New students everywhere will be on a steep learning curve in the next few weeks... and we're not talking in the lecture room.

IT'S THAT time of year again... This weekend the motorways of Britain are going to be criss-crossed by family cars weighed down to the gunnels, with mum and dad in the front and in the back, surrounded by duvet, TV, guitar, kettle, iron, a few books and assorted food parcels, will be a new student off to university. If your baby's off this week, I hope you've taught them the facts of life. Not about sex - chances are they know as much about that as you do. But there are other vital bits if information every new student needs...

How to change a bed, work a washing machine and even, occasionally, an iron.

Buttons can't be superglued back on.

Five pints of lager does not count towards your daily fruit and veg allowance.

Neither does the tomato on top of the burger.

Cupboards do not magically fill themselves with food. There's something called shopping.

There is no such thing as the Toilet Fairy.

Credit card cheques are the invention of the devil.

Ready meals are a rip off. If you cook something yourself you can eat well and have enough money for booze.

Lecturers think you're there to learn. Humour them. Turn up occasionally.

Beans on toast are cheap, nutritious and almost impossible to ruin.

Unlike jumpers on a hot wash.

It is, sadly, physically impossible to write a reasoned, intelligent 2,000 word essay in between coming in from a party and a 9am deadline. However confident you might be.

That strange smell could be the drains, could be a dead rat, or the month-old pizza under the bed.

No one ever died from not changing their underwear, but they certainly lost a lot of friends.

Condoms are cheap. Babies aren't.

Banks are out to make money and that means from you. Keep within your limit and you've struck a blow against the system.

Everyone else is new and just as terrified as you are. Get out there and get to know people. Some of them could be friends for life.

Make the most of it, all of it. The real world will start soon enough.

MANY years ago when my mother worked in a post office, an old farmer would come in once or twice a year and withdraw all his considerable savings. Once he'd watched my mother count it all out in great heaps in front of him, he would be happy - and ask her to put it back in his account.

He'd clearly never really grasped the basics of saving and investing and just wanted to know his money was there and was safe.

Presumably, that's what all those equally baffled Northern Rock customers wanted as they queued for hours.

Maybe Northern Rock should just invite cameras into their vast drawers and safes. As savers seem unable to believe the reassurances of Northern Rock or even the Bank of England, maybe they'd trust their own eyes if they could see great wodges of banknotes just waiting for them.

But no, I wouldn't bank on it.

THE other thing about all those Northern Rock customers, of course, is that they were overwhelmingly middle-aged and over.

Maybe young people don't panic. Far more likely that young people don't save.

And in these current uncertain times, when they've actually got some money in their pockets, can you blame them for spending it as fast as they can?