Tab Rates vs. Tab Slates

Tab Rates

Fmylife.com. Addictive reading. Think your life’s bad? (Missed supervisions, snot dripping down your face, 17p left of your overdraft…need we go on?) Read some of these. Updated daily, some current favourites include: “Today, I was feeling a little racy and decided to send my boyfriend some naked pictures of myself. He responded, "That's OK, but does your face have to be in them?" FML,” and, “Today, I fell in a hole in my back yard and got stuck. My mother called the fire department. They all stood around laughing and taking pictures before they helped me. FML.” Check it out, if you aren't already familiar with it. And if you’ve anything worth contributing, it’s all anonymous.

The Tab. Warning: shameless plug approaching. Worst Cantabrigian; Downing Strips for Charity; Fit College; thousands of hits per day. Don’t even think about the days before The Tab, they’re too dark to even contemplate.

Parental love. Aware that they’re actually going to have to see you again in the coming weeks, contact has stepped up a notch, bringing with it, in my case, sympathy for my currently disastrous existence and promises of Christmas cheer. Maybe they’re not so bad after all.

The Royal Family. Gave me a cheeky wave from the back of her swanky car, and Prince Phil definitely looked nonplussed in my general direction. God Save the Queen.

The Mince Pie. Hallelujah to that. I may have come off as distinctly Grinch-like in last week’s Tab Rates vs. Tab Slates, but any event at which these are on offer, stick my name down. I can definitely pretend I want to be an investment banker for an hour in exchange for some pastry goodness that I certainly can’t afford to buy myself.

Tab Slates

Katie Price. Oh Jordan/Katie/whatever the hell you’re calling yourself these days in the post-Andre fallout, first you abandon the jungle (where you returned again in the first place, what’s wrong, did your most recent ghost-written travesty of a novel fail to hit the Sunday Times bestsellers list?) and now you’re apologising publicly for your behaviour in the last months and splitting up with your cage-fighter squeeze (um?). Coming to 2010: a new, reformed model, possibly sporting ever-enhanced cleavage.

Holiday work. I’m just starting to anticipate getting away from the place and you’re already piling on the holiday reading? Don’t you understand I don’t care enough about my degree to think about it outside the boundaries of Cambridgeshire?

Personal Hygiene. You ran out of Original Source three weeks ago and have since been using shampoo as shower gel. (Now you’ve run out of that too.) All your clothes smell of coffee, fags and Febreeze and you haven’t seen your desk in weeks due to the dishes that once housed a now unidentifiable food product that are lying all over the place. Just be glad you’ll be seeing mummy soon, she’ll kick some sense into you.

New Year Plans. Please can someone just tell me where I should be and hold my hand until I go there?

The Cambridge lingo. ‘Standard’, ‘safe’, ‘bop’ and ‘buttery’ are coming out of your ears; talking to friends from home on the phone results in a momentary pause and then the admission that they haven’t actually understood a word you’re saying for the past five minutes. Must. Remember. Roots.