Snakes don’t hiss, they refuse to come out with you

The end of exams may seem far away, but the reality is if you want to go to any decent nights post-exam, you need to start booking them now. Half of them are on second release by now – if not already completely sold out.

You’ll have been talking about post-exam life with your mates since January, no doubt. ‘Yeah it’s gonna be mental!!!’, ‘can’t wait to blow all my loan after we’ve finished!!!’, ‘let’s get earlybird tickets for everything!!!’ – that kind of deal.

So why oh why, now the time is here, is everyone being so goddamn flakey? ‘Sorry, I’m working then’, ‘sorry, got no money’, ‘sorry, I’m in Cornwall’ – are these the same friends that were gagging to hit Regression Sessions mere months ago?

This kind of behaviour isn’t even limited to post-exams – signs of flakiness may have been evident all year round. Catch your flakey mates missing plans because their ‘alarm didn’t go off’, their ‘phone was broken’, they ‘needed to do work’. 90 per cent of it utter bullshit.

It’s your flakey friend’s fault that more people drop out of going out once they realise not ‘everyone’ is coming; her fault that you had to buy an extortionate third release ticket because she couldn’t make up her mind as to whether she wanted to go or not; her fault that you’ve never got a full squad photo. Your cover photo remains unchanged since summer 2015 because she’s never been there for a complete group pic. ‘Photoshop me in!’, she jests, but you’re not twelve, and you’re not having some botched MS Paint monstrosity on your Facebook for all the world to see.

If you know you won’t come, just say so. Don’t say yes, don’t pretend you’ll be there, don’t add in a ‘what time?’ for decoration – just come out with the truth. A brutal ‘sorry but I’d rather push pins into my eyeballs’ isn’t even necessary; a simple ‘sorry, not my thing’ will suffice. If you know you’d rather be wrapped up in bed like a burrito of cosiness, alone with nothing but Netflix and a 16” pizza – and, to be honest, who wouldn’t – just, please, say so.