Chapter 83

Back at University for what we called the ‘Summer’ Term, (and officialdom still referred to as the ‘Trinity’ Term), the final three months of our three-year degree course were probably best described as ‘frantic’ as we completed our required programme of studies, and finished the final editing and checking of our dissertations before submitting them for typing.

It was the dissertations that caused most of the trouble, for several reasons; they were so much longer than any of our previous essays or other pieces of written work, they were going to be ‘published’ by being preserved in the University Library with an abstract available for researchers across the world, and worst of all, they had to fully comply with every rule of academic referencing, citation and quotation of other research. They were a nightmare, especially for the girls who had to read (and give the correct credit to) a lot of other academic papers to back up their assertions and conclusions. And we couldn’t really get started on our revision programmes until the thrice-damned dissertations were out of the way. Oh, and we had to find the money up front to pay for typing and binding as well!

Crikey, even now we look back on it as some of the most stressful time in our lives – partly because we were trying to live up to the high expectations of our tutors, who were constantly telling us that with just that little bit more effort we could do really well, but also with the additional pressure of knowing that we were about to become the first people in our families to earn a University degree, so of course we wanted to do better than average, and our folks to be proud of our achievements.

It wasn’t all ‘nose to the grindstone’, though. We did have some fun as well. As they say, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy“. We didn’t want that to happen, did we?

Fred’s birthday came round during our first week back after Easter; as he was doing a four-year ‘sandwich’ course and had done a year out in industry, he was a year older than the rest of us, so it wasn’t the ‘coming of age’ big celebration – he was now an ‘old man’ of 22! We did take him out on the Friday for a meal at a Chinese restaurant near Caroline Street, and then on to the Jazz Club, so we certainly made something of it, just not on the day itself. (We’d decided that we’d all virtually give up drinking alcohol during the week, so as not to be distracted from our studies by spending too much time in the pub or Union.)

The night before his actual birthday, Julie and I had just been stripping off for bed after several more hours spent poring over our notebooks, when our door opened without a knock, and in slipped Vee. She was wearing her baby doll nightie (the one of very fond memory when my sister came down to Cardiff the first time for the Pink Floyd concert), and Gustav spotted it instantly.

“Whoops! Sorry, bad timing! Julie, love, I’m giving Fred an early birthday present tonight; you couldn’t be a dear and do the teas in the morning if for some reason I sleep in a bit, could you?”

Julie was giggling; I don’t know whether it was at my shocked expression at being burst in on while naked, or at Vee’s openness about her plans for a night of passion, or (most likely) my obvious difficulty at hiding my natural reaction to Vee’s manifest charms. Oh yeah, in that nightie, they really were manifest – there was no missing that nicely trimmed patch of pubic hair below the nightie’s hem, nor the pert boobs peeking over the top.

(The incomparable Nigel Molesworth would have commented that Vee’s hem did not cover her ‘hem-hems’, but of course as he lived a monastic life at St. Custards, he had always had very little to do with GURLS apart from the odd Speech Day visit by Arabella Fotherington-Thomas, and probably would not really have recognised them as ‘hem-hems’.)

“Yeah, of course I will, Vee. Have fun!”

The wicked grin she got back verified our suspicions. Vee was going to give herself some serious loving from Fred as her birthday gift to him...

The door closed behind Vee, and I quickly finished piling my clothes neatly on the settee and got under our quilt, trying to cover up the fact that Gustav had automatically responded to Vee’s allure. Well, it’s not all that tactful to let your girlfriend see that some other girl has got your motor running, is it?

Julie was busy rummaging in the chest of drawers, and I didn’t notice what she was doing until she pulled back the quilt, and I saw that she was now wearing her own pastel blue baby doll nightie.

“Wow! What’s this in aid of?”

“Solidarity!”

“Solidarity?”

“Yeah! Your average Male Chauvinist Pig in the street, and by that I mean yourself, my darling, probably thinks that Vee is deliberately demeaning herself by wearing provocative clothing in order to cater to the perverted sexist fantasies of her boyfriend?”

I admitted that such a thought might possibly have crossed my mind. (She knew me far too well for any fib to have been believed.)

“So, in Women’s Lib solidarity with Vee, I’m about to show you just how wrong you are!”

She sat on my tum facing me. I tried to look her in the eyes rather than the chest, which was quite an effort. Her gorgeous boobs were nicely highlighted by the way they pushed out the neckline of the nightie.

“And you also think that she might have bought such an item purely for the enjoyment of any male companions, of whom in the past you have been one?”

That argument was probably also true, but I reckoned I could get her on the logic.

“Isn’t that the reason that you bought yours, to pander to my kinky tastes?”

“No it bloody well isn’t! I bought it for me!”

That didn’t entirely make sense.

“You did?”

“Yes, I did! You remember we had a threesome with Vee just after the start of our second year, when she lent me her nightie, and I had a great time? And then again at Easter last year? Well, she said that it gave her extra confidence, so I let her talk me into buying one, and then we had that amazing night while everyone else was still away. That was a year ago, and then Jen got her pink one, and told me that you went crazy as soon as you saw it, and then Sheila bought hers for Valentines this year, and we had a Six Musketeers session and we all got fucked stupid in our baby dolls?”

I tried not to grin too widely as I recalled those wonderful occasions. They had been a LOT of fun! Valentine’s weekend with the twins had been the first anniversary of the Six Musketeers, after Julie and Sheila had first ‘given’ themselves to Hamish as a 19^th Birthday present threesome, and the baby doll nighties had been Sheila’s idea of marking the occasion.

“Yeah, I remember all those. But exactly how did you benefit? I was the one getting all my fantasies fulfilled?”

She giggled.

“Because YOU, you pervert, just like Adrian and Hamish, get even more excited than usual, and I reap the benefit of your extra arousal. Would you agree that Gustav is currently in a state which might reasonably be described as tumescent?”

I admitted that he was indeed as stiff as poker. Yep, more so than usual. She did have a point that my arousal was greater than normal.

“And it all started when you perved at Vee in her baby doll nightie showing everyone her lovely fanny?”

Bugger! I’d been caught bang to rights. No point in even trying to deny it...

“Yes, but...”

“But me no buts, matie. You got turned on by Vee, and now that I’m also modelling your favourite kinky fantasy clothing, Gustav is bursting at the seams?”

I nodded in agreement. Julie DID look incredibly sexy in that nightie, and I did indeed have a serious hard-on.

“So you’re about to rise to the occasion and screw me rotten?”

I confessed that my current intentions vis-à-vis her did rather incline in that direction.

“And therefore I’m about to experience some outstandingly memorable orgasms?”

Desperately trying to keep a straight face as we mixed our long words, I intimated that I hoped that something like that as a potential outcome would indeed be the case.

I didn’t dare admit, (though I gritted my teeth and silently prayed to the gods of priapism that I would be spared the shame of a premature ejaculation), that Gustav in his current straining-at-the-leash state might not last long enough to do the business properly.

“So I win?”

And indeed she did. Several times, several times. Despite my fears about unexpectedly releasing my seed, Gustav was a star, and more than fulfilled her expectations. Well, a combination of his experience and my ability to run through the properties of the Lanthanide series of elements in my mind to distract him, without losing my sexual rhythm...

The next morning, it was Sian, not Vee, who brought in the morning tea, laughing as she woke us from our deep post-coital slumber. Julie’s nightie had been discarded sometime during the night and was now lying in the middle of the carpet, and Sian lifted it up on one foot to show us that she’d found it.

“I might have guessed what was happening when nobody brought the tea, so I had to do it myself. I saw Vee’s baby doll on her floor as well! You two are such utter nymphos; goodness only knows how I ended up sharing a flat with you and your boyfriends! I’m just glad that I’m built for comfort not speed, because I can’t see myself in something like that – not that I need it, because Malcolm knows he’s onto a good thing!”

Chuckling to herself, she left us to it. We were both too dozy to think of any witty retorts – after all, it was Sian who I’d first slept with, and she had encouraged me to have sex with Vee and then with Julie, so accusing the others of nymphomania was perhaps a touch over the top.

Lord, but that tea was welcome! We’d both got slightly dehydrated during our exertions, so much so that I put my dressing gown on and made another pot. Vee and Fred were already locked in the top landing bathroom, so we only had to split the tea four ways. Julie and I then nipped down to the half landing bathroom for a quick splash ourselves before getting dressed; we were both somewhat sticky around our nether regions.

There were grins all round the table at breakfast as we wished Fred a ‘Happy Birthday’ and gave him the cards we had bought; Monica and Sarah from downstairs heard us singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and nipped up to join in, and then it was time to head off to our respective places of learning.

April raced by. It was almost frightening how quickly our exams were approaching. My tutor was piling on the guilt, telling me that he had a fiver on me in the pool for those students who were going to get Firsts, and that he’d be in trouble at home if he didn’t get it back. I wasn’t entirely convinced that he was joking.

There was also the little matter of getting a job. With the end of college within sight, we now thought much more seriously about our prospects of finding gainful employment later in the year.

Not that we had very much idea how exactly we were supposed to go about it.

Julie had bought a copy of the Times Educational Supplement and had gone through all the adverts and editorial, and now seemed happier with her options for Teacher Training College. Sadly, my Chemical Journal was woefully lacking in juicy adverts promising a great salary starting this September...

Luckily for us, we weren’t the only ones thinking about our future.

A fortnight after we got back, Prof called all those of us Chemistry students who were due to graduate that year in for a presentation on writing a Curriculum Vitae, or CV, having asked one of the University Personnel people in to give us their professional advice. Prof made it clear that we were expected to attend, and that he would be there himself, which gave it much higher priority in our eyes.

It was actually an incredibly useful session and I’d have kicked myself if I’d not bothered to attend; partly because it sharply reminded us that potential employers would very soon start to invite applications for interviews on their ‘milk round’ visits to the University in search of this year’s graduate entry and we’d better get our acts together lickedy split, but mainly because of the helpful practical advice and examples he offered. This chap clearly knew what he was talking about, and he was even more confident in front of an audience than one or two of our lecturers!

“You have to keep at the front of your mind the basic purpose of your CV – to get you shortlisted for interview. That’s all it does. The problem is, lots of other people also want an interview, so the poor sod whose job it is to organise the shortlist has to read every single CV that is submitted. Yours has to pass his immediate tests – is it neat, tidy, typed, well laid out?”

“You would be amazed at the poor quality of some of the CVs we receive for jobs at University College Cardiff – handwritten, on sheets of paper ripped out of notebooks, with rings from a coffee mug on them, even missing a contact address, so we couldn’t ask them for interview even if we wanted to. You’d think that these people didn’t want to get a job! I implore you – please, please, please don’t make those incredibly basic errors.”

“I’m going to give you a hand-out with the ‘do’ and ‘don’t’ headings, and please treat them as Gospel, because I can promise you that the Personnel Officer who receives it is actively looking for a reason to drop your CV in the ‘rejected’ pile and reduce the length of his shortlist. It might be something as simple as the wrong colour paper – always use white or cream paper, you may think that blue or pink paper will stand out, but it’s normally seen as an invitation to discard it!”

“Now, the covering letter. Hand-written, but neat. Short, sharp, business-like and to-the-point. One side. Don’t on any account go on to a second side; you’ll just put their backs up. Their reference and job title, your contact details, any dates you aren’t available for interview – and I strongly suggest that you limit that to the actual period of your Finals and explain why – and leave it at that. No repetition of anything that’s in your CV, and don’t forget to use ‘yours faithfully’ if you’ve addressed it ‘Dear Sir’, and ‘yours sincerely’ if you’ve had a name to use. Follow any instructions given in the advert, to the letter. And for heaven’s sake, get it in before the closing date, otherwise it’s headed straight for the wastepaper basket.”

That was all clear enough. Mind you, he did cause a few gasps and groans as he then went on to detail practical examples from his own experience.

“Sadly, even if you do follow all my rules, you will have to trust to luck in some cases; every personnel officer has their own pet likes and dislikes, and what may get you shortlisted by one person may get you rejected by another. On their initial scan of all the applications, their first task is to reduce the number to a manageable size, before they start short-listing. This process can be extremely arbitrary, even unfair, but it’s a fact of life!”

“For example, take Burton’s Biscuits, the people who make Wagon Wheels. I met someone at a conference recently who swore blind that the Graduate Recruitment Manager rejected all CVs that didn’t give the applicant’s postcode, because that showed a lack of attention to detail. His deputy, on the other hand, rejected all CVs that included a postcode, in the belief that postcodes are a modern gimmick and their inclusion suggests that the applicant is easily sidetracked from the main task. So your chances of getting an interview depended entirely on which of their in-trays your CV landed in. But they both managed to reject about half of their pile on one initial glance at the address details, and that’s what they were trying to do! As far as THEY were concerned, job done. Just a bit tough on all the people who had taken the trouble to apply, and who got dumped at the first stage through no fault of their won. Yes, Burtons were bound to miss out on some good candidates, but they were working on the assumption that there were more than enough applicants who could do the job, and they just had to select one of them. The moral of that story is – don’t be discouraged if you don’t get shortlisted at first, because it may well be absolutely nothing to do with your application.”

“You won’t yet have the common problem of writing too long a CV, because you haven’t done much. But make sure it is NO LONGER than two sides, because they simply won’t bother to read any more, and it will upset them that you are making their job harder. You can give your ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level subjects and grades this time, but in future they won’t matter a jot unless they are directly relevant to the job you are applying for, like if you have a relevant language qualification, say French, and they export to somewhere where they speak it.”

“Do mention any work experience you have; recruiters like people who can demonstrate a bit of get up and go. If you’ve been lucky enough to have a summer job where your employer is happy to give you a positive reference as to reliability, punctuality and general usefulness, then that is a definite plus.”

I glanced at Malcolm. His face had initially fallen; as I suspect had mine. At least we knew that Mr Johnston from the vegetable factory would give us both a glowing reference. IF, and it suddenly seemed a big IF, we could get an interview in the first place!

The man from Personnel continued speaking.

“But it’s not all bad news! You Chemists are far luckier than most in that respect. The big firms recruit a lot of graduates every year, and they form what we call the ‘Milk Round’. They send their recruiters to all the universities to interview likely candidates on site, and they pretty much interview everybody that we ask them to see. Your CV is still important, but your interview performance and your reference from your Tutor count for much more.”

You could feel the gathering gloom in the room disappear like a summer morning mist when the sun catches it. There was a lot of suddenly expelled air from people who hadn’t realised that they had been holding their breath in fear as to what the bloke might say next.

We’d all gaily assumed that our generation would pretty much just walk into a job for life, as our parents and older siblings had. Okay, we knew that the oil crisis of 1973 had caused a recession in the Western economies that now had UK unemployment at just over a million, but everyone said that the economy was showing signs of a recovery. And we were University Graduates; that surely had to count for something?

“Your tutors will give you a mock practice interview if you wish, and I strongly recommend that you do request one; there are some notes on interview technique in the packs, but there are a couple of things I want to cover. Most important is appearance. First impressions count. Anyone who tells you otherwise is deluding themselves. Jacket and tie is essential, a suit shows that you are taking the interview seriously and trying to impress. Nice firm handshake, and look them in the eye. Don’t be flash or eccentric, there’s no need for a handkerchief in your top pocket or a bow tie, just be normal. Polish on your shoes, hair brushed, properly shaved and any beard or moustache neatly trimmed. Hair ... Well, let’s just say that long hair is currently fashionable and therefore accepted, but don’t push it. If you look like a bush on stilts, the recruiters are immediately going to wonder if you will fit in to their company culture. You really don’t want them having those doubts at the start, because that will colour how they see you.”

He looked around the room. There were a few dismal faces. Some of my fellow students had rejoiced in their new-found freedom not to have to shave or cut their hair, and three years later, ‘walking bush’ was not an inappropriate description for one or two of them.

“Oh, and one last thought. Decent grooming is essential, but don’t overdo it. Clean fingernails and freshly washed hair are a must, but control the deodorant. I know that ‘Our ‘Enery’ (Henry Cooper, the boxer) keeps telling you to ‘splash it all over’, but if you stink the interview room out with ‘the great smell of Brut‘, don’t expect the representatives of a conservative ‘blue chip’ company to appreciate it. Ditto the use of Brylcreem, for heaven’s sake don’t dress as if you’re headed down to the Mecca Dancehall to see how quickly you can pull a bird, because that’s not what they’re interested in.”

That last little speech earned him a laugh from us all, as he probably knew it would, and lightened the mood no end.

“Any questions?”

He’d pretty much covered everything; the only important part that he’d missed was exactly how we could get our CVs typed up to these high standards – very few of us had typewriters, and those we could get hold of were old and dented.

“I think that if you ask the Departmental Secretaries very nicely, they won’t mind a little bit of extra work at reasonable rates; just don’t ask for many more copies than you actually need, and please use your best handwriting, so that they can actually read what you put down?”

There was more laughter. We had learned early in our first year that the secretaries, with their years of experience, were our best hope of deciphering the spidery scrawls that wandered across most of the memos we got from our lecturers!

I was in such a good mood when I got home that I suggested to Julie that we go and watch the new film just out, ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail‘. We ended up with all six of us going, and of course the walk home was full of japes, all couched in ‘an outrageous French accent’. Sian could imitate the ‘coconut shell’ sound of horses hooves with her tongue, and so for a while we cantered home, telling each other that “your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries”, or saying ‘Ni!’ and demanding ‘a shrubbery’. It had been a great evening’s entertainment, and had taken away a lot of the tension that had been building up.

Jen’s twentieth birthday celebration the next weekend was a particularly memorable sexual extravaganza for the Six Musketeers; we all met up in Clifton on the Friday night and had a great celebratory meal out at the little Italian restaurant round the corner, consuming four straw-covered bottles of their house Chianti between us. The twins has obviously tipped them off, because there was a candle burning in Jen’s portion of tiramisu when the waitress brought it to the table. We even allowed ourselves to be persuaded to have coffee afterwards, which was served with almond ‘biscotti‘ which were so hard that I thought I might have broken a tooth!

Julie and Sheila had originally planned things so that there would a constant threesome involving Jen going on from midnight on her birthday evening. However, when we all got back to the flat, it seemed silly to wait an hour and a bit before we got started, so we worked on the assumption that she probably would survive into the twenty-first year of her age, and we might as well crack on.

Their ‘celebration’ began on the piled quilts in front of the fire, with both of them getting Jen warmed up (and the sight of the two of them kissing her all over certainly got Gustav going), then Hamish fucked Jen from behind while she ate Julie out; then I fucked Sheila while she was cleaning Jen up, then it was Adrian and Jen, then Hamish, Julie and Jen, and so on until roughly four in the morning, when even Jen could take no more. We tucked her up with Hamish and went off to bed; to sleep. Sheila draped herself over me, I pulled up the quilt, and we were off to the Land of Nod.

None of us were really up and about before midday, and the girls all rejected the suggestion of a nice bracing walk on the Downs, on the grounds of feeling too sore between the legs!

However, I’m pleased to be able to report that by the middle of the afternoon, with the help of a big Brunch and some more of Sheila’s magic soothing lotion, everyone was sufficiently recovered for me to be able to slowly make love to Jen from behind on our sides, while Hamish was doing the same to Julie on the other half of Sheila’s bed. The two girls took turns kissing each other and their man, and it was wonderful to watch Julie’s face as Hamish brought her to a slow but sustained orgasm. A few minutes later, it was his turn to gaze at his girlfriend in the throes of ecstasy, as I gently brought my sister to her umpteenth climax of the weekend so far.

Revitalised by several cups of tea and some Battenburg cake (bought, from the corner shop, but not too bad), we started discussing the options for supper. As we’d not visited Mr Waite the butcher that morning, the choice was rather more limited than usual.

“There’s a new place started up the other side of the Students’ Union, serving Pizza. Twin and I were thinking of giving it a go sometime; why not tonight?”

“Presumably we’re going to the Union anyway to watch Doctor Who?”

“Yeah! That should work nicely!”

So we wandered off to the Union, watched the first episode of “Revenge of the Cybermen”, came back out into the fresh air, found the pizza place, and got a table for six.

(Back in 1975 in the UK, pizza was most definitely not the ubiquitous item it is now; takeaway or delivered pizza was unheard of, and there weren’t all that many places serving it as a speciality, probably just a few in London. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that it became a common sight, and even then it was mainly a sit-down meal with plates and knife-and-fork.)

We all studied the menus we had been given; they meant very little to us with names like ‘quattro formaggio’. The only thing we knew for sure was that we didn’t want one covered in anchovies.

The waitress had clearly experienced novice customers before now, and cheerfully prompted us.

“Why don’t I bring you a number of different pizzas, each cut into six slices, and then you can try them?”

We agreed with her suggestion that she would bring us four pizzas – a simple cheese, tomato and ham one, another with spinach and a baked egg on each slice, one with chopped salami and onions, and something she called ‘Hawaiian’, which had cheese and pineapple chunks on top. We’d had the ‘Florentine’ pizza as a starter at the little Italian restaurant, and it sounded fun to try other flavours.

We drank Pepsi from glasses; we didn’t often have fizzy drinks, but it didn’t seem right to have a can of beer or cider with a pizza, and the wine list was so expensive that none of us wanted that. The waitress seemed happy enough with our order; perhaps cola was part of the Pizza experience?

Actually, the sample pizzas were all very good. By popular demand, we decided to share a fifth one which had spicy salami slices and chili peppers on it, something she called ‘Peperoni”, and that was very tasty. It left us with residual heat in our mouths, so we had six bowls of ‘tutti frutti’ ice cream to follow, each with a couple of fan-shaped wafers stuck in the top. We did turn down the offer of coffee; the bill was already above our usual budget for eating out, but worth it for the new experience. We couldn’t complain about the portions; we’d all done justice to our meal.

We got back to the flat at about half past eight after a very gentle stroll back up the hill from Clifton Village, which walked off the ‘stuffed’ feeling very well.

Adrian filled up the kettle and put it on the stove. Sheila closed the shutters against the street windows for warmth and privacy.

“What would you like to do now? Caledonia Place Cluedo?”

Jen piped up quickly.

“You’re not going to do me again! I’ve done my bit for the weekend, and I’m too sore for much messing about!”

There was general laughter; Jen had never before admitted having had enough, and there was some doubt as to whether she actually meant it.

“Okay, so who do you think we should do tonight?”

Jen immediately nominated Julie.

“And then we can all gang up on Sheila in the morning, before we go round for lunch at the Baxter’s.”

Julie was happy to be our ‘victim’; she declined the offer of ‘foreplay’ in the form of a board game with intimate forfeits, and just asked for a bit of time to ‘warm up’.

That all went very simply; the three girls went off to Sheila’s bedroom, there was much giggling and some loud moaning, and by the time we boys were called in, Julie had very pink boobs and, as my sister very crudely and uncouthly put it, an urgent desire for some cock inside her.

“Hamish, you’ll spend the night with Julie, so you go first.”

Julie elected to ride him; he was a true gentleman and tried to hold her boobs so that they didn’t bounce all over the place, and they had fun. I stood against the wall with a naked Sheila backed against me; Gustav was trapped between her legs and I had my hands on her lower tummy. Adrian was sitting on the floor at the end of the bed, with my sister on his lap, and his arms around her boobs.

For my turn with Julie, we went for missionary with her legs high up on my shoulders; we were a little bit rough with banging our pelvises together, which got her off big time, and after a couple of minutes to allow her to get her breath back, Adrian got her to turn onto her tum with a pillow underneath and slowly fucked her from behind; she loved that too.