Drift awake; everyday apart from Tuesdays when they test the fire alarm. The room isn’t large, but comfortable, standard, lit by a five-set row of windows opposite the door, above the headboard of the bed. Not soft. It is 9.00 am.
The shower – pressure absent – like standing in tepid rain; helps the soul more than the flesh. A small en-suit, not so much a creature comfort as a creature feature, earns the extra pounds in these first 15 minutes of rapidly increasing lucidity.
Towel down. Bloody hell it’s cold. Those clenching, almost perverted, moments of winter nakedness. There is a crack in the curtains. I can see them….
Grey today but not exactly freezing; expecting things to get worse soon. Right now, I don’t care about the weather. I need coffee.
Over the sound of the kettle boiling: the news - streamed off the BBC. This is better than TV because I can pause the bastards in between cups.
Hurricanes and earthquakes make for humble breakfast viewing. This world-growing sense of unease should be difficult to feel where you are on you own. Making sure the planet is still in chaos.
Milk!

The short walk to the campus shop and back provides all the essentials. Also provides a chance to count how many people stare at the tie while I stand in the queue.

Back in the room, the Conservative Party leadership race is on and I couldn’t give a flying fuck.
Books out on the bed in preparation for a morning seminar: Performance Art, How Movies Work, Theatre and Its Double, A Short Guide to Writing about film. Note taking for a presentation on theatre space.
This is where I need to be.
Busy day; a drama seminar, then a lecture followed by a screening. Meeting at lunchtime in the bar to discuss the devised theatre piece I am co-ordinating for the Drama Society.
Sounds from next door; my corridor buddy is awake.

An hour later in the seminar room located at the top of the multi-story car park/ prison that is my college I am trying not to look my attractive female seminar leader in the eyes…
I am the only male in this small room, talking, explaining how different scenographers have used space over the course of the last century to create theatrical effects. She smiles at me. Need to grow up.

£1.80 will buy you a pint at the bar, but I am not there to drink. Sam, one of the drama Society presidents, is leaning over a piece of paper.
‘You could get forty people turn up, and that’s fucking impossible.’
‘I know.’
‘You will have to have some auditioning process.’
‘How can I justify who to choose? It’s a devised piece with no specific requirements in character or stature. If I turn them away I’m as good as telling them they’re shit.’
‘That’s a problem’
And it goes on like this until I say:
‘Bugger I’ve got to be at a lecture five minutes ago.’

Freud. Psychoanalysis. The Oedipus Complex. I can tell half the students around me are worrying about how this topic fits into drama because they’re whispering. I am starting to understand why my drama teachers at school were such a mine of useful information.

The screening is, in a word, bizarre. Artaud was clearly a madman and the frenzied actions of this French cyber-punk theatre group that admired him so might just be as well. Either that or they’re geniuses. God I’m tired.

It is 5.00pm.
Jon hails me as I drift past his door en route to my room.
‘Yo dude.’
‘Hey man.’
The Bill and Ted Complex.
Why we talk like this I don’t know, but so far it’s stuck.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Finished lectures?’
‘Yeah, might chill out for a while.’

Chilling out is a sequence of options:
Read. Write. Whatch endless Family Guy episodes someone - no one is quite sure who - has ripped off the net.

There is a group of us - five guys and four girls – all living in the same building. The system goes something like this:
Congregate in each others rooms, eat together, drink together, mix and match conversations between the cast of the group; the peculiar sitcom of living in Halls.
Around 7.30 someone will suggest that we go to dinner knowing that the dining hall has just closed its doors. Everyone looks at me - the decision maker.

Food and drink: the two most important words in the students’ vocabulary.

Eating. Most days one of the campus bars provides the best evening meal, but ordering Chinese food or pizza is the popular alternative.
Drinking tends to be a travelling activity. Often beginning in a college bar, the action moves to another after another college bar until someone points out that we can just as easily drink in our rooms if we go to the off-licence.
Later glowing with a sheen of alcohol, packed into my room, playing cards strewn over the floor, Sam Jackson shouts ‘great vengeance and furious anger,’ as the Pulp Fiction DVD spins for the hundredth time.
‘We should actually go out tomorrow night,’ someone suggests.
‘Yeah,’ all agree.

No one is actually whatching the film.
Everyone is thinking about going to bed.

People start to excuse themselves and stumble out for the comfort of their own rooms. The night becomes a blur.
‘Sleep well dude,’
‘Yeah, you too, see you in the morning.’ Jon heads next door. The key turns in his lock, the door shuts, then the muffled but distinct noises of bed-time.

Alone in my space again, picking up empty beer bottles, and stacking them carefully.
Removing the chaos.
It is 2.30am.

Bruce Willis is about to shoot John Travolta when I turn the screen off.