Most of my mates that I grew up with took a fairly standard route through University, going straight from school with or without the Gap Year. However, one of my mates went into an apprenticeship and spent a few years working before deciding that he wanted to go to university. After spending a year in night school getting the necessary Maths A-Level to do the course, he set off to uni looking forward to the chance to emulate the rest of our drinking and women-chasing antics.

Although the first was never an issue, James was having a few problems with the second. Whilst the fact that the town he was in only had the Science and Technology faculties, and so a poor male/female ratio was a significant factor, there were a couple of incidents which would indicate that he did have to take some of the responsibility for his lack of success with the fairer sex.

The first occurred whilst out one evening, and he and some friends got chatting to some girls in a bar. All was going well, and James, being the polite sort of fellow he is, asked her for her name; she duly obliged.

Both the conversation and the drink flowed freely, and eventually James had to attend a call of nature. Unfortunately when he got back to the table he got a little confused about where he had been sitting and ended up thinking that his mate had swapped places and was now chatting to the girl he had been chatting to leaving him with her friend. James wasn't overly concerned by this turn of events, so sat down, introduced himself and started chatting away. The girl was, unsurprisingly enough, slightly confused, and was even more confused when he then asked her for her name again. However, she duly obliged, and gave it to James anyway. It was as he was replying, "Oh! That's the same name as your friend!" that he realised his mistake...

During the second incident James could well be considered blameless, indeed he could well be considered the 'victim' in this particular tale. He was out one evening and chatting to a couple of girls when his mate Matt came up and announced, "I wish I were a girl, 'cos then I'd spend all day in bed fondling my breasts," before turning round and walking away.

The conversation came to a rather abrupt halt; the girls made their excuses and left.