WORDS BY JOHN MCDONNELL
ILLUSTRATIONS BY TED PEARCE

At some point in your university life you will end up living in an area that is swarming with packs of wild-eyed rudeboys who, given half a chance, will happily clear your room of anything worth more than a packet of Maltesters. Securing your home and deterring would-be burglars is therefore very important. Here are some tips on how to do this.

PLACING THE TRAPS
Making your house look as unattractive as possible (despite the fact it is overflowing with 17-inch MacBooks and Lord of the Rings boxsets) is key. Think of it this
way: would you pick up a £20 note if it was covered in dog shit? Well, OK, apart from you, most people wouldn’t. I recently discovered a very effective way to make one’s house look literally very unappealing. This summer I had a fly problem in my house so I bought a load of sticky bits of plastic and stuck them on my windows to catch the fuckers. It was a terrible idea. Within a few days the adhesive strips were covered with dying flies. A couple of days later, these rotting insect corpses had spawned clumps of sticky yellow larvae. Up close, it was one of the most putrid things I have ever seen. Attach a load of these to the outside of your most vulnerable windows and any greasy, weed-addled teen who approaches will be dry heaving if they get within four feet. In fact, soon people will be crossing the street to avoid your house.

SQUIRTING THE PERIMETER
When I moved into my new flat at the start of the year, a loud, camp American man would sit on the wall outside my bedroom window on the phone at 1 AM and keep me awake with his high-pitched squeals. So I did what any normal person would do. I smeared the top of the wall with the contents of a large tub of Vaseline and then splashed lots of thick bleach on top. He hasn’t been back since. If there is a gang of kids sitting on the wall outside your house every day, eventually they will decide to venture a bit closer and, next thing you know, one of them will be scrambling out of your kitchen window with your housemate’s George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine under their arm. You could use the method I have just described to deter teenagers loitering outside your property. A more fun take on this solution, however, would be to spread mayonnaise all over the wall and then pepper this with bits of leftover kebab meat or discarded bits of fried chicken (which will no doubt be thrown nearby). If you can’t be bothered doing that, putting up a sign which says “BEWARE! THIS IS A GAY DOGGING AREA” should also do the trick.

HIT ’EM FOR SIX
OK, so you’ve done everything in your power to keep would-be thieves from your house (well, except installing a burglar alarm). But what would you do if someone
does manage to break into your house? First, you pray they stumble across one of your housemates’ rooms first and there is a violent, bloody struggle, after which they flee (having maybe or maybe not mortally wounded your pal). If this doesn’t happen, you need to make sure the burglar has real difficulty getting into your room. If your bedroom door doesn’t have a lock, jam two wooden or rubber wedges underneath your door when you head off to slumberville at night and no matter how hard someone on the other side pushes, they wont be able to open the door. It is of course very easy for someone to simply slide these wedges away from the door and then casually stroll into your room, but most would-be burglars are so stupid they can’t even tie their own shoelaces (hopefully). Should they manage to get in, however, you will need a weapon at the ready with which to batter them to death. If you’re living with a well-to-do chap from the countryside, borrow his cricket bat and sleep with it under your bed. Alternatively, if you’re living with an American, use their baseball bat, and if you’re cohabiting with a medical student, try their squash racket for size. You may want to properly weaponise the bat by banging some nails into it or lining the edge with razor blades. The added bonus of this is that when Ollie is practicing his sweeps and leg glances in his room he may accidentally slash a major artery.