The cold bit

It's January!
This is not a good thing, for a plethora of reasons very few folk seem to want to go out in January apart from students. This is not a good thing. With overdrafts to pay off after the Xmas excesses, this summer’s holidays to book, the membership at the new gym to start/give up on and the quite frankly appalling weather a lot fewer folks are out and about gracing the streets with their presence and giving me far too little to do. I don’t know if those most vulnerable to short term financial hardship, the chavs of the world, are responsible for most of the grief we get but come January it definitely seems the case.

Students are the only reliable custom at this time of year though their reliability is a well predictable function of loan installment to end of overdraft each and every term. There are at least 2 fine hallowed schools of learning in this city and they keep roughly the same timetable. Fresher’s week is full of two hour queues to get into an overcrowded club where the 18 year old imbibing their first ever taste of SnakeyB just over 2 hours ago leads inexorably to own swift departure in a slop of livid purple vomit. Toward summer they ebb and flow with the passing of final exams and results days before fleeing to Glasto/go traveling/go and get a proper job/find soap and a haircut/pay tax.

This time of year they’re out to drink, dance and try by cunning combination of the both woo each other to satisfy another new years resolution. This involves little clothing and lots of alchohol. This is distinct from the Friday and Saturday chav rutting ritual by lacking on all but the rarest occasions the testosterone/beer/‘disrespect’. So it’s bright young things being sought after by their ilk with the geeks salivating into their tequila against the far wall. My most common act on a student night, entering the toilets only to deploy the classic line “I think it’s time you were leaving”. Most common thought being I wish I’d had school uniform like that when I was at school. Actually, scrub that it’s too damn cold to be going out dressed like that, you’d freeze your freckles off.