by Stuart Flegg 

I feel that I ought to begin with a confession. You see, I’m not really a student at this university. I’m a fake, a fraudster and a wannabe. In short I attend lectures at Queens Campus. I also ought to mention that I’m not here by accident, it is something I chose.From my first week here I was rather enjoying myself. I quite liked the campus. I quite liked the en-suite room. And I quite liked the lecture buildings. I admit they’re no Palace Green but they’re no Elvet Riverside either.

Within the first week, however, I noticed that nobody expected me to feel like this. A girl from the JCR told me not to worry and that “Stockton grows on you”. The JCR president told us all the college would “find its way into your heart”. I must stress that both of these statements are completely true but at the time all I could do was think up a list of life-threatening illnesses for which both statements would also be correct.

But that’s all in the past, merely an introduction to my main topic for the day; free food. When I said I was a student from Queens Campus, what I should also have mentioned was that I’m a member of what is unquestionably the best college outside the city of Durham. This is not a declaration I have made based on unfounded collegiate fervour, but one based on perfectly rational criteria. Last week we all got free pancake kits, Stevo did not. Armed with this knowledge we can finally put to bed this whole question of which college is better. That, as far as I am concerned, is the end of the matter.

There is however one snag. While receiving pancake kits is nice, nobody knows what to do with them. In order to use the pancake kit properly, the inhabitants of each flat are required to be in the kitchen at the same time. This is never going to happen. I don’t even know who everyone in my flat is. Well, I do but one of them lives at the library and another one lives at the bar. Hence my conundrum.

In the end I decided that the best course of action was to move the milk and eggs to the fridge and to line the syrup and lemon juice up along the window ledge. I then decided that when I did make pancakes, I would just use my own ingredients. Satisfied with my solution, I made a cup of tea. Then I realised that there was no milk, except for the designated pancake milk. I cannot begin to describe how guilty I felt pouring that milk into my tea but it would have been ridiculous not to, milk costs money!

Then I hit problem two. I had decided to make pancakes so headed to the kitchen with (some of) my flatmates to get to work but then; disaster. Someone had stolen the golden syrup. It is a strange sensation, discovering that a present you didn’t initially expect or want but had later decided to embrace and make use of, to been stolen. It’s not like it had been something I paid for but still I was extremely upset. But I still managed to make some pancakes and I learned in the process why I hadn’t made any since last year.

Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful to the college for my free, half-burned, sugar-coated, syrup-free batter-ball, so much so that I wrote this article in its honour. For some reason though, I get the impression that my words may sound a little insincere?

Image: Arnold Goodway (Flickr ID: agoodway)