The pitter-patter of stiletto-heeled Offsted feet-to-come echo along the yellow corridors of both college campuses. The tutors are all so busy writing lecture plans and schemes of work that they no longer have time to teach us. The janitor has been instructed to stop karate-chopping students without their student ID cards (to prove they belong, though why one would want to belong if one didn’t have to is beyond me.) I spotted a pile of working white board pens, the kind that do more than just squeak uncomfortably and leave behind vague impressions of semi-illegible notes-to-be-copied, and the options in the canteen are getting a little healthier by the day, pepper by pepper, salad leaf by salad leaf. The chip butties for the next three weeks will come with one rather than the usual two-and-one-extra-if-you-ask pats of butter.

The girl who sits next to me in English Lit with the bleach blonde hair and cons, with the Dead Kennedys zip-up jacket that little bit too large (too large in a cool way, suggesting male ownership, someone like the one with the green moheican she pointed out last week), the one with the roll-ups and majestic Cleopatra flicks of black-blue liquid eyeliner above and below her green-flecked eyes, the girl who is never ever on time and buys the set books the day before the exam… even she is panicking.

We are being licked into shape, when we are not having to teach ourselves. The graffiti on the toilet walls is being scrubbed at day and night, and anyone caught smoking on the premises will be bundled up in the black of the night and taken somewhere top-secret, only to be returned after Offsted have retreated.

I have been made class speaker for Film Studies, we may no longer may take our polystyrene coffee cups into lectures, hence no guarantee of even one of us staying awake, and then there is the coursework. It took me an hour and a half to film the pouring of a bowl of cornflakes last week, the key light melting holes into my face.

Thank the powers-that-be for the imminent October half-term. Not even Offsted can take that away from us!