Strobe lights, cheesy pop music, men wearing makeup and stilettos, women wearing chequered shirts and Doc Martens, poppers, speed, sweat, booze…the lot. A man in drag wearing neon sunglasses and heavy makeup stuck a ‘tubed shot’ straight between my breasts without so much as a blush. A gay man licked my face. I sniffed poppers and went insane to ‘Mr Brightside’.  Worried about being mugged, my friend slung his arm around me and we did our best look tough and confident, only to colapse laughing near the Hall gates and have to hold each other up to walk in a straight line.

And then in the morning of course, I had the gift of a headache straight from Dante’s inferno and had to put on a brave face while my mother and the ever-grouchy boyfriend turned up. HAnging round with such wonderful queers was really harsh on the pocket as well. £6 door entry in most places and my damned shoes kept coming off.

Lectures start properly tomorrow, at 9am. Here’s hoping.

The English social was dire for the first hour-  I swanned around with a glass of red wine, muttering expletives inwardly and trying to scope out people who looked approachable, and then stumbled (quite literally) on a pleasant meleé of people including 2 very Northern, left-wing Manchester locals, a polite and talkative Irish boy and a couple of third-years heavily involved in the student media (hopefully I can get involved as well). We made good use of all the free wine, and then hopped on a bus to a local pub. Excessive drunkenness, shouting, singing, laughter and shamelessly elitist conversations about poetry and writers ensued. I left with liberal quantities of Guinness splashed down my top, several new phone numbers and a feeling that I’m really fitting in here after all .

“Funny how things turn out”.

Going to take the bus into the city centre soon, and orm around for a while looking for a suitable dressing gown and various toiletries, as well as pens and cutlery.  Hopefully the loans will have gone in, and then the wonders of the welcome talk beckon. I might take this opportunity to offload my Sainsburys loot into the kitchen, though it was locked when I tried last night…

I love this city. I have wanted this freedom all my life, so why is it so strangely underwhelming when it comes? I feel lost, and lonely for the first time in a long while. I feel like an outsider and I’ve been here one day: the conversation is contrived, the laughter is forced, the common ground between myself and my new acquaintances is non-existent. I feel as though I can’t fully relax; sound bleeds easily through the walls and up to my window from the streets below, I can’t eat or sleep properly, can’t even shower in privacy. Everything is new and alien and I am torn between my logical, rational self (persevere until the situation improves), and the humbled fool who returns home after scarcely closing the door.

I have to stay here now, I have no choice if I want any kind of job prospects. Tomorrow I will get some bus or other into the city centre and walk around alone until my subject welcome talk, after which I’ll come back to my room, cook something just about edible and spend the night tapping away on the interwebz again rather than living it up in true Fresher’s style. I can hear the noisy bastards from here, even.

In a bid to do something constructive with my cheerless first night, I’ve been sporadically printing CV’s off for various menial jobs, in the hope I might get some cash to ‘live a little’ ( and save a little more, o costly PGDip). Also dropped an email to the local student newspaper, volunteering my snarling services as an arts & features writer. It doesn’t look like the BBC Journalism Trainee Scheme will be biting my hands off any time soon, that’s for sure. The launch night is tomorrow and I am contemplating whether or not to turn up anyway – at least it would demonstrate enthusiasm. I’ll also have a gander at the Socialist Students Soc, providing it’s simply left-wing and doesn’t peddle Soviet-style bile. Fascinating, mm-hmm?