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Alloway Halls

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Flatmates
Stories and Photo's
The Great Alloway Water Fight

Alloway Halls was a very difficult introduction to life away from the comforts of home. There were 8 students sharing this flat, and by the end of the year, every one of us had been evicted, chose to leave, or moved to another part of Alloway Halls. There were a lot of conflicting personalities in our flat (flat 1). I lasted 8 weeks, before moving to Lyon Street.

There are more amusing stories in these 8 weeks than in the remaining time I spent in Dundee! The warden didn't like the people in our flat, so he was always looking for excuses to pick us off one by one, but we played right into his hands. I was the only third year student in the entire halls (which holds 144 people), so trying to study was near impossible with parties to go to every night! Rob made lots of movies in our flat, but they all went mysteriously missing. If you know of their whereabouts, it would be cool to see them.

It is a time I look back on very fondly, although at the time, I was desperately homesick, and was being threatened with eviction on a regular basis. On top of this, none of us had any money, as the Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) computer system had crashed, and our Student Grants were not given out till Christmas (9 weeks into term). A lot of students had to leave University as they could not afford their rent, but the University agreed to wait for our rent.

Soundtrack of Flat 1: Young Guns 2 Soundtrack
Film of Flat 1: Boyz n the Hood

Flatmates

I don't know what many of these flatmates are up to these days, so if you have any information, then please e-mail me.

Name/Room	Reason for leaving Flat 1	Information
Room 1 - Neil Elder (Glenrothes)	First person to be evicted. Neil set off a firework directly at the warden, so there was no choice!
Room 2 - Sean 'O' Carroll (Ireland)		Last seen working at the Dundee Union behind the bar, which means he must be studying there too.
Room 3 - Dave Kerr (Glenrothes)	Had to shift from Flat 1 to Flat 7 when their was only two people left in the flat after only 4 months!	Got his degree in Computing, then went back to 1st year to study Behavioural Science. Dave's web-site
Room 4 - Christopher Plews (N. Ireland)	Moved out of our flat to another part of Alloway Halls, then moved back in with us the following day! Eventually moved to Flat 17.	"i left Uni after my 2nd year, i am now a manager for a big shopping company based throughout Ireland, the shop is called Heatons."
Room 5 - ME!!	See the start of this page!	N/A
Room 6 - Rob Burns (Cowdenbeath)	Whooped all of us at Tekken 2 on the playstation!! Played lots of jokes on Craig (his favourite being when he took all the labels off Craig's tinned food!!	Worked at Sky for a year and a half, and then moved to Venezuela, where he is working as an Independant Financial Advisor.
Room 7 - Stuart Kellock (Bristol)	Was moved to flat 7 (where Dave was) when there was only two flatmates left.	Moved to University in Bristol after completing his first year at University.
Room 8 - Craig Pitcairn (Dunfermline)	Craig moved out to Flat 17 (where Chris was) when there was only 3 people left in Flat 1.	Great friend. He moved in with me again when I lived in Meadowside. Still living in Dundee. Left his computing course to work in the BT call centre. Craig's web-site.

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Stories and Photo's

Chris Plews (he's the one on the right!)

Official photo of the living room area. Needless to say that we weren't provided with a couch!

	Day 1: You've seen Gladiators on the TV. Remember the event where someone has to run down a tunnel while being bashed by pugil sticks etc! Well, this was our initiation into life in Flat 1. All the other 7 flatmates lined up with their pillows, as each flatmate took turns to run from one end of the corridor to the other! Lots of bruises after this one!
	Chris moves out. You can see Dave checking out Chris's lamp, as his had stopped working the day before! Chris lasted a day away from us, then moved back in, before finally moving back out again!
	A random fight. General fighting was a way of keeping ourselves amused in Flat 1. Craig may have said something about Neil's hair!
	Neil's revenge! He placed a pole with a bucket of water balanced on top of it against Craig's door, knocked the door and then ran. When Craig opened the door, the bucket fell into his room soaking both him and his bed! When he ran out into the corridor, the only person he could see was me (as I had just took this photo), so he presumed I had done it, and swung at me with the pole! I managed to duck twice before diving into my room. He took two chunks out of the wall though, so I am glad he missed me!
	This was a present for Dave. Lots of sticky sellotape, condoms, cornflake packets etc were hung artistically from the ceiling outside his room! If only the guys had applied themselves to their study with such enthusiasm!
	Ganging up on Craig! Craig had to leave by his window in order to get out of his room on more than one occasion. Annoying Craig was by far the most popular past-time in Flat 1! Here, we see that he is barricaded in his room by Rob and Neil. At other times, he would find washing powder in his salt dish, and the labels ripped off his cans of food!
	Fight of the hair clippers! Stewart had enough of this flat being referred to as "the one that has the guy with the big hair", so he grabbed a big pair of scissors, and tried to pin Neil down. Neil escaped without losing any hair though.
	Revenge on Sean: Sean could only enter and leave through his bedroom window for several days, after many roadwork's and signs were screwed against his door!

Neil's Room: When Neil went home for a weekend, he had left his room unlocked, and my flatmates expertly moved his entire room (posters and everything) into the corner of the living room, and set it up again!

On the first night in Dundee, we all went to the Student Union Party, where we got to meet everyone else who was new to University. At the end of the night, I thought I would save some money and walk home, whilst all my flatmates piled into taxi's. After 2 hours of wandering about Dundee in the pitch black, I realised that I had just gone past a landmark that I passed an hour previous! I then had to get a taxi (which cost more than if I had shared in the first place)!

The Great Alloway Water Fight!!

The best story of all! This nearly got upwards of 30 people evicted one night (including me).

It all started when the 8 girls in the flat above us, started pelting our window with water bombs. This led to our flat throwing cups of water at them outside. The fight then moved inside and became more tactical. This meant that the battleground became the stairways between the two flats. Buckets and hoses were soon being used instead of cups and water bombs!

Pretty soon, the whole six flights of stairs were absolutely drenched with water (as were the flat occupants)! Someone accidentally threw a bucket of water over the fire sensors and set the fire alarm off. Two fire engines turned up, along with a police car. The whole of Alloway Halls were gathered outside. When they searched our flat, they realised the fire extinguishers had been used. Neil then went back to his bed and was found again when they searched each room!

The whole of Flat 1 were immediately held responsible and told they would be evicted, but the University eventually backed down. About 20 people owned up. They were each ordered to pay some money towards the cost of having two fire engines called out.

This was the incident that made the Warden watch us all very closely and it was only another 3 weeks before the first person would be evicted... (this was before Big Brother became famous, but it would have been great to have had a crew film this whole event!)