THE cities of Britain are thronged with callow 18-year-olds having loud conversations while knowing f**k all. These are a few of the worst:
“Yeah, I’m actually really spiritual but, like, not in a religious way. I might be a Buddhist”
A conversation between two white students in £375 leather boots each trying to vaguely depict themselves as exotic creations nobody is fully able to comprehend. Neither knows anything about the Buddha except he’s fat and cross-legged. One will buy the tarot cards she was never allowed by her parents today and read them ineptly for the next week.
“Oh, you haven’t seen any Kubrick? Well we can watch them together”
There is always one 18-year-old who believes it a signature achievement to have watched more films than anyone else, as if sitting on your arse while having no friends is hard. He’s keen to enlist everyone else into his cineaste club by forcing them to watch films in his room. Five weeks into the term he’ll be watching them alone.
“No I’m really poor, my parents could barely afford the luxury accommodation”
If you’re genuinely a poor student you’ll live at home, have a part-time job, and be an outcast. Nonetheless, all the rest feel the need to cosplay poverty because it feels cool to do so. The actual feeling of being relatively poor will be provided by the foreign student in the flat with his wardrobe of Gucci and his Mercedes. It will not be as enjoyable.
“I wish I could do drugs, but I’m actually allergic?”
There are many good reasons for not doing drugs, and these students are armed with none of them. Instead they’ll claim allergies, invent moral codes, and breathlessly tell exaggerated anecdotes about trouble with the law in a small village in Hertfordshire. Meanwhile someone will get far too into drugs and drop out as they always do.
“I’ve never told anyone this, but I actually remember being in the womb”
Yearned for years to reinvent yourself? Finally getting the chance to not be Milo who cried when dissecting a frog in year eight, but Milo the visionary who’s got an eidetic memory and commands a respectful hush when entering a room? Now’s your chance. Say whatever bullshit you like, nobody’s listening, they’re waiting for their turn.
“My course is in fashion communication marketing, but I’ll probably drop out and become a stand-up comedian. Or a film director”
It’s good to have dreams. Wildly unrealistic dreams, based not on your talent or ability or even your actual interests, less so. Still, you’re only a fresher once and you might get a shag out of it, so why not? Until it turns into a relationship and you’re still together at 40 and she occasionally says ‘Tom wanted to be a stand-up,’ and you wince your eyelids inside out.
