Miscellaneous

Sarah counts to ten

Hide and Soc in Notts

Picture the scene; you're in your first week at uni and you go to your Freshers' Fayre. When you're there, you're confronted by the sight and sound of thousands (well, it seems like thousands!) of societies – all vying for your attention. You feel as though the posters are going to come to life and scream "Join me, join me!". 

This was the picture that met Sarah Hinds during her first week at the University of Nottingham (and the same one that greets thousands more students at both of Nottingham's universities). So, which society did she join? Hide and Soc of course!

Hide and Soc (or The Society of Childhood Games to give it its full title!) is 'the best society in the University', according to Sarah. What do they do? Well, they play hide and seek. In lots of different locations – this week it's in the playing fields near the Sports' Hall but it does move around. 

Sarah's membership card

But that's not all. They also play all sorts of other childhood (not childish) games: tag, ring-a-roses, board games each Tuesday evening. Talking of board games, they hold a board game Olympics each year – to find out the best player in each game: Monopoly, Battleship, Scrabble, the list goes on.

Pub and seek

If you're not convinced and feel that that all does sound a bit childish, there's one game that's definitely for adults: the pub version of Hide and Seek. It's a little bit complicated; one group are hiders and the other, seekers. The hiders go to a pub and place a chalk mark outside ("it must only work if it's not raining" says Sarah). 

The seekers go round from pub to pub and place their mark (in a different colour) until they find the hiders. Sounds a bit like a pub crawl but with a hide and seek dimension, although they do encourage their members to behave responsibly. Sarah points out that while it may be usual to have a drink in each pub, it's definitely not compulsory – non-drinkers are welcome too.

So why did Sarah join? "Well, it's a laugh and a brill club", she says, "I'm studying Bio-Chemistry and Genetics, so I joined the Bio Soc and the BioChem Soc, but this just seemed like fun." She also mentioned that they gave away sherbet sweets ("you know, the real sweets with sherbet inside that you had when you were a child") but she insists that it wasn't bribery. She also mentioned that she thought it would look good on her CV(?) 

Sarah shows her allegence

Her Mum, though, suggests another reason she may have joined the society: hide and seek was her favourite game when she was a child. She says her daughter has a long history where the game is concerned. She was forever hiding in any box about the place. Warming to this theme, Sarah quickly added "the cupboard in the living room, I was always hiding in there. The last time, I think, was when I was about eight years old." It's a shame really that Sarah's a seeker in the games (her official membership badge says so!) rather than a hider.

Her reputation is spreading. She works at weekends in a local supermarket where some of the staff have taken to calling her 'Heidi' (as in Heidi Hide and Seek). "I was just waiting to start serving the customers the other day", she blushes, "when a message came on the tannoy for her beginning with the name 'Heidi'…." It was another member of staff with a sense of humour, to whom she had been waxing lyrical about the benefits of joining the club.

Sign up!

Both universities have a glittering array of weird and wonderful societies for those with time on their hands. Join the Bellringers, Dark Celluloid (alternative films), Gilbert & Sullivan, Hash House Harriers (urban orienteering), Korfball, ISS Soc (Pro Evolution Soccer series), Juggling, Pirates, MassageSoc, Ultimate Frisbee or those students with definitely too much time to play with could become a member of the Neighbours Society.