Term has started, but the workload hasn’t yet had the chance to overwhelm you, and everyone is still keen to make new friends. Or enemies. Or lovers – everyone has their own tactics.

Swap season is upon us. Gird your loins, line your stomachs and turn on the charm: it’s time to rifle through the dressing up box and bulk buy the cheap wine. That oldest and noblest of Cambridge traditions is back, and boy are we ready. Forget vacation work and pre-term essays: I don’t even remember what “I’ll-hit-the-ground-running-this-term-I-promise” ever meant.

Everyone has their preferred swapping locations. With the Mahal missing in action, Curry King now rules supreme as the dirtiest and cheapest of all swaphouses. Take one or two steps up the ladder and you’ll reach the likes of Mai Thai and Curry Garden, where the food can just pass as edible – depending on how much you’ve drunk by the time it arrives – and the waiters don’t always stare daggers at you. The Ritz of seedy swaphouses has got to be Sesame. The mildly terrifying, brothel-like interior décor of the small, windowless rooms is all but eclipsed by the glory of karaoke. The only downside: when you stumble out of your underground lair having just belted out a pitch-perfect version of ‘Wannabe’, you realise that you are a very long, cold walk from the promised land of Life and Cindies.

Alternatively, you could go for the more prestigious formal swap. With these, however, come several dilemmas. To gown or not to gown? To penny or not to penny? And, most pressingly, what do you do now the porters are growing suspicious and you are all trapped hiding behind the battlements of a snowy Trinity rooftop?

The next hurdle to be tackled with swaps is the theme. From the conventional ‘Tarts and Vicars’ and ‘Rubik’s Cube’ spring the less ordinary: ‘Sluts and Lobsters’, for example. A word of warning for the indecisive amongst you: a slutty lobster costume really is something that has to be seen to be believed. And absolutely unnerving. Or try something else imaginative: ditch the toga party and go for ‘Childhood Heroes’. With that said, I point-blank refused to go as Carenza Lewis from Time Team. Despite actually being my childhood hero, action slacks, a fleece and a trowel is a look very few people can pull off, let alone on the dancefloor of Cindies.

Swap culture may spawn the kind of outrageous behaviour the Daily Mail revels in, and yes, sometimes it can go too far. But if you can work out which of Sainsbury’s cheapest wine you can reasonably down in under an hour (here’s a tip: don’t take a bottle of port to a swap. It’s neither big nor clever and will end badly for everyone involved) hoard your engineer pennies and remember to book your table under ‘St John’s College’, you’ll do just fine.