The best bit of university is watching the brake lights of your parents’ car disappear through the gates of your new halls of residence. I feel sorry for today’s freshers, denied the intoxicating, scary weeks of their new lives. Cooped up in their rooms, self-isolating like sick hens, they’re now paying lots of unnecessary rent and missing out on the fun of meeting people. Even worse, they won’t have escaped their parents, who’ll be stalking them online to check everything’s all right. The experience will make them inventive, shrewd, resourceful and funny — viz the “Send food” posters some of them

Source: The Times September 27, 2020 22:52 UTC