The hidden joys of campus
My first year was perfect. Not once was I distracted from an evenings drinking to worry about bills. I paid my money to the university, and that was it. In signing one cheque, I had an unlimited amount of electricity, water and toilet roll at my eager disposal. I didn't know how lucky I was at the time, but after an expensive second year, I can look back on my extravagant first year with a smile. Surely there is some mistake
We got a telephone in our student house. A telephone, you see, had seemed like a good money saving idea at the time. After all, it was cheaper to call from a land line than it was to call from our mobiles, and provided that we made most of the calls after 6pm, it seemed like the economical thing to do. It was. This illusion wasn't going to last. Then the phone bill arrived. In big capital letters, British Telecom cheerfully reminded us that we had made £129.74 worth of telephone calls. Surely this wasn't the money saving project to which we had so eagerly signed up. It was, however, all true. Reality check
We had, in just a couple of months, run up a telephone bill that would buy eighty-six and a half pints of Carling at the student bar. As if having to pay my share of a bill this size wasn't bad enough, it was only made worse when there were rather a lot of calls which nobody would admit to making. Having to divide up the cost of these unaccounted calls made a few people rather unhappy at discovering that they were going to have to part with even more of their precious student pennies. I guess that I should be thankful that we had a fully itemised bill. If we didn't, then a little unhappy arguing might have turned into bloodshed. For the grief and shock that the phone bill brought with it every three months, I am no longer such a firm believer that it is indeed good to talk.
Sam Fugill Could you be a student diarist?
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