10 sure signs that you're living in Studentsville...

• You walk past 3 smurfs, a cowboy and a full-grown man in a nappy on the walk home and don't bat an eye-lid.
• Non-student houses stick out like a sore thumb. They are most easily identified by the prescence of actual living shrubbery in their gardens and the absense of beer can pyramids in their front windows.
• During periods of cold weather your main concern isn't the possibility of slipping on black ice but frozen vomit (you may think I'm exaggerating but this happened to a friend of mine, not a nice way to start the morning. Well, not nice for them. Amusing for the rest of us? Very).
• There are more off-licences then there are places to do your weekly shop. Leaving you happily drunk most of the time but probably slightly malnourished. Better hope that cider counts as one of your five a day.
• You don't know your next-door neighbour's name but thanks to mercilessly thin walls you are fully aware of what they sound like during sex. Yes, I'm talking to you Mr Grunts-a-lot.
• 'Morning' rush hour isn't untill midday, anybody seen before this time is still in last nights clothes, stinking of booze and commiting the dreaded walk of shame.
• There is a notable absense of fine-dining establishments. There is however a broad range of places where you can pick up a fried chicken meal for under three quid (salmonella comes free of charge).
• On the way to 9am lectures you face an assault course of unconscious students, empty beer cans and fast-food debris (no doubt the result of someone's drunken late night stop at the aforementioned chicken eatery).
• The term "Hoodie" no longer refers to Adidas-clad chavs but to Rah's sporting the latest Jack Wills hooded gilet, generally going by names such as Tarquin and Beatrice. (On a personal note I would like to point out to any such people that a "gilet" is simply a bodywarmer- and giving it a french name does not and will not, change that.)
• There are more road signs in your front room than there is left on the roads.

So they aren't the classiest of places and they're not particurlarly child-friendly, but isn't that the point? It's the last time in our lives where we can live this way, going out on a Monday night, stumbling home chicken in hand and preceding to have loud sex for all the neighbours to hear. Yes, student areas are shit-holes. But they are OUR shit-holes. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Chicken anyone?

*Special recognition must go out to Miss Harri Bryant here, who helped me think of ideas so that she didn't have to work on her dissertation!*