Unless you’re a member of the Bullingdon Club, go to Christ Church, or have managed to wrangle some extra pocket money out of your college’s bursary scheme, you will be well aware that life as a student is wrought with fiscal uncertainty. Sure, the student loan is a significant boost to the old savings account, but once you factor in croquet cuppers stash, nights out and a subscription to Good Houseke- sorry, GQ, there’s not really much left to be getting on with.

As someone with far less dignity and a much higher maintenance girlfriend than the average student, over the next eight weeks I’ll be trying a variety of money saving methods so you don’t have to. A new term, with fresh prospects, no exams (if you’re lucky enough to be in the second year), and some cracking weather means it would be a shame not to exploit the finer cultural, scenic and epicurean sides to our city. By which I mean, getting bladdered at every possible opportunity. 

The thing about university clubs is that there are lots of them. Too many, if I’m being honest with you – I can say for certain that no sleepless nights would be had on my part if (just picking at random from the OUSU website), ‘Oxford Uni Conservative Association’ was shut down. I don’t even know what Conservatives are – for a bit I was pretty sure it was something to do with an ugly extension that poor people use instead of a morning room, but then my granny kept banging on about Johnny Foreigner, who I presume is some kind of figure head to these people.

Anyway, whilst the majority of us would not be particularly peeved if Underwater Hockey practice was cancelled due to a spate of drownings, the outcome is that a great number of meetings are held all over Oxford with embarrassingly few attendees. Naturally, in an attempt to draw a crowd, many of these offer free wine. I think you can see where I’m going with this. In exchange for a brief/moderate/awkwardly long conversation with an art nut/keen green/proud biologist, you win at least a couple of glasses of Tierra’s finest, and in the best case scenario, even a couple of cheeky bottles of red in tow.

My editor has asked me to stress that this is a hypothetical situation, and that even in that hypothetical situation, they were gifted by the club president anyway. Probably. A quick search of ‘how to get drunk on the cheap’ online yielded some… interesting suggestions, but as a devotee to the piece I embarked on a night out as per its instructions. The results were a mixed bag: I can exclusively reveal that losing sleep (not napping during the day counts, right) and missing dinner (to be fair I forgot to book hall) gave me a dizzy and nauseous turn, rather than heightening my prelash buzz. Avoid.

The dubious doctrine of get your drinks over the counter sounded mental earlier in the day, but after a couple of tasty lagers I was more than game for a cheeky shot of Listerine. The minty freshness is only topped by a pretty savage afterburn, followed by more of that nausea from earlier. Avoid.

The pinnacle of the internet’s wisdom was simply learn the art of flirtation. If you have ever had a girl buy you a drink in Oxford, please write in so I can learn your secrets and pass them off as my own in a future article – ‘VK Orange? Classy choice. Mine’s a vodka Red Bull’ went down like a lead balloon. Baffling.

After last week’s partial success, a college ball is perhaps not the most obviously immoral environment to continue my run of form. I’m feeling thoroughly improper though, so it’s black tie or bust.

I’m here with a big group of friends, and my best friend among them. I’ve only told the guy next door about my challenge, but for everything else this girl is my number one confidant. Her enthusiasm is infectious. We are two people, lacking in any self-consciousness around each other, who value every aspect of the opposing personality. Talking of opposing personalities, I realise that stalker girl number one, perhaps inspired by the partial success of her fellow predator, has made it to the party.

She is rotund and unattractive, with a personality that is prone to gossiping and sensationalism. Totally wearing. She catches my eye, and I spin around, desperate to avoid contact, right into my best friend. Have you ever had one of those suggestive moments where a new direction becomes possible for the first time, and the tension is unbearable as you decide whether to take it or not? This is what we suffer as I turn into her and find our faces inches apart.

We rise up to meet it; freed from constraint amongst the inevitable decadence of ball-goers. She puts her hands on my shoulders, and gives me a risky, full-blooded kiss, open-mouthed, and I can taste the flame of the shot that she must have just taken. We keep kissing, without thought of friendship, pressing our faces together in the crowd, revelling in the moment without caring what happens next.

We break, and I stumble away towards the toilets. I see the ice queen is here too, an irritated onlooker at my new attachment; her scowl says, “I shouldn’t have made him work for it”. As I carry on, I notice stalker number one tracking my movements, but disorientated and eager to return I manage to lose her. Her inability to see over anyone’s shoulders has also aided my flight.

Finally free, I begin to piss against the bottom of an unused door, away from the crowds. Then, in mid-release, the door swings open and, horrifically, I spatter all over stalker girl, who, shrewdly judging my escape route, has managed to come at me from an unexpected angle. Not anticipating My unintentional counter-play is even more unexpected.

She shrieks and runs off the way she came. I finish up, feeling that I’ve somewhat redeemed myself for last week’s admitted lapse of judgment. The ball is winding down. Our friends head home soon after, leaving my best friend and me, caught between strangers and lovers, amongst the barren stalls and litter-strewn grass, heavy with potential and hot in the calm night. 

So last week, in one of my more confessional moments, I revealed details of the challenge to my friend next door. This has had unexpected consequences. I am now actively and tragically being pursued by two desperate sirens, who overheard our talk, as they attempt to shipwreck my sexual odyssey. Both are deadly vixens, but the first we shall discuss later. The second is inarguably beautiful, yet from what I’ve experienced her personality prevents anyone from getting even close. She’s distant, aloof, sarcastic, the hottest ice queen you could imagine. Now then, my red-blooded readers, I ask you to watch my back if you can – best pantomime voices at the ready for “she’s behind you”.

I’m playing a bit of mixed sport, which is tactically great from me. Sport is basically sex with more people involved, or so I hear, anyway. The game finishes and we’re all going to head back to college, but I’ve left some stuff in the changing rooms and head back in to retrieve it. Ice queen walks in and comes across to where I’m sitting on the benches. She straddles me, and gently puts her fingers on my face. The look in her eyes is teasing, contemptuous, but she gets away with it.

She puts her lips so close to mine that they brush together, but keeps her eyes fixed on me, before gently reaching up to close my eyes. She gives slow kisses; a flicker of tongue and the pleasure of lips breaking over each other. I’m helpless, and try to hold her haunches as she curls up on me but she knocks my hands away. She pulls my shirt off and kisses down my neck, raking her nails gently down my chest. She pulls me to my feet and walks away, only as far as the nearest shower where, with a heart-stopping grin, she turns the water on full.

She pushes the water into the folds of her body; her shorts rise up to meet the tops of her legs as her shirt sticks around her breasts and hips. She beckons me, almost imperceptibly, and I collapse. I walk to her and kiss her hard on the mouth, cling to her, explore her, and she responds in kind. She peels her sodden shirt over her head, and as she reaches behind her to unclasp her bra she falls against the shower wall.

Every moment is an anarchic; I press up against her, glorying in the rush as her breasts touch against my bare skin. We clash teeth, biting at each other with desire.Then the water stops. Then she pulls away, utterly nonchalant, and leaves me dripping in the shower as she re-dresses. I can find nothing to say; she speaks first, with one quick look of disdain, before leaving. “Well, you’re going to have to work for it”.

Don’t know what she’s on about, readers; I’ve already told you I’m not interested.

One socially competent boy seeks girl to help him shag the elephant in the room into submission. Anyone fairly appealing and over may apply. And of course what better smorgasbord of all things fairly appealing and over then the start-of-term college bop? I’m successfully dodging any flying references to last week’s failure, as I attempt the deadly seduction technique of the deliberate cheek-kiss. However, after conquering the cheek of another fresher, our drinks knock against each other and we get a golden shower of red bull. “God I’m so sorry, I’m such an idiot”. “Oh it’s fine – we’re only going out to waste time until Magdalen Bridge, can you lend me a top? And you’ll need to change too, you’re soaked!” Readers, this was unexpected.

One socially competent boy seeks girl to help him shag the elephant in the room into submission. Anyone fairly appealing may apply. And of course where is a better smorgasbord of all things fairly appealing than the start-of-term college bop?

I’m successfully dodging any flying references to last week’s failure, as I attempt the deadly seduction technique of the deliberate cheek-kiss. However, after conquering the cheek of another fresher, our drinks knock against each other and we get a golden shower of red bull. “God I’m so sorry, I’m such an idiot”. “Oh it’s fine – we’re only going out to waste time until Magdalen Bridge, can you lend me a top? And you’ll need to change too, you’re soaked!” Readers, this was unexpected.

So we run back to my room near the college bar and I rifle through the drawers, pulling out a couple of shirts. I start to change when she pulls her top off in front of me and, with a casual smile, reaches out for the shirt in my hand. We’re both stood there, topless, and she laughs before she pulls the shirt on. She kisses me on the cheek (clearly she shares in the knowledge of my favourite ploy), before pulling me towards Wahoo. The infallibility of the cheek technique prevails.

We’re there for a few minutes before her friend arrives, and we go over to talk. “What are you wearing? It’s fucking huge.” “Oh, my friend gave it me… such a lifesaver”. And with that she goes, taking his hand and throwing me a “see you later”. Error on my part. Leaving soon after, I sack all May Day ambition off and start walking home. There’s just enough time left in the night to hopelessly confess the challenge to my friend next door.

There seems to be this stigma that, if you’re a boy, and not socially useless, you should invariably have had sex by the time you hit university. The more outgoing a personality you possess, the weirder you seem to become by revealing such a secret. I don’t tell people I’m a virgin. I’m a confident person, but I’m not that confident. I’ve had girlfriends in the past, before Oxford, but while we “did stuff”, it just wasn’t time for the main event.

When I got here in Michaelmas I’d been single for a while and was on the lookout for something serious, so I didn’t ever try to push things too far too soon with those girls I got close to. I suppose that’s why this coital crusade is even happening. By the time it got to Hilary, law mods had taken off and I calmed down on the whole relationship hunt to focus on work; it was starting to feel like ‘I want never gets’. No-one likes a keeno. And so to another week of Trinity, and to being casual, and unsuccessful.

I can feel her fingers running through my hair as we exchange hot, blurry kisses; I pull the curves of her body into mine. Long private minutes pass by; it’s not the best kiss ever, but for a friend of a friend things between us have been immediately easy. She’s really attractive, and there’s been a spark in the conversation. We’re stumbly with drink, clumsy tongues in each other’s mouths, but there’s nothing clumsy about the feel of her hips beneath the thin dress fabric. I slip kisses from her lips onto her neck, and she lets out a sigh which recovers into laughter, as she pulls away. The dull thud of the bass, the buzz of talk, and the amused faces of my friends watching from the bar come rushing back messily. I’m aware of a tug on my hand as she leads me away from the dancefloor towards the cloakroom. Cue even more amused faces from my friends as I leave, doing my best impression of a straight walk.

I can feel her fingers running through my hair as we exchange hot, blurry kisses; I pull the curves of her body into mine. Long private minutes pass by; it’s not the best kiss ever, but for a friend of a friend things between us have been immediately easy. She’s really attractive, and there’s been a spark in the conversation. We’re stumbly with drink, clumsy tongues in each other’s mouths, but there’s nothing clumsy about the feel of her hips beneath the thin dress fabric.

I slip kisses from her lips onto her neck, and she lets out a sigh which recovers into laughter, as she pulls away. The dull thud of the bass, the buzz of talk, and the amused faces of my friends watching from the bar come rushing back messily. I’m aware of a tug on my hand as she leads me away from the dancefloor towards the cloakroom. Cue even more amused faces from my friends as I leave, doing my best impression of a straight walk.

In the queue for coats I’m starting to feel the effects but I manage to drive my disorientation aside when she reaches her arm out behind and slowly starts to touch me through my jeans. Drunkenly playful, she opens her mouth slightly and arches her neck, and as her tongue touches against her teeth she presses her back against me and subtly pushes her hand down inside my jeans.

At this point, I start spinning, but can’t tell if it’s the drink or the girl. We reach the counter and I fall against it as she asks for her coat. They’re discussing some issue, but all else becomes irrelevant as I realise it’s the drink. Definitely the drink. Crisis: the drink is now an immediately pressing issue. In a moment of panic, I snatch her bag from the counter as she argues and run into a corner.

I can’t tell what’s more horrific, my emergency ability to projectile-aim, or the fact that no-one seems to have noticed. Closing the bag, I thrust it into the hands of a club worker coming past and tell them that the girl at the counter just dropped it.

I’m a horrible human being.

This is strike one, and it’s not a good start. It’s Trinity term; I’m a first-year lawyer; I’m also a virgin. I’m not embarrassed about it, and I don’t feel I have anything to prove, but I’m nineteen and never been… well, fucked. Is that too much to ask? So that’s what this diary is all about. If you’re in my situation then maybe you’ll go along for the (semi-proverbial) ride with me, and if not, it’ll be a great spectator sport.  

There you have it: eight weeks to lose the v-card. Eight strikes and I’m out. Let the games begin. No handbags necessary.

The vested interests in the tabloid media are invoking fallacious arguments in promoting free speech ahead of privacy.  The most common is some analogy of the ‘victimisation’ of consenting women by rich, famous men who are full in the knowledge that their actions can be veiled by an injunction. But the reason why it is predominantly the rich and famous who seek injunctions is not because they are the sole perpetrators of wrongdoings; it is because the costs of litigation exclude the majority, and it is only the famous that have their, otherwise, banal engagements embellished by the media. This argument therefore doesn’t address the morality of seeking injunctions.

The judiciary are set the task of balancing the conflicting human rights of free speech and a right to privacy. The central message from Lord Neuberger’s report on Friday was that free speech supersedes privacy either when an illicit activity has taken place, or if the matter is in the public interest. The Supreme Court make these judgments on a case-by-case basis. If an individual’s actions are legitimate and have no externalities then the public have no right to have exposure to them, unless they are collectively willing to engage in reciprocity, or in other words, they are willing to engage in a society with no privacy whatsoever.

Max Mosley is right. Whilst his actions with those women were far from orthodox, they were consented, perfectly legal and nobody’s business. But because his achievements have caught the public spotlight, it is inanely assumed that every trifle in his life is in the public interest. And though the classic retort claims that public figures should be scrutinised because of their elevated position – as if they were now sterile and inhuman, not every figure in public life wished its demands upon them. The late Princess Diana’s treatment by the media and her interview with Panorama in 1995 give weight to this notion. We should therefore assume that all famous people may not appreciate perpetual intrusion into their lives.

The central reason for the exposure of the idiosyncrasies of familiar people by the media is to provide entertainment. It is entertaining for some to find out that John Terry had transgressions with the girlfriend of a former team-mate, but the very same incident involving three members of the general public, unknown to the fourth person, would evoke indifference, not interest, in the fourth person. The same can be said about any personal issue or activity that someone may have or have done, which they’d prefer not to be shared with the world. So the moral debate should centre here: whether someone privy to an affair, vice or insecurity should have the responsibility to tattle. If society has said no, then it shouldn’t exhibit double standards by making spurious exceptions with criteria that clearly lie outside the accepted conditions of legality and public interest.

Of course, the consensus would be different, should the party privy to the information have loyalties to other parties and feels obliged to divulge. But this is acceptable because the social setting is more intimate, and the interested parties have a broader understanding of the demeanour and intentions of others, placing the incident in a context for which to make a better judgment. Tabloids feel obliged to their readers, and represent a macrocosm of the first case: documenting every move of an easy, recognisable prey and creating a distorted, caricatured and, therefore, untruthful context with the sole aim to profit through entertainment.

Lord Stoneham’s justification of using parliamentary privilege, allowing MPs or Lords to override court injunctions on free speech, to reveal Sir Fred Goodwin’s affair with an RBS colleague at the height of the banking collapse is contentious. To say that the affair blighted his judgment is completely irrelevant, because it’s an unverifiable claim and there are no meaningful lessons to be learned from it – except, maybe, the tautology that people in positions of power and responsibility are also subjected to the whims of human nature. One is not condoning Goodwin’s actions but merely removing them from the realm of perceived abnormality.

We should therefore welcome Lord Judge’s wider condemnation of the dissemination of defamations on the largely unregulated social networking platforms. In addition to declaiming that modern technology is ‘out of control’ in terms of restoring the balance between conflicting rights, he said: ‘ I am not giving up the possibility of people who, in effect, peddle lies about others using modern technology may one day be brought under control’. This is a slightly different issue, but both comments lie at the heart of the argument about using platforms to degrade people who have done nothing illegal and in the public interest. He was speaking in the context of influential Twitter users who promulgate information which for, whatever reason, should not be expressed with the intention either to mislead or to breach another person’s privacy. Lord Neuberger’s choice of words may have been improvable, but they encapsulate the need to rebalance the tradeoff between free speech and privacy, for however liberating the internet has been, liberation restricts privacy, and legislation needs to redress this. But in terms of the Supreme Court’s record on issuing injunctions and super-injunctions, it is getting the balance right.