I live in a student house with eleven people. "Eleven!" I hear you cry. "How do you sleep? There must be a queue outside the bathroom every morning?"
These questions are often asked of me and yet there aren't many problems living in a house with eleven people.
It is such a big house that noise levels are never a factor, most of the people are quiet souls anyway, and there are three bathrooms which means there's never a queue in the mornings.
One of the many advantages of living in a student house is the diversity of courses housemates study which now and again presents some interesting opportunities. You've got your Law and your English students, they're pretty boring.
But then there's the film students. In between watching American Pie and other teen comedies for "research" on joke dissertation topics they do actual filming - it could even be called work - and enlist their mates to star as extras.
This morning I got involved in one such filming for a final year short film.
It involved a monotonous train journey or four on the Liverpool central to Kirkby line.
I noted our own Chris Johnson's latest blog on the Merseytram debacle where he questioned the need to start the now dead scheme with a tram from Liverpool to Kirkby in the first place.
Why did they think they needed a tram on that route at all I wonder? Merseyrail is already operating a fine train service from the city centre to Kirkby and areas in between.
I should know. I did the round trip four times in one morning!
It was boring, warm, uncomfortable and took a whole morning, all for the sake of filming a scene that will probably lass less than a minute.
But it was fun at the same time. We had the lovely fella from Mersey Travel supervising proceedings. He was pro at this lark. He'd worked on Awaydays last year.
He ensured we kept our feet off the seats at all times and, in effect, cordoned off the area of the train we were filming in, giving us all a feeling of great self importance!
Set in the near future, the scene involved myself and a few fellow extras in the background talking to ourselves on phones implanted in our brains.
Then when we enter a tunnel we all go silent, future telephone masts obviously won't solve the underground signal problems.
And so picture it, on a mid-morning train ride from Liverpool to Kirkby or Kirkby to Liverpool you've got a bunch of students filming a bunch of students talking to themselves. Quite a sight indeed. Funny looks from fellow passengers were plentiful.
There was no reward for this other than our chance to appear in our mate's short film but we were treated to McDonald's afterwards.
It was our first meal of the day. That's proper student behaviour.
Making New Year's non-resolutions.
(Sun 17/01)
Taking over the Mersey trains
(Thu 05/11)
A very alternative trip to Leeds
(Thu 15/10)
South Africa's modern day apartheid
(Thu 20/08)
Working in a Cape town nursery
(Tue 28/07)
