Actual date: 15/9/2012

It’s been a strange week. Last week I left you as I went to the ball, taking Alex to the ball with me, and you know what, we both had a great (very expensive) night. Alex is a video games journalist in the making so when we were sat at the end of a table surrounded by lads I felt quite comfortable that she’d be able to hold her own in conversation with them. As not only is her encyclopaedic knowledge of video games incredibly sexy, it’s a great conversation starter, especially with lads. The fact that she is a huge Everton fan (nobody is perfect) and knows the offside rule also helps her conversation skills. So while I was discussing my optimism for the current football season (Oh how wrong I was. I could not have been more wrong) with a Spurs fan (who will feature quite prominently I imagine, so I’ll call him Gareth, after the over-rated Welshman that currently plays for Spurs), Alex was discussing the intricate details of some obscure level of Metal Gear Solid with , a game I never really took to. Too much stealth and stuff like that for me.

Anyway. I digress.

The wine flowed, the food – rather surprisingly for a student society ball – was excellent and the conversation was pretty good as well. It was really good to see a lot of the lecturers and clinical fellows (CEFS- Doctors that teach us in our small groups, some are good, some are less good) that we had come to know during the week mingling with the students. Santa Connery (See “The First Day, Published 20/8/2013 for the reference) gave us another welcoming speech, this time without any mention of circling sharks or vultures.

When the wine ran out I moved onto port.. the cash also ran out about the same time as this so I moved on to paying with my credit card. (Something that I regretted at the end of the month). And that is where the night starts to blur. I remember a very tall (I’m 6’1” so he must have been tall), well built bloke hitting on Alex, much to my amusement. It’s always funny seeing the look on her face when a bloke is blatantly hitting on her in front of me, she doesn’t quite know what to do. After thirty seconds or so I decided that I’d had my fun and went over and gave her a kiss and introduced myself to the fella, who looked a little embarrassed, apologised and started talking to me as if nothing had happened. He’s actually a really nice bloke and I get on really well with him, not sure he remembers this though…I might have to remind him when I see him next.

We spent the rest of the night with my two housemates, who I realise I haven’t introduced you to yet. For obvious reasons, I have to give them nicknames. It’s probably important to know that one of my housemates owns the house that we live in, and is actually a very good landlady. My landlady therefore will be called…. Lilly (her boyfriend is Harvey), and my other housemate is called Kate. Both are southerners and a year younger than me. Which is fine, I don’t have anything against the south (At least I didn’t until I lived there..) but it really did amaze me in the first few days a lot of the differences, even in little things.

Anyway. Lilly talks. A lot. Mostly about her two rabbits, which I’ve not quite decided if I like yet. I had rabbits when I was a kid, loved them and my guinea pigs, however that is a story for another time. The talking about the rabbits (especially before 8am and coffee) got to the point where Kate and myself had to ban Lilly from talking about them before we had had our morning caffeine. Kate also talks. A lot. About pretty much anything.  Which leaves me, I’m quiet, northern and not a morning person. We all seem to get on well enough though, and no-one has killed anyone yet anyway.

This is another of the problems with the graduate course that the people who designed it seem to have overlooked. I guess that’s because it’s not really a problem for the university. Unlike traditional undergraduate degrees where you spend your first year in halls and pay a vast amount of money for the privilege of living in conditions in which it would be illegal to keep prisoners As post-graduates (when the uni want us to be) we aren’t entitled to a place in uni accommodation. There are a few places provided on campus, or a few in the surrounding areas. None of this appealed to me really. This meant finding people to live with, finding people that I have never met before and signing a contract to live and work with them for a year. Quite how people managed this before facebook is beyond me. I do think I’m quite lucky to have stumbled into this house, I do get on with the girls when I get a word in and I’m sure I’ll learn to love the rabbits. If not, I make an excellent stew.

I feel like we all bonded as a house at the ball, especially Alex and the girls. Alex spent a large amount of the evening holding Kates hair back as she vomited into the toilet while Lilly and myself talked to her American boyfriend on skype about the hedgehogs outside the ball.

We started our proper modules this week as well, before this we’d been doing a lot of introduction lectures. Now we were doing more introduction lectures, just for specific subjects. Sadly there’s nothing really that interesting that’s happened so I don’t have much medical stuff to talk to you about this week. Hopefully next week will pick up.

Sorry that was a long one.  I still can’t remember anything that I learned that week. I think I was writing this after watching my team get absolutely stuffed as well, so I wasn’t in the best of moods. One moment from the ball that I’d forgotten and made me laugh.. and made me realise how much of a scruff I’d obviously been the following week. I was walking passed a lad that I’d got to know quite well that week, and he didn’t recognise me in a tux, with a haircut and a shave. He was actually quite taken aback when he recognised me. So if I ever need to go on the run.. I just don’t shave for a week.