Varsity Dragon

Some time ago your scaly green friend forgot the first two rules of working for a corporation:

1) Never volunteer for anything
2) Especially anything to do with graduate recruitment

and answered an email asking for volunteers to turn up at the various milkround events that the company holds to try and get the "brightest and best" talents of esteemed seats of learning to come and lay down their lives work for Banco Di Haggis. As one of these was the capital of Swampland where I live I figured that at least I'd get home early enough so I put my name down.

That was months ago so it came as a bit of a shock when on Monday, as the perfect shitstorm was breaking around me as the realisation that I and my colleagues now worked for the bushy eyebrowed monocular cunt who calls himself prime minister, I got a reminder that I needed to be in Cambridge on Wednesday afternoon to pimp my employer.

"Hmmm...." opined my co-workers, "Tough sell little dragon."

"No shit," I replied as I wondered about faking tail-rot on the day. Ah well, might as well go, at least I can blag a few pens.

Anyway Wednesday comes so off I trundle to some grey concrete building down by the river out of view of all the really nice colledges; it sort of looked like someone had glued a load of square concrete egg-boxes onto the side so having spent a goodly proportion of my student days living here...


County College, Lancaster. As seen by a dragon after several pints.

... I felt right at home.

The gig kicked off at one in the afternoon and in trundled the keen students... well keen enough to be awake and moving at 1pm which rather lets the side down student-wise I thought and they all go off to talk to JP Morgan, UBS, even the fucking Bank of England; anyone but us whom they give a wide berth in case they catch a bad dose of government intervention and loss of bonuses. In the end I started humming the old Milwall FC chant that goes to the tune of Rod Stewart's "Sailing"

We are Banko
Banko di Haggis
We are Banko,
From Auld Reekie
We Are Banko
Banko di Haggis
No one likes us
We don't care

Spot the dragon

In the end we did get a few people come up and have a chat about what we had to offer and were we actually going to be hiring anyone? I had got myself all prepped up with clever words like "good capitalisation", "sound foundations" and "being a civil servant isn't so bad you know" and despite being a dragon and thus having all the sales skills of Gerald Ratner I got a few people enthused enough to say they would come along to the evening do we were having in a few days time. Usually the conversation went something like ...

"Go on, we have an evening presentation round the corner soon, why not come to that!"
"Oh I don't know..."
"There will be food."
"Er..."
"Free booze."
"Well..."
"Dwarves in mankinis having sex with live halibut!"
"Eh???"
"Chainsaw juggling lepers?"
"Oh go on then."

Regrettably I found out after a couple of conversations that it really did help if I prentended be a Cambridge aliumnus rather than having graduated with a 2.2 in Mud Studies from a northern redbrick so I started out with a maths degree from Trinity. I think by the end of the event it had become a double first in PPE and Quidditch from Gonville and Caius. Hate to think what I'll be saying at this evening do when I will have had the benefit of some free booze.

One thing that never changes is the coffee in student refectories. There was a nice view...




...but the coffee tasted like hot gritty water. Utterly foul.

The best bit of the event came towards the end when all the employees from the organisations who had been shanghaied into the event ignored the few remaining students (the sensible ones having all repaired to various alcohol retailing emporia) and started trading swag. The going rate was one tube of Banko di Haggis jelly beans to a pen and two to something worth having like a USB stick or I-pod amplifier (got both - happy dragon!). I even blagged a squeezy "stress bull" from my former employer Merrill Lynch which, now that they don't exist, will be worth something in a few years time.

Come six pm we all slope off with sore feet and pockets stuffed with as many pens, highlighters and packets of jelly beans as we can manage to carry.

I snapped this of King's on the way back to the bus station, very nice.



Anyway I'm at Loughborough in a few weeks... come and say hello to the Grumpy Dragon if you're in town. I'll be the the one with the wings and tail stood at the stand with nobody around it.