Mary Gee Houses are a university halls of residence residing in a part of Leicester just outside of the city centre. A leafy suburb area, it encompasses a few hundred students within a dozen or so purpose built houses. C-Block was our designated house and from there on it gets a little hazy. I remember when I first moved in there was this old guy of about thirty, with grey hair and glasses called Erik. He resided in the room opposite me and was about as much fun as cot death. Erik and his neighbour, Dan, were from Sweden.
Actually, to trace our ancestry back you'd have to go back to 1999. John had spent a year in this house called "The Lodge", and having no friends of his own he decided to hang out with the people who students who had moved in. Cue Alex and Mark who ended up forming an unholy triangle. Which was later turned into a square once Paul started hanging around with us. A year later we all agreed to live together in whatever dwelling we could lay our hands on.
Mary Gee was better than all the other halls of residence for two reasons:
1) You could make your own food. Having all lived in catered halls where the food takes like "hospital waste", "gay meat" and "weasel shit" (These were comments written on the anonymous catering feedback form which we all took turns signing) we were less inclined to repeat the experience. I mean, we were told when we could eat. Hate crimes.
2) Mary Gee was the cheapest and most shitty so we figured we could trash the place and no-one would notice.
So anyway, we all moved in and everything was kind of alright. We met Andy and Pete, who lived in the floor between Mark, Alex and Paul, and me. Apart from those Pesky Swedes who did everything they could to disassociate themselves from us, everything was perfect. We created a ghetto in which we could relax and enjoy the fruits of freedom and intellect and life was good.
Then Pete moved in.
Pete was this goony, freakish specimen with a ridiculous frizzy ginger mop and constantly trembling fingers. He was re-sitting a "years without residence" (which meant he had failed the first year and wasn't allowed back into the university until he had passed his exams).
On the first day of his arrival, Pete asked to borrow some acrylic inks off me. He then proceeded to daub stupid methadone-inspired shit all over the loft panel just outside my room. This wouldn't have meant much to me, except our nazi cleaner caught wind of Pete's antics and thought I had written "Carpe Diem" on the damn hatchet. Before I could protest, the Sub-Warden from next door came 'round in a mood because this had clearly interrupted his Guinness-drinking session or something. Pete was hiding downstairs in a craven fashion we would become well accustomed to while I got a bollocking along the lines of "Why don't you play space invaders like normal students instead of defacing university property?"
When we found out Pete was gay, well that just about capped it all.
At the beginning, Pete was bearable. He had an interesting collection of vinyl and edited a fanzine called "Viagra Falls" which sold reasonably well. He could even play guitar which allowed him to participate in jamming sessions. However, soon after Pete started happily burning all of his bridges. Apart from growing "legal-high" plants, Pete had the genius notion of ordering cannabis through the post from Sweden and not marking his name on the address. This made us all prime suspects of drug trafficking should any of the packages get intercepted.
Fortunately for me, Alex, Mark and Paul, there other normal people living with us: Andy and Rich.
They had come from Beaumont halls as room-mates. Andy was this brummie semi-Aryan muscular chap with a preference for archaeology and car-theft. Rich was more of the computer science, radiohead type.
It was clear they needed each other.
While Pete was obnoxious and boring, Andy and Rich were much more tolerable, and after several months of avoiding us in case "Pete had given us Gay", we finally blended together as a functioning social group on Andy's birthday.
Of course, there were other people who came and vanished with out leaving much of a trace. However, these people bear little or no importance to the general gist of this page and so should be forgotten after you read our small dedication page to them.
Soon after, the general layout of Mary Gee settled in and we were a semi-functioning block. It has to be said that our block was the only "all-male" block in Mary Gee so we weren't expecting much in the way of girlish tidiness. Pete tried to wear a pair of marigold gloves to do the washing up, but quit soon after we beat him a sock full of oranges (hurts like a cunt, but doesn't leave a mark Andy tells us)
Things went stumbling along, and then after Christmas the Swedes fucked off back to Nordonia without saying so much as "goodbye". They were then replaced by the Americans, who were much better because they bought 'round chicks.
When it was time to leave Mary Gee, I searched for a house. (Actually, Alex was going to join me but I left him just as he said "Let me just get a biro pen and paper"). Seeing as we were all skint and living on nothing more than Asda Farm Stores Peaches and Pop-La Lemonade, I opted to find the cheapest house on the university market. As you will find out later, we weren't let down.
One thing was for sure, we wouldn't be living with Pete. Apart from the fact that he kept eyeing people up everytime they took a shower, Pete was mentally unstable. Seriously. One night at 3 in the morning, me, Mark, Paul and Rich had come back from a club only to find Pete wearing an Apron and rolling some dough using a deodorant can.
"Pete, what the fuck are you doing?" I said. Pete turned around with his upper lip trembling.
"Oh, hi John, I'm just making a pizza."
It then dawned on us just how much of a mess he had made. There were pots and pans and flour and shit everywhere. I mean, we're not exactly nimble with the cutlery, but Pete made the kitchen look like the caretaker's office in Nazi Auschwitz. I was too horrified to say anything, but I knew the chance of Pete living with us had dropped to zero.
Sure enough, the next morning cleanerbitch had kicked down my door demanding to know who had fucked up the kitchen. I told her something along the lines of "I don't know. Go menstruate next door." and then, rather predictably, our Leprechaun sub-warden came bounding in to give us a pep-talk on "maintaining a functioning student block". As he walked out the door, Pete came merrily mincing in and had the balls to give me another pep-talk on basic cleaning skills.
"Pete, we've been looking for a house..." I said diplomatically.
"- and then you add a drop of lemon to the bucket.... what do you mean, "Looking for a house"? "
"I mean, me, Alex, Rich, Andy and Paul are looking to move in together." I said, hoping he'd get the point.
"Oh right, I want a room with a water-filled mattress so that my -"
"Pete, you're not living with us."
Immediately, Pete's face collapsed in a hilarious way like he'd suddenly had a double stroke. In between sniffles and crocodile-tears, he spewed out clichés such as "it's because I'm gay isn't it?" and "Oh wah John, please let me live with you, my family think I'm strange. Wah."