REFRESHERS DIARY ENTRY TWO: SSEES PUB CRAWL

Mission two: The SSEES pub crawl

The night’s main watering hole

So after the fun and games of KOKO on Sunday night it was on to the SSEES pub crawl on Tuesday. This is the third year running that I’ve gone on the pub crawl. In my freshers there was a fancy dress theme of going as something which started with the same letter as your first name. I didn’t have anything to wear- went as Luke the lawyer simply by wearing a suit and in the end just looked like a prick.

This year after a stop off at The Court in the late afternoon I arrived at SSEES just after 7 to find freshers milling around. There was a conspicuous lack of nasty vodka this year which was very odd and led to everyone heading off to the Marlborough Arms in a strangely sober state.

The sudden appearance of at least fifty freshers at the Marlborough seemed to be a shock to the system for the rest of the patrons. I definitely overheard someone say, “Holy shit- is this some kind of school trip gone wrong?”

The inability of freshers to understand how a pub actually works and queueing out the door in a straight line also didn’t help matters.

So with the pub heaving I decamped to ULU and waited for things to blow over a bit, wasting rather a lot of money on the quiz machine, before returning to The Court just as the pub crawl returned.

Far too much money was wasted here.

By this stage everyone was suitably drunk, and the social awkwardness of earlier has totally disappeared. I walked past a group of freshers chanting “Down it! Down it!” to another fresher as he attempted to see off a pint of lager. Fat chance-  the only thing this kid will be downing will be water and paracetamol in the morning.

“So the next thing I know the turtle is in my bed”.

Perhaps the most fun thing about any situation with lots of drunken people is the snippets of conversation you hear. Particularly when those drunken people are freshers. “Yah honestly, when I saw the size of it I totally knew it wouldn’t fit” was the suspect comment made by one girl while I definitely heard someone say “So the next thing I know the turtle is in my bed”. Very odd.

At around half ten the pub crawl moved on to Potion but once again my third year friends and I stayed behind. The cue to leave came when I put ‘Rocket Man’ by Elton John on the jukebox, followed by Irish folk song ‘Black Velvet Band’. Apparently this isn’t the done thing on a night out in London. Maybe this explains why I have no friends.

Having ostracised myself I moved on to Potion where the pub crawl was nowhere to be found. I made a quick check downstairs but could see nothing, due to the total lack of light presumably designed to disguise the grubby decor. Back upstairs drinks were reasonably priced and up until the point where I knocked my pint over in the process of retelling a particularly interesting story it was going well. The spilt beer was a sign it was time to go home.

And so another freshers event was over- and I managed to make it home this time without a stop off at any fast food establishment, which is a major achievement. And to my knowledge no freshers vomited, passed out or died- which generally means it was a good time all round. Excellent stuff.