Who is my flatmate?

YES! The wait is over - I am back on Warwick University campus, and it feels so weird! I've been away for sixteen months you see, doing that whole Erasmus thing I haven't shut up about, and the campus is so familiar, yet so different as well. I've gone from comfortably existing among the noobs, to becoming the old and wise finalist who is experienced in the art of Warwick life and surviving a degree. Of course that is not the case. I'm as wise as someone trying to pick an electric socket with a razorblade.

But I have not completely settled in just yet. You see, I'm staying in the halls of residence known in the common tongue as Claycroft. It is a wonderful residence with decent-sized rooms, a good location (next to the sports centre where I can burn some calories, and a Tesco where I can buy enough burgers to render my exercise useless) and a decent price.

The reason for the latter is shared bathrooms. These days if you want en suite at Warwick, you need to be the son/daughter/lover of an oil dealer from Qatar to afford it. However, I didn't particularly want to be living in a hostel for the year, setting off on a regular poop pilgrimage to the bathroom on the other side of the block. 

So Claycroft has provided the best of both worlds: flats with one bathroom per two rooms. This is great if you know with whom you're sharing this intimate place. I did a group application for halls with three other guys and two girls. Now, the flats are obviously gonna be single sex, so that rules out the girls, and one of my friends wasn't guaranteed on campus accommodation because the poor bastard hasn't been away for the last year and thus has been able to look for his own place in Leamington, and the lots that were drawn were not in his favour. 

You can probably guess what's happened. As fate would have it, the two other guys have been allocated together, permitting all the facilities they need for their homoerotic endeavours, leaving me with a fear of the unknown. 

Who is my flatmate? He hasn't arrived yet, and judging by the lack of familiar faces last night at the Students Union, it probably isn't going to be someone I already know. A bathroom is an intimate place to share between two people. I have a few theories about who it could be, and why I should be worried. 

1) The Player: The sort of student who will spend the year fishing for Freshers, and reeling them into his love boudoir conveniently located next to my innocent recluse so that I can hear every gyration of his conquests in the middle of the night, leaving me bereft of sleep and sanity.

2) The Raver: To him 'student' is merely a title, an excuse to spend three years on a daily binge of ale and amphetamines, crashing his way back in the flat at 4am with a gang of other lunatics so they can continue the night listening to house music at full volume whilst they bellow philosophies about the meaning of life and the purpose of Kim Kardishian, before quickly darting to hurl all over the white goods, leaving me bereft of sleep and sanity, and with a mess to clean up in the morning.

3) The Dysentery: The unfortunate sort with terrible flatulence or bowel problems that will make horrible noises and leave nasty smells to poison me every time I use the bathroom. Not to mention the skid marks...

4) The Self-harmer. Blood is not a welcome sight, and I am here to finish a degree, not to be a therapist.

5) The Oxbridge Reject: The tall brash handsome guy whose arms are as thick as his English accent. The only problem he has ever faced in life was failing to bribe Oxford or Cambridge University to admit him with his mediocre grades from Eton using generous donations from his banker father. He plays rugby, yet studies a scientific subject to make him the quintessential perfect man, apart from his bigoted conservative and anti-foreigner views. You know the sort...

6) The Nerd: I will be quite nerdy this year. I need to make sure the last three years are not all in vain and attain that 2.1 degree that seems to be all the rage. However, I do like to play guitar (both acoustic and electric) and the occasional bit of loud rock/metal music from my iPod speakers. If my  flatmate is even nerdier than I am and unable to tolerate this my sanity is at severe risk. 

7) The Thief: Oh my shower gel seems to have run out quickly. Waaaaaait......

8) The Creep: He will take a weird liking to me, watching me as I walk into the bathroom, sniffing my soap and brushing the bristles of my toothbrush. He wants my arse, but won't make the move. Then there's the sort who will.

9) The Queer Rapist: You know, like the Bull Queers from the Shawshank Redemption, targeting men after years without seeing a woman. They probably won't be prisoners, but they could be from somewhere like Estonia where all the attractive women have emigrated to live the American Dream modelling for third-rate blogs (....) and hence target me as their next sexual conquest. 

10) Norman Bates from Psycho. In that case, Mum, Dad. I love you, and hope you can continue to live a normal and fruitful life.

As you can see, this uncertainty is rather vexing. Why couldn't it just be a girl. They're clean, tidy and when they fart it smells like lavender....... 

Oh well, soon I shall know. Fingers crossed it's not one of those aforementioned guys, but I'm not too hopeful.

Rant over

Ollie