I've never minded spiders. I've always been happy to pick them up, brush them away or save a damsel (or male equivalent) in distress from any eight legged monsters. Snakes are okay, but then I don't come in to contact with them particularly often. Bees are alright too, but then that'd probably be different if I were allergic to them. But, I digress from my new-found fear. Actually that's an understatement...PHOBIA...!

When I returned to my humble abode in London, I was greeted with news of a small, furry visitor, or seven. We have mice. My flatmate found a little mouse, bold as brass, licking the peanut butter from our kitchen tiles the night before my arrival. At this point in the story I was actually more upset by the mouse trap now waiting in the space the brazen creature had occupied. I removed the trap immediately, muttering about the inhumane capturing tactics for so-called vermin.

That night, my opinions changed.

Sleep-deprived, hungry (a whole packet of biscuits may have felt gluttonous at the time, but it really doesn't keep you going for a whole day!) and just feeling a bit homesick, I struggled to sleep. Which meant I was wide awake to hear my furry friend under my bed. I sat bolt upright. My room was under attack. I was being threatened. And that scratchy scratch of tiny claws on my dirty carpet sent shivers through me. I did not realise until that moment, that mice terrify me. I was frozen and could not leave my bed. And how did I react? Obviously, I called my boyfriend, at 4am, whilst he is asleep in Yorkshire and I am grief-stricken in London, as any one faced with a whiskered trespasser might.

Boyfriend recommended that I turn the light on. No. This would involve putting my feet on the floor. And what if mouse ran at me? No, I don't care that he is minuscule in comparison- he terrifies me.This vermin, has stolen the peanut butter from my floor- how dare he? He had nibbled my bread! And now, he and most likely his riddled offspring were chilling out under my bed, chewing on my home.

I did not sleep at all. I watched episode after episode, volume at its loudest in the hopes that (and this was under boyfriend's recommendation) mice get even more grossed out by the surgery scenes in Nip/Tuck than I do. I don't know how they felt about the on-screen drama but I do know how I felt about the in-room drama and that they had best scurry off before the mouse trap, now smeared with peanut butter, finds its way to under my bed.

I don't really know that I belong to a culture as such. But there are certainly some 'cultures' I have adopted and as a result 'rules' I loosely live by....

The culture of the student:
1. Drinking before lunchtime is not alcoholism or giving in to peer pressure, but simply a way to save on groceries and get the party started.
2. When something is good, bad, ugly, or indeed beautiful or nothing at all, a friendly face and 'fancy a pint' can only make it better :)
3. Clothes do not need to be washed until every item of my wardrobe has been worn... to an outsider it seems to be some kind of social experiment- how many people will sit three seats away from you on the bus when you wear pyjama bottoms, with a sequin top and your best ear muffs...to a student, it's nearly laundry day, or another night at Reflex.
4. I will walk miles to find a cash point that does not charge for withdrawals, but I will walk to the end of the earth to find one that dispenses five pound notes. Luckily for us, most campuses boast such services at all of their cash points- this is basically what uni is all about.
5. If pints are 50p it does not matter that there are suspicious liquids/solids on the floor of the club, that I cannot pick my shoes up off of the dance floor, that men and women get naked for various buzz words in songs, that I can't see and that I lost my friends three hours ago and have no phone signal. The.pints.are.50p.

The culture of the South Coaster:
1. Good sea air will cure everything. Even a cold. In winter.
2. Fresh fish tastes better. I do not like fish, so I cannot comment, but I do feel proud when 'Poole produce' is written on those horrible bin liner type fish bags and fresh certainly smells less like my worst nightmare than not so fresh.
3. Sand gets everywhere. We hate it. But we love mentioning it. Yep, evvvvery.where....go on mind, wander.
4. A boat is the ultimate luxury. As is living in Sandbanks/Canford Cliffs. But more than these, you know you've made it when you possess a beach hut, for a week, once every three years, that you can't close the door on.
5. "I was really good, I didn't try to get into clubs before I was 18". That's because a) there are three clubs in your whole town and it costs a months wages for a taxi home and b) the beach was your oyster, and you preferred to risk life and limb necking White Lightening and assuming you could still swim at the local beach three nights a week.

The culture of the Brit:
1. Tea in the morning. Tea at the office. Tea when you get home. Tea after tea.
2. Socks stop sandals from rubbing- a touristy Brit cliche but one that I understand and sympathise with, perhaps because my Dad does it and I want people to think him cute and English rather than point at him and laugh or perhaps because I am just rather British too.
3. When we walk up hills we need big sticks. Some people have professional looking walking sticks, many of us just have sticks we found on our last jolly and left in the boot of the car.
4. Arguing about pronunciation. Scone and scone (but said the other way) are the same word, and they mean the same thing, and which way you say it is really not a class thing, an intelligence thing, or a popularity thing. It is simply a British thing to argue with other Brits about how to pronounce English words. And by the way it's scone, with the e!
5. The weather. Enough said.

My 'culture':
1. Supernoodles will provide nutrition in all hours of need, these include but are not limited to- hangovers, bad grades, when Jeremy Kyle is on, festivals at any time, being dumped, being asked out, when there is no food left, when there is only cheese left, and when there is a fridge full but only Noopy goodness will do :)
2. There is a draining board for a reason. Once dishes have been cleaned they are put here to dry. They do not need to be dried, they will do this in the designated drying area and then you will return them to their cupboard-shaped homes. Put the tea towel down.
3. Socks should be odd. It is far more interesting this way and it has made me many a friend.
4. Cat people are not to be trusted. Dogs are sacred, and dog people are loyal, and friendly and kind much like their counter-parts. And you can look after their dogs- winner! People who like both are still an anomaly to me and so probably shouldn't be trusted.
5. Smile. And everyone will smile back. Except 99.9% of the people on the tube every day in London.

The queue stretches down inside St Pancras station as passengers wait to try to board a Eurostar

Until moving to London I hadn't fully appreciated how much I like a good queue. I am rather fond of an orderly, polite system whereby if I am there first I will board the train/order my latte (not that I drank lattes or even knew what they were before I moved to London!)/pay for my groceries and so on, first. If I am at the end of a queue, however long it may be, and however much of a rush I may be in, I have the utmost respect for this way of reaching my daily goals and I will wait until it is my turn. It seems that in London, and perhaps big, busy cities in general, that a queue will be respected so long as it is going at the speed the people further along the line need it to. If I am not going quickly enough down the escalator, or boarding the tube at break neck speed I have found that I respond to a shove/shout/poke and sometimes briefcase to the stomach by moving a great deal quicker- something these bustling Londoners clearly realised a long while ago. It is with this revelation in mind that I will answer 'What would you use a magic wand for?'... If this question had been posed at the beginning of my adventures in London I would probably have used the wand to speed up time and thus the queue, or to make the staff in Starbucks quicker, the lady who scans my groceries less chatty, or the tube doors stay open longer. Not long after this I may have decided to wave my wand and have queues act as if a fast forward button could control them at busy moments. A month into being a rat in the rat race that is London I feel angry, hurt and yes, vindictive. I feel these people who push me in the queues I have so much respect for should know not only that I have lived by a beach all my life, and regard more than five shops on the same street as good as any shopping mall, but also that I will cry if pushed too hard and that this will be embarrassing for all involved. But knowing will not be enough anymore. I would now wave my wand, and with my new-found power (oh yes, this imaginary power has gone right to my head) and I would have these pushers and shovers, these disrespectful city-folk sent to the back of the queue. Yes you heard. To the back of the queue. Preferably a queue that is not my queue, and not even in London, so that by the time all these culprits have been zapped away, there would be no queue of people at all, just me, respecting my nice, orderly, and invisible queue. Queue-police, over and out!