Starter For Ten Read Online Free PDF Page B

Runners beckons us along a corridor to a large, wood-panelled room, with high windows and sparsely populated with students - about seven parts Tart to three parts Vicar, and with a roughly fifty-fifty split between female and male Tarts. It's not a pretty sight. Burly men and quite a few women, in artfully torn tights with sports socks stuffed in their bras, leaning against the walls like, well, Tarts, whilst patrician Edwardian vice-chancellors peer down from their portraits in despair.
    'By the way, Bri, I don't suppose you've got that tenner ...?' says Josh, frowning '...for the home-brew?'
    I can't really afford it of course, and it's the tenner that Mum pressed into my hand, but in the spirit of new friendship I hand over the money, and Josh and Marcus skip off like dogs on a beach, leaving me to make some more of these friendships that will last me a lifetime. I decide that, generally speaking, at this early stage of the evening it's best to go for a vicar, rather than a tart.
    On the way to the makeshift bar, a trestle table selling Red Stripe for a very reasonable 50p a can, I put on my talk-to-me please face, a simple-minded close-mouthed grin accompanied by tentative nods and hopeful glances. Standing waiting to be served is a lanky hippie with a matching village-idiot grin to mine and, remarkably, an even worse complexion. He glances around the room, and in a high Brummie accent says, 'Absolutely looooony, isn't it!'
    'Insane!' I say, and we both roll our eyes as if to say 'Teh, kids today!' His name's Chris, and it soon transpires that he's studying English too; 'Synchronicity!' exclaims Chris, and then proceeds to tell me the whole of his A-level syllabus, and the precise contents of his UCCA form, and the plot of every book he's ever read in his whole life, before embarking on a description of his summer spent travelling round India, in real time, and I pass the days and nights that follow by nodding, and drinking three cans of Red Stripe, and wondering whether his skin really is worse than mine, when all of a sudden I realise that he's saying ...
    '...and d'you know what? I never used toilet paper once in all that time.'
    'Really?'
    'Nope. And I don't think I'll ever use it again either. It's much fresher this way, and much more environmentally friendly.'
    'So what do you ...?'
    'Oh, just my hand, and a bucket of water. This hand!' and he thrusts it under my nose. 'Trust me, it's loads more hygienic.'
    'But I thought you said you kept getting dysentery?'
    'Well, yes, but that's different. Everyone gets dysentery.'
    I decide not to pursue the point, and say, 'Great! Well, well done you . . .' and we're off again, travelling on bare wooden benches by rickety bus from Hyderabad to Bangalore until, somewhere in the Erramala Hills, the Red Stripe does its work and I realise with joy that my bladder's full and that I'm really sorry but I have to go to the toilet - 'Don't go away, I'll be right back, stay right where you are' - and as I'm leaving he grabs me by the shoulder, holds his left hand up in front of my face and says, evangelically, 'And don't forget! No need for toilet paper!' I smile and head off briskly.
    When I come back I realise with relief that he has gone away, so I go and sit on the edge of the wooden stage, next to a small, neat woman dressed neither as tart nor vicar, but as a member of the KGB Youth Wing - a heavy black coat, black tights, a short denim shirt, and a black soviet-style cap, pushed back behind an oily black quiff. I give her a 'mind-if-I-sit-here?' smile and she gives me a 'yes-go-away' smile, a tight little spasm, and there's a glimpse of tiny, sharp white teeth, all the same size, behind an incongruous smear of crimson lipstick should probably just go, of course, but the lager's made me fearless and over-friendly, and so I sit next to her, anyway. Even over the gurgling bass-line of 'Two Tribes', you can still hear the muscles in her face tightening.
    After a while, I turn and