Starter For Ten Read Online Free PDF

blonde moustache.
    'How are you getting on? Alright?' says Josh in drag.
    'Fine, fine.'
    'Why's your mattress on the floor?'
    'Oh, I thought I'd try it as a futon for a while.'
    'A futon? Really?' says Josh, pursing his lipstick-ed mouth as if it's the most exotic thing he's ever heard in his life, which is pretty rich, coming from a man in drag. 'Marcus, come and have a look at Jackson's futon!' and Marcus, in a curly black nylon wig, hockey skirt and laddered stockings, sticks his nose into the room, snuffles, then disappears.
    'Anyway, we're off now - are you coming along or what?'
    'Sorry, coming ...?'
    'Tarts and Vicars Party, Kenwood Manor. Should be a laugh.'
    'Right, well, maybe. It's just I thought I might stay in and read . . .'
    'Oh, don't be so wet . . .'
    'But I don't have anything to wear . . .'
    'You've got a dark shirt, haven't you?'
    'Uh-huh.'
    'Well, there you go then. Stick a bit of white cardboard under the collar and away you go. See you in five minutes. Oh, and don't forget that tenner for the home-brew, yeah? Love what you've done to the room, by the way . . .'
    QUESTION: The interaction energy of two protons relates to the separation between them What are the forces between the protons when the separation between them is respectively a) small and b) intermediate?
    ANSWER: Repulsive and attractive.
    As a man of sophistication and experience, I know the value of 'lining your stomach' before an evening out, so for supper I buy a bag of chips and a battered sausage, and eat them on the way to the party. It starts to rain quite steadily, but I eat as many chips as I can before they get too cold and wet. Marcus and Josh stride self-confidently on ahead in their high heels, seemingly indifferent to the mirthless glances of passers-by. I suppose that posh-boys-in-drag must be one of the inevitable miseries of living in a university town. For soon it will be rag-week, the leaves will turn to bronze, the swallows will fly south, and the shopping arcade will be full of male medics dressed as sexy nurses.
    On the way, Josh bombards me with questions.
    'What are you studying, Brian?'
    'English.'
    'Poems eh? I'm Politics and Economics, Marcus is Law. Play any sports, Brian?'
    'Only Scrabble,' I quip.
    'Scrabble's not a sport,' sniffles Marcus.
    'You haven't seen the way I play it!' I say, quick as a flash.
    But he doesn't seem to find this funny, because he just scowls and says, 'Doesn't matter how you play it, it's still not a sport.'
    'No, I know, I was just . . .'
    'Are you soccer, cricket or rugby?' says Josh.
    'Well, none of them really . . .'
    'Not a sportsman, then?'
    'Not at all.' I can't help feeling that I'm being assessed for admission into some un-named private club, and failing.
    'How's your squash? I need a partner.'
    'Not squash. Badminton occasionally.'
    'Badminton's a girls' game,' says Marcus, adjusting the straps on his slingbacks.
    'Take a year out?' asks Josh.
    'No . . .'
    'Go anywhere nice this summer?'
    'No . . .'
    'What do your parents do?'
    'Well, Mum works on the tills in Woolworths. Dad sold double-glazing, but he's dead now.' Josh squeezes me on the arm and says, 'I'm so sorry,' though it's unclear whether he means Dad's death or Mum's job.
    'How about yours?'
    'Oh, Dad's Foreign Office, Mum's Department of Transport.' Oh my God, he's a Tory. Or at least I assume Josh is Tory if his parents are Tory, it does tend to run in families. As for Marcus I wouldn't be surprised to discover that he's in the Hitler Youth.
    Finally we arrive at Kenwood Manor. I'd avoided the halls of residence as I'd been advised on the university open-day that they were dull and institutional and packed full of Christians. The reality is somewhere between a lunatic asylum and a minor public school - long echoing corridors, parquet floors, the smell of damp underwear drying on a luke-warm radiator, so and the sense that sumevvheie, something teiiible ib happening in a toilet.
    The distant thud of Dexys Midnight