Just Another Angel by Mike Ripley

not only left-hand drive, it had German number plates, a hefty dent in the nearside panel, a window sticker saying ‘Stop the Bloody Whaling’ and a bumper sticker saying ‘Nein Danke’ to nuclear power, and the whole thing had been garishly resprayed in two-tone brown and purple.
    â€˜Duncan,’ I said, ‘it’s perfect.’
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    Like a lot of modern universities, you get into Essex one of two ways – from the side or underneath. The campus buildings are based around five squares raised on concrete stilts, which were officially known as podia. The architect had got the idea from the piazzas of small towns in northern Italy. What he hadn’t counted on was the tunnel effect of putting five together and pointing them into a wind that came more or less straight from the Urals after turning left over Norway. That and the rain, which stained the concrete dirty brown, gave the place a deserted look even during term-time; but the fact that it was so close to London meant that it really was deserted at the weekends as students and staff headed for the bright lights.
    It was just after noon on a Friday when I arrived, so the weekend exodus was just starting. I parked the van in one of the perimeter car parks and walked through the campus buildings reading the graffiti until I saw the amended sign reading ‘Stundent Onion,’ and one that hadn’t been vandalised saying simply ‘Bar.’
    Most of the Students Union offices seemed to be below square level, under the podia. As the floor-numbering system at all modern universities is totally unintelligible to everyone except the drug-crazed mathematician who thought it up, I just followed my nose.
    There’s something about student bars, mostly the smell, that you never get in even the roughest pub. I rarely used them when I was a legitimate student, much preferring the local pubs. They always had uncleanable carpets and too few ashtrays (prime targets for students living in halls of residence) and the service is usually lousy. In recent years, they’ve all got the real ale kick and always have too many pumps, which means that the throughput is slow and four out of five beers go off before they’re half sold.
    I bypassed the bar, which was slowly filling with shuffling students, and read a Letrasetted sign: ‘Union Print Room – Affiliated to National Graphical Association (Pending).’ The door it adorned was open, and inside came the familiar sound of a photocopier on print and collate.
    The guy operating the machine seemed a likely touch. He was about my age (though he looked it) but taller and stringier than me, and he had a close-cropped beard but no moustache, which is usually a bad sign. (Rule of Life No 81: never trust a man with a beard but a naked upper lip – he’s either a sociologist or a religious fanatic.) The rest of him, though, ran true to form: an old school blazer, jeans so faded they could appear in a Levi’s ad any day now, and what appeared to be a genuine, official Born To Run tour T-shirt. There you had it, the archetypal should-know-better-at-his-age professional student. You’ll find them all over the country. They nearly always end up in local government or the probation service. (Rule of Life No 307: when a student, remember – the comrade on the march today is the police chief of tomorrow.)
    â€˜Need a hand?’ I asked, knowing that his type just couldn’t wait to get you involved .
    â€˜Can you use a stapler?’
    â€˜Do I get a retraining grant?’
    â€˜We don’t make jokes at the expense of the unemployed.’
    My God, if he wasn’t the genuine article! I didn’t think they bred them like that any more. Still, it’s nice to know some things hardly change.
    â€˜Why not? The Government does.’
    He grinned and pointed to an electric stapler clamped to the edge of the table.
    â€˜They’re all collated,’ he