shop

Great deals on drink and every kind of Lambrini imagined. The staff are great company when you have to restock on mixer halfway through pres, usually lending a hand when you’re too high to get your money out and they don’t judge you for buying £10 worth of munch. They remember you as well. They’d know the cigarettes I smoked and had them out on the counter ready for me before I even asked.

Flasher man

Mostly spotted on Cowley Road picking fag ends up off the floor, he lives around Crescent and is a big personality in the area. He wears a long trenchcoat with holes in and just pants underneath, and is always shouting something strange. He’s the legendary flasher man and is kind of a big deal.

 When my flatmate arrived on moving in day with her parents, this nutter actually flashed them. Now, we look back on it as a moving in welcome. But at the time we were all pretty scared off him and would cross the road to avoid him. Since we’ve moved out, we miss hearing his shrieks from down the road and it definitely seems a lot quieter without him.

Not quite Clive Booth

Crescent is underrated. So you might have a single bed and your oven doesn’t always work, but in what other halls would the warden lend you his own drinking game? There may be the occasional private school kid who didn’t get into Cheney, but mostly Crescent isn’t full of twats.