UPDATE: 

There have been two more bomb scares this afternoon, at Girton and Churchill.

Students working in Girton library were told that the University received an email this morning naming Girton as a college that has been targeted by the hoax.

“We were advised to take our bags with us when we leave the library, and the librarians keep wandering around doing checks. But no one’s at all concerned,” said Sophie Cavanagh, a third year Girton geographer.

Students at other colleges have been emailed evacuation plans, should the situation develop.

More details to follow.

If you hear any more information, please email news@cambridgetab.co.uk

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UPDATE: 

There has a been a third bomb scare in three days, with King’s evacuated this morning.

Shortly after 9am this morning the university security centre received a call claiming to have planted a bomb inside King’s, but after an evacuation and 45 minutes of searching students and staff were allowed to return after nothing was found, and police confirmed it was being treated as a hoax.

Speaking to The Tab the university said: “No devices were found. No members of the public were on site at the time as King’s Chapel has not opened for the day yet”.

The University Communications officer did admit that a link seemed “likely” between the three events but that it was a matter for the police.

A police spokesman told us that the threat was thought to be part of a series of national hoaxes and told us they were ‘not too worried’: ”This is being investigated as part of a series of hoaxes and students should not be concerned.”

Eva Nisse, a first year PPS student at Kings, told The Tab the mood was generally one of indifference.  ‘The main question on everyone’s minds was “Is this the usual fire alarm and when can I get back to my toast?”‘

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UPDATE: 

Speaking to The Tab, University Communications Officer Tim Holt confirmed that the bomb scare at Clare was a hoax after a full security sweep was conducted.

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UPDATE:

All sites at Clare have now been reoccupied. In an email to all Clare students, steward Mick Petty explained: “the perceived threat was reported to the authorities at Clare by the University Security Control Centre who had received email traffic indicating a security threat to both Clare College and Hughes Hall”.

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UPDATE:

Clare College has been evacuated following a bomb scare on all three of its sites at around 11am this morning. Residents of the Colony on Chesterton Lane have been evacuated to Jesus Green whilst those in Old Court have been directed to the Fellows’ Garden.

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UPDATE:

Students have been emailed informing them that they are now allowed back into the site. Melissa Reilly, the Teaching Administrator said in the email that ‘the site is now open and freely accessible.’

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The New Museums Site has been evacuated after a bomb hoax in the CUSU offices.

The Tab spoke to Clare second year, David Byrne. “The general mood was one of concern but not fear. People seemed more annoyed than afraid. Most people thought it was probably a hoax – a Trenton-Oldfield-style disruption to studies.”

Thirty people were evacuated from the Old Examination Hall and the Earth Science Laboratory at 2pm in a hoax that mimicked the spree of scares from other Russell Group universities.

Film is a powerful medium - and at its best that power can inspire, challenge and educate. The UK Green Film Festival aims to take this power and use it to engage people with an environmental agenda. The latest in the string of film festivals that always seem to fly under the student radar in Cambridge (like the British Silent Film Festival, Cambridge African Film Festival and the travelling London Korean Film Festival), it promises to showcase some fascinating documentary cinema in the city.

In the words of John Long, the festival’s director and co-founder, cinema allows “us to reach out to people who may not ordinarily engage with the environmental movement, but who love great film. We can take good environmentalism from one sphere of life and cross over in to another.” The festival itself will be trying to do this in twelve cities across the UK from the 18th-20th May, and will feature three screenings (one per day) at the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge.

Opening the Cambridge branch of the festival on May 18th is Happy, a film that might not immediately strike you as a conventionally ‘green’ film, which takes an ambitious look at folk across the world and what makes them happy. Long feels, however, that this fits into the more broad scope of the festival. “We like to come at environmental issues from all angles. Happy tackles consumerism - one of the root causes of the environmental problem we face - head on. We chase consumerism to make us happy, our western world is increasingly geared to it, but does it deliver? Are we happy? Or are we chasing the wrong goals? It makes you question your values, then a lot of other, more ‘traditional’ environmental stuff seems to fall in to place.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcMQmuvzPmI

Other screenings include In Transition 2.0 on May 19th, following a number of different community-led iniatives looking to improve their own environments, and Taste The Waste, examining the extraordinary fact that over half our food goes missing between source and plate. The latter has already screened in Cambridge, at the 31st international Cambridge Film Festival, Cambridge’s mainstay cinematic event. The involvement of the host cinemas is clearly important to Long, “they know their local community better than we do, after all. What we do as a festival is pick a selection of the best films available to us in the UK, then our venue parters choose the films from that list that they feel will best engage with their own local audiences.”

A film festival seems an excellent way to engage people beyond those already receptive to ideals of the environmental movement. In Glasgow, for example, they have made the slightly odd choice to show The Terminator as one of their screenings. Long likes this offbeat choice: “I love that - re–casting a classic as an environmental movie. I guess it’s a vision of a future, not too distant from now, a salutary take of the worst case scenario… but you’d have to ask [Glasgow Film Theatre] why they chose it in particular!”

The latest in a number of cinema events to come to Cambridge, the UK Green Film Festival is another gem in the calendar that, sadly, few students seem to know about. These events give the opportunity to see cinema that rarely, if ever, appears elsewhere. This year, in term time, I’ve been lucky enough to attend four film festivals North of reality checkpoint, and the Cambridge Film Trust continues to put on special one-off events outside the main festival year round.

Regarding the goals of the UK Green Film Festival, Long doesn’t necessarily see the methods employed by the festival as a better way of engaging people with environmental concerns. They are, rather, one more valuable tool in the arsenal. “I guess I’d be an advocate of a by-all-means approach, but I do think we need to communicate with people where they are, and not expect them necessarily to come to us.” This coming weekend in Cambridge, however, I’m sure that many of us will.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKN3RLkEGfM

Pembroke creamed Caius in last week’s Fit College.

Judging by some of the feedback on my article last week, it seems that I may not have made it clear that I’m an older undergrad.

I have in fact spent nearly three years as an undergraduate, having completed a year reading Logic and Scientific method at the LSE, the best part of a year at Cambridge reading Farsi and Arabic, and am now looking to complete the first of a three year undergraduate degree course reading History.

That, I think makes me a bit of an expert on a number of things. Clearly I have mastered the art of failure. I have also developed a pretty good interview technique.

However, one of the disadvantages has been an increasing sense of detachment and isolation when it comes to Cambridge nightlife. I am sure that a few years ago, going clubbing was something I did without much thought. I went along, I drank, I made some effort to dance without feeling too self-conscious and I went home (invariably alone).

In a previous life – when I was attempting degree number one at the LSE – I was continually dragged around town and persuaded to paint the town red (fittingly, as most of my LSE chums were Marxists). It was relentless: every night was club night. I was not even spared on a Tuesday.

When I look round a packed nightclub now, I feel that everyone has read their script and is fully engaged. They don’t look awkward, and the fact that nobody can hear a word that anyone is saying doesn’t appear to matter.

They are obviously communicating, possibly through the medium of dance and movement, and thereby making arrangements for bad post-club shagging as the night wears on. I have tried, but I have the same difficulty mastering the language of dance and mime as I did last year learning Farsi. It’s a foreign language and quite impenetrable.

Worse: I feel that everyone can sense my discomfort. It’s as if a Monty Python arrow was pointing at me with the label ‘loser’.

My technique to deal with this in the past was simple. I started to smuggle a book into the club with me. Once inside I’d play the part of someone with lots of people to see then pop off to the loo for a leisurely read.

After an hour or so, I would return to the dance floor with what I hoped was a smug look, suggesting that I had been getting off with at least one and quite possibly a number of desirable women.

I like to think that I won a reputation for being quite the lady magnet, despite the fact that nobody ever saw any of my ‘conquests’. I carried it off because I had even convinced myself that it was true – until, that is, a bouncer outside Soul Tree (RIP) stopped me on the way in one evening and demanded to know what the bulge in my trousers was.

After a few ill-judged jokes, I was made to reveal my copy of Roald Dahl’s Short Stories. My subterfuge was ended and my reputation as a lothario lay in tatters.

So, if you happen to see me tonight in some crowded, noisy, sweaty, venue looking awkward (or possibly pretending earnestly to talk to someone on my mobile) and feel overcome with sympathy, how about sneaking out with me and finding a local tea dance? Or bingo hall?

Bring a book though, just in case.

ADC Theatre, 15th-19th May, 7.45pm, £6-10

Directed by Hugh Wyld

3 out of 5 stars

There’s a reason drama is generally dramatic. As last night’s performance of Burnt by the Sun evidenced, happiness – contrary to expectations – is by far one of the hardest emotions to portray onstage. Rather poignantly, the pursuit of conveying happiness usually ends up reduced to happy-film-montages flashing by before the real actions starts, or wrapped up with ribbons onstage as musicals or pantomimes.

So I have much sympathy for the cast and crew, who faced the challenge of pulling off an entire act of pretty much the most sticky-gooey-shiny sort of happiness you can get. A broad-shouldered and beaming Soviet war hero, Kotov (Saul Boyer), his pretty young wife Maroussia (Charlotte Hamblin), their honey-blonde pigtail-ed daughter (adorably played by what I presume is some locally-sourced kiddie) and their charming assortment of cuddly grannies spend a gorgeous and well-pampered summer wearing lots of white linen.

In the long slug towards dramatic conflict, the cast resorted to a variety of methods to keep things exciting – most off-putting was an odd pantomime-ish quality which hung over the beginning. Lines had a strangely hollow quality in their delivery, and though the script isn’t particularly written to include punchlines, actors did goofy things for laughs, furthering the weird pantomime effect. The slightly awkward, academic feel of the translation didn’t particularly help either. And although we had a stage of seasoned Cambridge actors, there seemed as well to be odd problems with volume and projection. Maybe it was just that some of the sound cues were blared so loudly we were deafened, but nonetheless it did feel a little like actors were shouting rather than projecting a lot of lines.

A drama which starts out in a Müller yoghurt advert needs an unnerving tension, a sense that all is not quite right - otherwise we may as well by watching a Müller yoghurt advert. We do find a few tidbits, but Wyld doesn’t seem to find the conviction to make them really punch through the cozy atmosphere. Kotov expresses some discontent with the remnants of his wife’s bourgeois family for reminiscing a little too fondly about the pre-Soviet days, but Boyer doesn’t quite manage to shake off the drowsy blanket of pantomime-cheeriness to pull it off.

When drama finally does arrive in the form of Will Attenborough as Mitia, an ex-lover of Maroussia disappeared for eleven years, the transition is bumpy and uncomfortable. Hamblin’s distress at the sudden appearance of her childhood sweetheart clashes with the cheery obliviousness with which the rest of the household simply accepts his return after eleven freaking years of silence. The final scenes of hardcore, proper guns-and-politics drama are played with far more ease and confidence, but still feel disjointed – though in this regard it seems to me that the script itself is pretty choppy, so who’s responsible for what isn’t always clear.

It’s a fiddly play to direct in your first foray, and it feels to me like debut director Wyld was just given more to handle than was fair with an exam-term ADC mainshow slot as well. With a few more plays under his belt, Wyld could very well be generating some slick, punchy drama – and I hope he does.

ADC Theatre, 15th May, 11pm, £5-6

3.5 out of 5 stars

Two Tab reviewers provide two very different interpretations of Fitz Barbershop’s cheesy fun.

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4 out of 5 stars

LAURA PUGH:

Fitz Barbershop proved a wonderful exam-term lateshow last night, and had the enthusiastic audience response to prove it. Filled almost to excess with cheesy-rom-com-buckets-of-feel-good, this act put a smile on every face.

A nice touch of diversity ensured that what’s generally perceived to be a very predictable mode of entertainment held plenty of surprises. Alongside the Barbershop classics there was plenty of new material, including an impressive adaptation of ‘Mad World’ and a version of Leona Lewis’ ‘Bleeding Love’ that managed to be both catchy and effective while surprisingly funny in its self-conscious cheesiness.

Songs ranged from the beautifully performed ‘Wonderful Tonight’ to smooth jazz and contemporary covers including Jose Gonzales’ ‘Heartbeats’, which was a highlight of the night. Soloists were on top form, though it did seem a slight shame that it was the same ones over and over – it would have been nice to have seen a wider range of voices shown off in the spotlight.

Comedy was very much an essential element, and audience participation was a very welcome addition. Getting audience members to text in chat-up lines may have been done many times before, but that doesn’t make it any less funny. Naughty classics such as ‘How Could Little Red Riding Hood (Have Been So Very Good)’ and ‘I Take a Look at My Enormous Penis’ kept the audience laughing throughout the night, punching through to create a hilarious contrast with the earlier sentimental serenading.

One might think that an all-male capella group might face certain limitations, but Fitz Barbershop embraced their genre and pushed it to its full potential. Rather than shying away from their all-male potential, such gems as ‘Saturday Night at The Movies’, where the part of the excitable girlfriend was sung by bass James Richardson, had the audience rapt with delight.

Their moves were slick, their vocals well-rehearsed and the cheese was on. It was nice to see that even in this term, much effort was put into making this show a real treat for its audience, and the effort paid off.

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3 out of 5 stars

JEFF CARPENTER

Fitz Barbershop is not a Barbershop group, and this was not a Barbershop show.  Ten delightfully nerdy young Cambridge students entertained us for an hour with their silly choreography and pretty mediocre singing of some fairly bland arrangements.  Barbershop (as I see it) is four guys singing solid, difficult arrangements, and it being about the music.  This was basically a pastiche on the whole idea of ‘Barbershop’.

The group performed ‘traditional’ barbershop arrangements the most convincingly.  Goodnight Sweetheart and My Evaline are clichéd choices but excellent, traditional Barbershop and were a real treat to witness.  The song about Red-Riding Hood was a particular highlight I thought.  Their opening song, which appeared to be an original song all about them, ‘Fitz Barbershop’, was done in the same manner and was lovely to see.

However, Stand By Me, Mad World, and all the arrangements which involved a soloist and nine people going ‘ba ba ba’ in triads were just boring.  I’m sick to the teeth of seeing a capella groups murder perfectly good pop songs by having a soloist belt uncomfortably over bland vocalizing and boring harmony.  I’m sorry guys, it’s nothing personal, but I just switched off.

Thankfully there were enough homophonic arrangements to engage but a capella – and Barbershop particularly – should lend itself to more creative arrangements.  Where was the classic Barbershop trope: a needlessly complex and virtuosic ‘tag’ to round off a song?  My guess – right where they left their vocal ability.

This doesn’t make for a bad show.  With a couple of pints down me, I had a stupid grin on my face the whole time.  The encore of the Penis Song was wonderful, and all their mad, stupid choreography like making a car out of people and waving their hands and taking off their hats was all great.

They all had superlative waistcoats, and vocally they weren’t bad. Better than they were at the airport certainly.  Unlike other groups, they didn’t yell their way through the songs but articulated well and sang liltingly and gently, which is ideal for Barbershop.

My problems is that I just adore Barbershop, and this wasn’t it.  If you have the good fortune to chance upon The Barbour Boys to this May Week then you will be able to share in my love for real, good Barbershop singing.  If you chance upon Fitz Barbershop, just make sure you’ve got some good bucks fizz down you and have a bloody laugh.

The Why We Broke Up Project, created by Daniel Handler, (better known to us as Lemony Snicket) to accompany his new book of the same name is a space for anyone and everyone to explain, anonymously, why it all went tits up.

From mother’s birthday parties to silver lamé bikinis (there’s a great selection on the Guardian here), and from heartfelt to deeply cutting – they are varied and totally compelling.

I wondered if at Cambridge the answers would be any different, have a certain flavour perhaps. And so I asked: why did you break up? And here’s what you told me:

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Your first came first, your feelings for your ex-girlfriend second, the fact that I had fallen for you really, really hard, didn’t even get a look in.

We broke up because you put your work schedule before me.

You were charming, erudite, gorgeous, caring, my parents loved you, but the sex was… well, my friends refer to you as ‘30-second-Sam’.

We broke up because you joked that you’d send your mother with me to buy your engagement ring to make sure it was expensive enough. It wasn’t funny.

You were at LSE, I was here, my work load made seeing each other difficult, and since we were both in first year, that wasn’t going to change any time soon. I guess you were the one that got away, but you have a new girlfriend, who is not just lovely but beautiful (I take that as a personal compliment!) and you and I are friends, so I guess I’m happy for you.

You were not a Cantab. This wasn’t the problem. The problem was you didn’t really grasp the concept of cliché. It was excruciating.

It was too difficult keeping it a secret and I wasn’t willing to share what was going on with the rest of college.

I couldn’t fix you.

You were a bit chubs, and I don’t do fatties.

We worked better as friends. I found you attractive when we talked but not when we kissed and I’m pretty sure the feeling was mutual.

We broke up because I thought I’d found someone better. I was wrong. I’ll always be sorry.

We broke up because it turned out you had simply memorised three interesting topics of conversation.

We were just sleeping together, and you found a nice girl who took you seriously. Good for you.

We broke up because you got with someone in front of me in Life.

We broke up because I was going to Cambridge, and you were going to Oxford. Given that on our ensuing gap years I went backpacking, and your Daddy paid for you to go skiing, I think the distance was more philosophical than geographical.

We broke up because you slept with your flatmate.

We broke up because you told me you didn’t believe in marrying for love and in today’s world marrying for money was the only realistic option.

I compromised who I was for you – I loved you too much and you didn’t deserve it.

We broke up because you told me that your mother “worked hard for her money” so didn’t deserve to be paying the amount of tax that she did.

We broke up because I couldn’t go for five minutes without receiving countless texts and missed calls asking if I was with other girls.

We broke up because you loved your mother more than me.

The sex just didn’t work. We got on well, albeit drunkenly. In hindsight, this was probably the issue.

We broke up because I was waiting for hidden depth. Then I realised you were just as empty as the first 7 months suggested. So I stopped waiting.

You look too much like a child. You’re a lovely boy, you just look like you’re 12 years old.

We broke up because of so many reasons. Too many to list.

We broke up because you were a bit too… how can I put this… racist?

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Feeling inspired? Share your break-up reasons in the comment box below.

Cambridge is hardly known for its amazing nightlife. But a new club is coming.

No Saints Limited announced that a brand new live music venue will be in Cambridge by October.

The Jam House will be the latest addition to the handful of clubs that exist in town.

The 600-strong capacity club will be constructed around the corner from popular venue The Place.

At the moment the building is an abandoned Gala Bingo Hall on Hobson Street. However Steve Thomas, Director of No Saints told The Tab that in just a few months time the old site will be transformed into “an entertainment base with a good quality restaurant.”

“It’s going to add a different dynamic to Cambridge nightlife.”

Steve Thomas, who was named ‘A big man in the world of nightclubs’ in 2000, tried to set up a burlesque club in the disused building last year. The plans fell through after the Council refused Mr Thomas permission.

This charming jam: A picture of the abandoned Bingo hall

At the moment hopes are high to diversify Cambridge clubs. Louise Johnstone, the new head of Big Fish Ents welcomed the competition.

“It would be very exciting and a great addition to the growing nightlife scene in the town. It won’t cause any problems to Big Fish Ents, we’re a Cambridge institution.”

The Jam House, which has a franchise in Birmingham, isn’t so popular amongst students as it only opens to under 21s once a week. The Cambridge club will be 18+ every night, however.

Jamie Anstruther, a Birmingham fresher told The Tab ”They’re trying to go for an up-market student vibe, but no-one really goes.”

Still, Cantabs can’t wait for a new venue to check out. Nick Marshall, a second year Trinity student said ”I’m going to conserve my energy now in anticipation of The Jam House. It’s going to be sweet.”

I’ve heard people (lazy people) say that the key to exam term is getting enough sleep. They are wrong. The key to exam term is stimulants, five times a day.

We at The Tab have had our writers put their health at risk and sample a whole smorgasbord of energy drinks for your benefit. Regrettably we couldn’t find any ‘Powerthirst‘ but we did manage to dredge up some pretty gnarly stuff.

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Blue Bolt by Sainsbury’s – Nick Sinclair

Cost: 50p a can

Rating: 3/10

Bouquet: The poor man’s red bull, you would be ill advised to have a go at sniffing blue bolt. I can only describe the smell as ‘morning after sleeping bag’ when you’ve been at the vodka Red Bulls the night before and have been sweating concentrated taurine through the night.

Body:  In the cold light of day Blue Bolt looks like your urine on the third day of Reading fest: heavily dehydrated and stale. It doesn’t really taste of anything; perhaps there’s a hint of sherbet or a giant urinal mint, but mostly it’s just sugar.

Effect: With 27.3 g of sugar all I wanted to do was brush my teeth immediately after drinking the stuff, before my mouth became a bloody mess of corroded stumps.

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Relentless (Apple and Kiwi Flavour) – Laura Grayling 

Cost: a 500ml can costs  £1 on the current Sainsburys’ deal.

Rating: 6/10

Bouquet: My first thought was chemistry experiment on grounds of the overpowering scent of chemicals. It resembles a cleaning product rather than a beverage.

Body: Here lies its redeeming feature – that is if you’ve ever craved a pulverised pick and mix. Think skittles and sour laces rolled in into one tantalising turquoise can. It would appeal to anyone whose taste buds haven’t left the playground.

Effect: Slightly elevated heart beat and the feeling you (hopefully) haven’t experienced since the age of 12 of having utterly gorged yourself on sugar. Relentless is a sweet shop in canned form, so my first instinct was to regress back into childhood and build a fort. This may not be productive for revision.

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Pussy – Harry Shukman

Rating: 3/10

Cost:£1.30

Bouquet: Imagine the smell of heavily-cleaned institution toilets and you’re close.

Body: The makers have muffed the taste. The milk thistle, schizandra and siberian ginseng combine for a clammy taste and a follow-up kick of fruits de mer.

Effect: Pussy is marketed as a 100% natural energy drink with interesting herbs and stimulating taste. I drank a few Pussies in the library like the smug bastard that I am. I didn’t notice much effect other than a smelly aftertaste. The Tab received a free sample of Pussy, but I definitely wouldn’t pay for it. Don’t judge books by their covers or Pussies by their cans.

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Monster – Poppy Damon

Rating: 7/10

Cost: £1.39

Body: A full bodied citrus experience, which leaves a distinctly medicinal aftertaste.

Bouquet: Inhaling the delectable syrup through my nose was much like clearing the nostrils with a very strong kitchen cleaner: strangely refreshing if not potentially fatal.

Effect: After checking out its website boasting 90s images of skaters and personalities such as ‘Wee man’, I was not expecting great things. But this drink is not monstrously overpriced and is surprisingly delicious. I certainly wasn’t doing any ‘Ollies’ or ‘sweet jumps’ on my inline skates whilst wearing a Blink182 T-shirt, as the website would suggest, but I was probably more awake than I was before I had consumed the juicy nectar.

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OKF Alcohol Doctor Hangover Tea, Alcohol Solution Drink 86 System Natural – Tom Bateman

Cost: £1.18

Rating: 3/10 (to recognise the audacity of making an onion-flavoured drink)

Bouquet: Journeying to the Korean shop on Mill Road, I discovered ‘Alcohol Doctor’, an incredible drink from the Orient that promises to combat the effects of over-indulgence by harnessing the awesome power of ’18 kinds fruits and vegetable’. When it transpired that the vegetable was onion, I knew I had to try it. The aroma that greeted me upon opening the can was one of mixed appeal. While I accept that for some the combination of Red Bull and compost will excite the senses, all it did for me was trigger my gag reflex, and not in a good way.

Body:   Unfortunately it just looked and tasted like a glass of muddy piss.

Effect: I can’t say I felt particularly energised after drinking my can of ‘Alcohol Doctor’. Maybe it was my fault, I probably ought to have been drunk for it to work as advertised. Perhaps I simply never got over the small print on the can that said ‘Oral Toxicity Analysis Certified’.

Hopefully our brave testers have informed your decision on which energy drink you want to have diffusing from your pores for the next month. Now, pick up a multipack and hunker down. Exams are coming.

As I enter the flat to look round for the first time, the first thing I hear is “I feel a positive energy!” I turn round to see a tall, dark-haired but very Russian-looking girl with high cheekbones that lend a cheerful edge to her face bound towards me, dressed in a cow-themed onesie, complete with tail.

She somehow envelops me in a side hug and I awkwardly reciprocate, loosely wrapping my arm round one of her arms from underneath. So far, so unexpected, and so great. She momentarily disappears to put on a green wig “to balance the zen” and then proceeds to show me the flat. There’s UV paint everywhere and it smells like a glue factory. “Don’t worry, the bath won’t be full of tomato puree if you move in!”

Everyone, meet my flat mate, Olesya.

She’s an artist and photographer and does some weird, artistic photos with girls in woods that I don’t really understand and spends a genuinely surprising amount of time waiting for no-show clients who later turn out to be in jail. I know Olesya because I’m mates with her boyfriend. He doesn’t live with her because he has no job to pay his half of the rent. He instead settles for his university accommodation which, whilst free, involves a serious cockroach infestation, no running water and a roommate who plays World of Warcraft non-stop shouting “This is for 1941, you Nazi scum” at online Germans.

Of course the downside of living with your mate’s girlfriend is that when he comes over, which he regularly does, and they have noisy sex about six inches away from your face through a thin but stylishly wallpapered wall, you can’t help but picture it pretty vividly.  Then you find it weird to look either of them in the eye in the morning because all you have in your head is questions about why they were making cat and monkey noises mid-coitus.

The other downside is constantly having your mate strut around the house in his Y-fronts, evidently the underwear of choice amongst young Russian men about town, whistling Akon’s seminal classic I Just Had Sex.

But in the main, life in my leafy, family-friendly Moscow suburb is great. Sure, Olesya takes a few too many magic mushrooms (her current vKontakte (Russian Facebook) status is “FUCK I LOVE MUSHROOMS!”) and once painted every surface in the bathroom phosphorescent orange, but she makes life interesting and unfailingly cheerful.

I’ve got used to the fact that the bathroom has no light, just a lamp with a tendency to make bulbs explode. The sudden plunge into darkness when you’re in the shower is so total that when you pour drain unblocker into your hair, you think for the first time that the“new formula” on a shampoo bottle means they’ve actually done something. Before it feels like your hair is being ironed by Satan and your skull is about to be unblocked of brain, that is.

It’s stopped bothering me that only one out of four hobs on my stove is working, because my planning skills have increased immeasurably and because I’m just forced to save the best till last.

I’ve even come to terms with the fact that my “bed” (it’s more of a fold-out sofa) has an unreasonably hard wooden shaft right down the centre, because if I sleep in the shape of a starfish it slots nicely into the groove of my spine. This rather compliments my sleeping experience until I roll over and I get cracked in the spleen by my own bed.

But really, all of this is what makes my corner of an enormous Stalinist monolith a home, and I’ll miss it when I’m gone.