Starter For Ten by Nicholls David

a terrible clarity, the realisation that the applause was ironic.
    The Student Union building is an ostentatiously ugly rain streaked concrete hulk, marooned in the middle of terraces of neat Georgian house like a bad tooth. This morning they're pouring in and out the swing doors, singly and in tight little groups with their day-old best friends, because it's the last day of Freshers Week, and there are no lectures till Monday. Instead today is our opportunity to join Socs.
    I join FrenchSoc, FilmSoc, LitSoc, PoetrySoc, and the writing staff of all three student magazines; the literary-minded Scribbler, the irreverent, salacious Tattle, and the earnest, campaigning, left-wing By Lines. I sign up for Darkroom Soc ('Join us and see what develops!') even though I don't have a camera, and then contemplate joining the FeministSoc, but whilst queuing at their trestle table I get glared at confrontationally by a Gertrude Stein look-alike and start to wonder if maybe joining FeministSoc might be trying just a bit too hard. I made this mistake once before, on a school trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum, when I followed a sign marked 'Women', thinking it was an exhibition on the changing role of women in society, and actually ended up standing in the ladies' toilets. In the end I decide to give FeministSoc a miss, because while I firmly support the women's liberation movement, I'm not entirely confident that I'm not just joining as a way to meet girls.
    I hurry past the fresh-faced, pastel-coloured sweaters of BadmintonSoc, just in case someone calls my bluff, then wave to Josh who's surrounded by pals in the queue for BeefyToffSoc, or whatever it is, something to do with ski-ing and drinking and harassing women and extreme right-wing views.
    I also decide not to join TheatreSoc. Like FeministSoc, it's a pretty good way of spending time with girls, but the down-side is that it's usually just a ruse to trick you into putting on a play. This term TheatreSoc will be producing Charley's Aunt, Sophocles' Antigone and Equus, and I just know I'd get cast either as a member of the Greek chorus, all shouting simultaneously through papier-mache masks in ruined bed-sheets, or one of those poor saps in Equus who spends the whole evening in a leotard wearing a horse's head made out of coat hangers. Well, TheatreSoc, thanks but no thanks. Besides, I'll have you know that in my last year at school I played Jesus in Godspell, and once you've been whipped and crucified in front of the whole school, there isn't really anywhere to go performance-wise. Tone and Spencer laughed all the way through of course, and shouted 'More! More!' during the forty lashes, but everyone else said it was a very affecting performance.
    When I think I've had enough Socs, I wander the room looking for the mystery girl from last night, though God knows what I'll do if I see her. Certainly not dance. I do two circuits of the sports hall, but there's no sign of her, so I head upstairs to the room where The Challenge heats are taking place, just to make sure I've got the right room and the right time. Sure enough, the poster's on the door; Your Starter For Ten. Only the finest minds need apply. 'Fancy your chances?' she'd said last night. 'Maybe see you there?' she'd said. Was she serious? And if so, where is she? I am an hour early though, so I decide to go back to the sports hall, to have another look round.
    Walking back downstairs, I pass the dark-haired Jewish girl from last night on the stairwell; Jessica, was it? She's standing with a bunch of skinny, pale men in Harringtons and tight black jeans, handing out leaflets for the Socialist Workers Party and all looking fuckingangryactually, so in a spirit of solidarity, I approach and say, 'Greetings, comrade!'
    'Morning twinkle-toes,' she drawls, glancing at my clenched fist, unamused, and quite right too, because it's not funny. She goes back to handing out the leaflets. 'I think DanceSoc's through there somewhere.'
    'Oh