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Day: 4 December 2011

Confessions of a former fresher

It is customary for every student after their first year to have absolute distaste for those over-zealous sentient masses of wristband-riddled flesh that spring up around campus every year, freshers.

But I have a confession to make. I was not always the scarred, cynical veteran of university life that I am now. I was once a chirpy, clueless fresher. I am now owning up and asking for forgiveness for all the obnoxious twat-ish things I did in that distant past.

My first year self was into some truly repulsive activities, such as smiling, making friends and socialising. I was so excited to finally be at university and now the thought of what an optimistic, fun-loving guy I was makes me feel like regurgitating the entire putrid contents of my insides out through my eye sockets.

There is a point in the history of time that I used to think night clubs, like 5th avenue, were actually good, and did so with not even a whiff of irony. I would be on the dance floor gleefully jumping up and down to “killing in the name of” thinking to myself how higher education has really made me appreciate the anti-authoritarian sentiment of the lyrics.

Fresher-me believed life in halls was tough. Maybe I thought that functioning heating and kitchen equipment made life too simple. We even had a cleaner, but I was always too terrified of her giving us grief about messy hobs that I would hide in my room as her vacuum cleaner of Northern malice could be heard in the hallway – sniffing out our pungent undergraduate bodies. Not that it was bad to be stuck in your room, the incredibly fast Internet that meant you never encountered a swirling circle of doom during an iNank.

Here’s some advice to any one hoping to be a good flatmate: do not decide that the best time to defeat the locust scourge in gears of war on the Xbox is four in the morning. Especially when you’ve just stumbled into your room after a night of downing sambuca shots with that person on your course whose name you can never quite remember. However, do at least attempt apologise when the guy in the room next door kindly asks you to stop as the volume is such that their desk is shaking like it’s on an espresso binge.

My appearance was even more dire. I thought it would be cool to paint my fingernails black and allow someone in my halls to pierce my ear with a potato. To fresher-me that was being zany and interesting, to now-me that was being desperately quirky and averagely individual. Worse was I didn’t mind going to lectures the next day with some face paint left on from dressing up the night before. Actually, it was worse that I even dressed up to go out in the first place.

Then there was the obsession with buying the largest and strongest alcohol available for human consumption, frosty jack. A right bargain with 2.5 litres available for around £3.50. A small price to pay for a night you can’t (and wouldn’t want to) remember and a day (sometimes several) of lying in bed sweating, sobbing and desperately pining for death’s sweet embrace to rid you of the pain your body is enduring as it deals with a blood stream now mostly composed of essentially apple flavoured de-icer.

Fortunately most of this is now well documented in the online archives of embarrassing and career-threatening images and information, also know as Facebook. However, perhaps it was by doing all these foolish things that at the end of my first year of university I had learnt one of the greatest lessons of life in academic institutes, to hate freshers.

Live: Madina Lake @ Academy 2

Madina Lake
Academy 2
16th November
3 stars

Playing their previous two Manchester shows in Academy 2, Madina Lake are more than familiar with what to expect. They even go as far as to mention that their last show here in 2010 was “the best show we have ever played”. The audience has a lot to live up to. However, the venue floor seemed to only be at half capacity, most likely due to economic reasons or the fact that the tour was not as well promoted; yet the adorned fans at the front few rows made up for any lack of eagerness, with enough energy to make it seem as if it was sold out.

They make their way through new material and old favourites ‘Never Take Us Alive’, ‘House of Cards’ and ‘One Last Kiss’. What I noticed about this band is that they really like to smile, like really really smile. I don’t think there was a point in the whole set where they failed to smile. This is an inspiring thing to see from a band that has been through their struggles in past months, with bassist Matthew Leone spending many critical months fighting for his life. The band are grateful and appreciative of the fans that have helped and stuck by them, constantly making the audience aware of this throughout the night via their rather emotional (and seemingly alcohol-fuelled) speeches.

Continuing to play newer songs ‘Hey Superstar’ and ‘They’re Coming For Me’, to a good reception, the highlight of the night was during ‘True Love’, probably described as the heaviest song in the Madina Lake back catalogue, where a wall of death successfully opened up, despite the small-ish size of the crowd occupying the middle of the room.

With a positive stage presence, high crowd and band participation levels and several confetti-loaded beach balls floating about, every figure in the room is bound to have been left satisfied.