The soul never grows old

Angels of the North

It was that moment in my student life, when you are obliged to choose which uni you want to spend the next three years. There were only two priorities when picking my university; number one; the course, and number two… the nightlife.

With fashion journalism as my choice, the uni’s I applied to, well the ones that didn’t reject me, all required an interview. The dreaded moment when you have to sell yourself to a room of complete strangers, telling them how good their establishment is, and how much of a privilege it would be to study there. In other words, being a complete bum-spider in the hope that the tutors fall in love with your over-eager charm and accept you into their university. My interview didn’t quite go like this.

It was around Christmas time I finally got a reply back from Northumbria. The same time my best friend Steph got her reply too. We had both applied for the same course and were both over the moon when they offered us an interview. We rang each other up straight away and wisely chose to coincide our interviews on the same day. In the moment of excitement we decided to make a trip out of it. Inviting a couple of friend’s along; our plan was to drive up to Newcastle the day before our interview; go out for dinner and then hit the town. Perfect!

 It was all the four of us spoke about for weeks. And the day to make our road trip up to the Geordie homeland had finally arrived.

It was Steph’s first real time on the motorway. When I say ‘real’ time, I mean it was her first time. With our sat-nav in hand, we felt confident about the journey ahead. I was appointed sat-nav reader; I preferred to call myself queen of TOM-TOM. But the idea was that I would keep a close-full eye on the navigation and keep Steph up-to-date of with direction. Easy? Apparently not.

We missed the first turning as my main concern was inserting my home-made CD that the rest of the car insisted on not listening to. Mcfly, Atomic Kitten, Destiny’s Child– I really didn’t see their problem with it.

After that small hiccup, the rest of the journey went surprisingly smoothly. This was probably due to Steph’s incredibly slow, or as she calls it, ‘sensible’ driving.

Finally, the Angel of the North was in sight. We had made it to Newcastle in one piece.

The hard part was finding our B&B. We drove around in circles through Newcastle centre for a good hour trying to find the location.  The thing that worried us the most; no-body had heard of the bed and breakfast we had booked. After another half an hour, we pulled over to ring the owner of the hotel, who turned out to be an international man called Sadi. The only words I managed to pull out from our conversation were, ‘hospital’, and ‘bowling alley’; these arewhat I assumed to be the directions.

Eventually, after a peculiar route into the heart of the Newcastle’s slum, we had, so the sat-nav would say, ‘reached our destination’.

We were greeted at the door by Sadi, who took us to our four bedroomed room on the top floor. Despite the fact we felt we were in the heart of the ghetto, our boudoir was remarkably nice.

It wasn’t long until we pulled out our huge bottle of Russia’s finest - ‘Vodkat’, and our apple-flavoured shots in the decision to get the night started early.

A couple of vodkas later we we’re downing shots, dancing on beds and making the most of the un-lockable bathroom door whilst our friends were occupied.  

During our rampage of music and, only what I can describe as, interesting dance moves, we managed to get ourselves a free plate of fruit and a letter, reading:

“Dear lowely ladies...” (yes, lowely) “… please keep the noise down, from room B304 –smiley face*)

A few hours later, we were ready to hit the toon. Or we were, until my friends fell into me like a game of dominoes, knocking what was left of my vodka and vimto all over my bright-yellow dress. The next part was a blur. All I recall; one dress coming off, another going on and a hairdryer.

The next thing I remember was waking up. Fake tanned, dry-mouthed and garlic-mayo on my toes. We had almost forgotten the reason we were in Newcastle – our interview!

After a manic rush of getting ready, tidying our room (in which was covered in melon, mayonnaise and kebab) and packing our bags with hangovers from hell, we had 30 minutes to get back on the road and to our interview.

We couldn’t find the university. Meaning my dream of studying in Newcastle was looking almost uncertain. 

Panicking whilst trying to map-read with a hangover somehow worked.  We pulled in at to the campus’ car park and ran to our interview leaving our other two friends to go to the pub.

We walked in five minutes late and were handed some questionnaires to fill out whilst we waited to be interviewed.  The hangover sweats were upon us. Infact, I still felt drunk.  Flashbacks from our night were coming back to me. My concentrations levels were gone. It was official; I was still hunk (hungover+drunk).

Luckily the interviews went smoothly. We worked our northern kiss-ass charm, and walked out feeling like future students of Northumbria University.

We went to join our friends and celebrate before we set off back home to tell everyone about our trip. We pined on about it for weeks.  Constantly checking UCAS for our reply.

‘Your offer for Northumbria university has been declined’.

So, here I am, at Southampton Solent university.

Other side of the country.

Paying the price by a six-hour train journey to visit home. For three years.

Note to future self: Never drink… ever!