Term off to a bad start, as whilst diving into the porter’s lodge, bod card in teeth and skirting parents clutching fresher offspring to their chests, Pert’n’Perky (my tute partner and nemesis) leapt out from behind the pidges to flash her gleaming mega-watt smile in my face.
Still sensitive after an alcohol-fuelled party the previous night, I reeled a little.
"Darling," she cooed, her cavernous cleavage serving as a magnet to the eyes of all fresher boys in the vicinity, "How was your holiday? Oh, poor thing, you haven’t picked up a tan at all, have you! My holiday reading didn’t take too long. Zipped through the Faerie Queene in a couple of days to be honest…"
Pricked with slight pangs of guilt about the pile of books that had lain stuffed in my wardrobe all summer, I looked for a distraction and immediately found it, in golden and muscled glory.
Bounding through the entrance to the porter’s lodge, accompanied by neither luggage nor parents, a fresher male of such stunning good looks made even Pert’n’Perky lose the thread a bit.
"Um, yes… Spenser… easy really…" she murmured, as we gazed open-mouthed at this demi-god who had unexpectedly been placed among us.
"God bless gap years," I breathed, as the bronzed apparition, who surely could only have attained such a hue in a country far, far away, turned to face us.
"Hi," he grinned a melting smile, "Do either of you know the way to staircase 8?"
As I opened my mouth to answer, calamity struck.
My parents careered round the corner, triumphantly brandishing a bottle of wine and calling my name. The porter yelled, "Who else needs keys?" and the parents rushed forward, cajoling their offspring with "Come on, you’re at Oxford now, show some bloody initiative…" In a sequence that seemed to unfold in tragic, unstoppable motion, one father, with a rather too enthusiastic shove to his daughter’s shoulder, sent her cannoning towards my mother, who drew the eyes of the quad upon her with a shriek of indignation and heavily tripped off one, stiletto-shod foot, staggering into my father. With a loud oath, he let go of the bottle of red wine, sending it tumbling onto Pert’n’Perky’s foot, where it shattered in a smash of shards and crimson.
Amongst my injured tute partner’s screams, my father’s apologies, the porter’s swearing and the nudgings of the freshers, I turned to the boy who I had been certain of securing as my future spouse."Second staircase on your left," I said hoarsely, as the wails of Pert’n’Perky echoed round the quad.
