Hope

I did stay up all night last night, eventually falling asleep at five this morning. Guy woke me up half-an-hour later. I felt quite wretched—cold, weary and dull-brained—but set off with Barry, Guy, Kamran and Pete to the station at six to head for Hove to try to get some Cup Final tickets. There were obviously quite a few other football fans with the same idea boarding the train in Watermouth.

We got there at eight and walked down to the ground to find a huge queue of blue and white bedecked people stretching back round the corner and up as far as the eye could see. My heart fell. The vast snake of people stretched up the road and turned right, round another corner and, to our relief, ended there. More people were adding themselves to the end of the queue all the time and every few minutes the river of heads would shuffle forward a few yards; by the time we’d rounded the last corner and had the ticket office actually in sight we’d been queuing nearly four hours and it was one o’clock.

We kept hearing rumours that there were only a few tickets were left: some said 4,000 were available in total, others 8,000, some even put it at 22,000. I started to doubt whether we had any chance at all. People who had just bought tickets wandered back along the queue looking satisfied. One bloke wearing a blue and white cap was trying to sell a ticket for £25 and two kids tried to flog their tickets for a tenner, and Pete and I were sorely tempted, but I was angry at the opportunist bastards who were trying to rip people off: as soon as it was obvious we were going to get tickets however, we too began speculating how much we could get for our extras. Hypocrites!

Soon it was our turn to go down the steps to the ticket office windows and we bought two each (five extra), at £4.00 a ticket. In high spirits now we drooled over the pale brown pieces of paper and set off into Brighton to make half-hearted attempts to flog them in pubs and even a betting shop, before getting the train back to Watermouth.

I'd missed my two o'clock seminar; I was shattered, and gladly climbed into bed and was woken up at five by Pete: he’d found someone who wanted to buy two tickets, but had given Kamran his extra one and now couldn’t find him and so wanted me to donate my two. I was worried in case Kamran sold Pete’s extra ticket for him and I was left without one, but apparently Pete has sorted it out and he flogged the pair for £24 after the mustached victim of our exploitation had turned down the first quote of £30. We’re pooling the money from the tickets and sharing it between five of us. We’ve got £34 so far.

I went back to bed and woke up again at eleven when Barry and Shelley came into my room. Shelley had stolen a bagful of food—bread, bacon, cheese, orange-juice, tuna, eggs, tomato sauce, etc. This term there have been massive food thefts from the residence hall kitchens all across campus; anarchy rules, with gangs of people raiding each other’s kitchens. Cheese is a big favourite, and one time last term Rowan and Shelley came back from a strike on Rousseau Hall with three carrier bagfuls, including wine.

Barry rang Patrick yesterday and found out that Phil’s girlfriend Fiona is now in an asylum. When Phil went to see her she was acting quite nice but a bit like a 10-year old, and then suddenly attacked him and bit him on the wrist. As Shelley said, she always seemed so well-balanced and ‘sorted out.’ “If she can end up in an asylum, what hope is there for the rest of us?”