Filling in the gaps
Just imagine the scene a year from now. A cold, wet, betowelled and bedraggled first-year joins the line of impatiently muttering students outside one of the few remaining porters’ lodges – lets say Goodricke’s – and waits patiently for his chance to claim a key to his room. The queue is a motley bunch; some were locked out during a shower, others are post one-night-stand and sheepish, still more have been victims of vicious Dalek attacks (the student-hating alien killing machine has now been fitted with not just a water cannon but a police-issue taser and some kind of spike-launching machine or something).
The ceiling is leaking, as the upkeep budgets have been cut to raise money for a new Olympic-standard curling rink on Hes East. The temperature in the queue is a frigid two degrees, as the money for heating Goodricke has been spent building an enormous sandpit for Ken Batten and Keith Lilley to bury their heads in.
Several of the less hardy students have given up all hope, and are huddling together for warmth in what’s left of Goodricke JCR. One of them is trying to catch a duck to eat, but without much enthusiasm, and it outwits him easily.
A shifty-looking swastika-tattooed skinhead is taking notes for Redwatch; they now target students, labour voters, ducks, journalists and the elderly as communist scum.
The elderly, massively overworked porter behind the glass partition has been brought over from the Physics Department and is nearing the end of a 12-hour shift. He wipes the perspiration from his brow as he begins the day’s ninety-fourth journey to the parcel store around the corner.
Unrealistic, you think? Just sit by and watch Batten and Lilley fail to return portering to normal. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
