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Coats on nights out and expensive pints: A northerner’s guide to Royal Holloway

tl;dr – it’s expensive


I am writing this article as I sit on my train home, the perfect example of what it’s like to be a northerner down south. It’s expensive. This is all you need to know about life in Royal Holloway if you're a northerner.

Make sure you have a railcard

Unlike your friends that are able to just pop home every weekend, a regular trip home is impossible. Not only is it too far to travel, but you would have to extend your overdraft just to book the tickets. A rail card saves you a third of the price, and it’s essential (think of the alcohol you could buy with that money).

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Forget about how cheap everything is at home

The sooner you get used to the idea that drinks are going to be expensive, the better, because your cheap northern drinks prices are no more. Happy hour will become your saviour, but don’t expect it to be anything like the deals that you are used to, it basically just means that your drinks are now the price that you would normally pay at home.

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Apparently it's "dinner", not "tea"

At home you could ask "when are we having tea?" and everyone would know you’re talking about the evening meal, but down South it’s different. If you ask your southern flatmates this, they may just look at you with a confused expression on their faces. It seems that down south "tea’"only refers to the drink, and causing the tea versus dinner debate.

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Tea up north is completely different

You could argue about it all day, but you’re never going to agree, so you may as well just come to terms with the fact that the North and the South can sometimes be like two different countries.

You can take a coat on a night out

Considering it’s definitely colder up North, it's shocking that down south, a coat on a night out is completely acceptable. Gone is the notion that a coat belongs at home on a night on the town, because down South you just pay to put it in the cloakroom. Just remember that when you return home, the reverse will apply: It might be snowing outside but the only thing you'll need for warmth is that tequila shot.

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This is how we go out summer and winter

Everyone thinks they can mimic your accent

At home, you’re used to everyone sounding the same, but not that many northerners seem to want to venture past that midway point (not surprising with the price difference) and so any northern accent stands out a mile. Whilst everyone will tell you they "don’t think you have an accent" they definitely think you do, and wait for it, they think they’re pretty good at mimicking it too. Your whole time at uni will be spent with people repeating the things that you say, and failing every time to sound anything like you.

Honestly, it never ends.

And on top of all of this, you will spend the whole semester being told just how northern you are, only to return home and have your friends take the mick out of how posh and southern they think you’ve become. There’s just no winning.