Breaking the dcuk

Inspired by a short quip from The G--, and saucy like its French counterpart, the Delectable Connection UK once again draws us to L-- for scrumptious snacks and duck dishes. Of course, in between meals we had to find something to do, which in earlier times must have been the origin of nearly all the fine art and writing of the Western world and perhaps the motivation to invent things like the toenail clipper or the butter curler.

Faced with the ruins of the feet of chicken gnawed to the bone and a tablecloth drizzled artfully with soy sauce (that would feel more comfortable at the Tate Modern (obligatory Tate Modern/Modern Art that is actually Rubbish jibe)) we of course went around seeking to occupy ourselves, which come to think of it is quite the startling and polemic reversal of what things were like long ago, when in between brief entertainments such as bead necklace threading and reproduction, people spent most of the time in between looking for tasty berries and sheep to eat.

We did a myriad things, that deserve no mention (other than, fittingly, walking down R-- Street and being assaulted by the ever-annoying tongue-in-cheekness of FCUK dribbling down the sides of shop fronts, rendering it an experience akin to being jabbed in the ribs by an awful and incompetent stand-up comedian hoping that we would "geddit"), before popping into H-- (yes, popping into, as one would pop into the ubiquitous and nameless corner shop for a pint of milk and bananas, dropping change into the hands of a wizened old Asian woman the son of whom are working their fingers to the bone washing plates at a £4.95 all-you-can-eat buffet Chinese restaurant and whose lease is being threatened by unscrupulous High Street property barons who want to redevelop the area into an office block and because of this she spends all night weeping into her scratchy polyester pillow while her young grandson lies in bed and dreams of chestnut buns and the girl at school).

H-- once held an amazing aura of mystique for me, because of the heavy press coverage, the word of mouth of aunts who chatter too much but mainly due to its unattaintability, so when I did get a chance to first visit it, it was quite the experience, and I liked it like a fire likes the taste of gasoline.

Second, or even third time going there however, its sheen began to flake off like the cheap varnish on souvenir models of Big Ben, mainly because I only went there to buy chocolate and doughnuts, probably the only things that I could humbly afford, though it would be like going into that aforementioned corner shop and buying a stick of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit. So in that sense it was just another so-called convenience store, albeit one that was obscenely expensive and where everything it sold seemed extra precious (even if it did sell toilet paper you would think that wherever you touched the toilet paper to, fresh roses with leaves of gold and glitter would sprout). Imagine walking into the local Aldi and picking up a Snickers bar, putting it on the counter, and the clerk bagging it, and saying "Your total is £15" and you handing over the money, eyes shimmering.

I might have started to become a little desensitised towards the value of money, as in my glee to look for price tags to ridicule and finding on clothes tags that should have been attached to low-mileage Japanese used cars, and casually tossing it off as though I had been reading the price tags on bottles of ketchup and mustard. Indeed, I was a little miffed that I could only find something that cost £1200 as the highest priced item in the store (I mean, where were the truffles, or the gold bars, or the diamond and jewel-encrusted toilet seat?)

But the truly rich need no price tags, and as we trooped out in our waterproof jackets and sneakers, the staff were probably snickering at the riff-raff that come around only to gawk at things they could never afford in several lifetimes, before pressing the switch to allow like the Queen or Elton John into the secret chamber, the one with the toilet seat and the anti-theft laser cannons.

Outside, I bit into a cherry liqueur truffle, and let the sweet liquid dribble down my chin. Ah, the Snickers of H--.

Pier Pressure

It’s not very often that I feel compelled to completely spill the proverbial beans about what I’ve done in a day, because most of it is dreary and awful, like the puns (or indeed, palindromes) I use for my unimaginative and hackneyed titles.

As others may exclaim, bright-eyed and breathlessly, we had gone punting down the River C— once again, after overcoming a rational and rather terrifying fear of capsizing (albeit in less than frigid, and knee-deep waters), and that to heighten the experience and the sensations of frivolously whiling away a cloudy afternoon, we had decided to bring along a, as they say, picnic of sorts, not just a bunch of Snickers bars and cheap sodas but actual sandwiches, crisps, tea, and water, altogether a diet more befitting of the undoubtedly refined and cultured activity-goers that we would become.

Naturally, we were looking forward to such an experience, no doubt a singular one that seemed to signal our integration into the customs of our adopted country but also one that its own kind were fleeing away from in favour of rowdy evenings of frothy beers and too much cheap, vile whiskey, but it might also have been an odd image stuck in our heads after reading so many imported storybooks in our impressionable and formative years, that picnics were a fantastic and desirable afternoon pursuit, just like organising a stamp collection of a rare and unique menagerie of authentic Rhodesian stamps or making likenesses of famous world-leaders out of string and digestive biscuits, or even writing unnecessarily long and meaningless sentences in the style of Proust translators who enjoy or even relish churning out treacle-like prose; indeed, we lead the world in plumbing the depths of hobbies that people look on with a mixed sense of antipathy at the collapse of the human condition and morbid fascination.

Pausing to catch my breath (be it from actually unbrokenly typing that out or from trying to daub weeks-old butter onto bread only slightly thicker than an English student's work-file) I realised we had assembled a buffet that would not have been out of place in a Victorian tea-room (except that egg mayonnaise sandwiches did not require for an army of maidservants and peons working their fingers to the bone, endlessly buttering, boiling and peeling and chopping eggs until they cried for their homelands) and then I wondered how the hell we had learnt about all this and how the hell I could even think it would be so natural for women wearing wallpaper-like dresses and britches to be eating our kind of lunch, packed into Tupper wares, plastic bags and stainless steel Thermoses, much like putting a collection of WW I postcards into gaily pink coloured plastic clip-files with Hello Kitty motifs on them.

Soon enough we had carted everything onto the boat, and set off, veering and bumping but most of all eating and shielding our cups, trying to reduce the river-water content of our tea, due to my obvious inadequacies at punting. While supposed to make me feel like an ultra-bourgeois member of society that an anarchist would not hesitate to shoot, I felt it rather to be more well-described by those pint-sized soaps or pretzels that they (at least used to) hand out on planes, well-intentioned but obviously inferior betrayals of the original. The connotation of this is obvious enough, and while I did savour my chicken-and-bacon-and-sweetcorn sandwiches I doubt I would want a repeat performance of such an act for, like most attempts to replicate the past that fail because the, for want of a better word, zeitgeist is absent, we can only replicate the form and not the spirit (and not a very good form at that).

Unless, of course there are cucumber sandwiches on lace doilies; but then that would be more a parody than anything else good-intentioned.

Rain of Terror

It's not just any old place and any old time that one gets to see the irascible and facetious tantrums of the weather, with golden sun transforming into light rain reverting back to cloudy, then lapsing into rain and intensifying into hail. Most people think that such a lightning switch in the weather is highly representative of many things, such as fleeting, but awful mood swings and the fickleness of human nature. But balancing in a boat that was no more than a few shiny planks of wood held together by some glue and goodwill, on the river that was a freezing soup of ducks and disease, I tended instead to curse under my breath about what a misnomer the word "Spring" had come to be.

However, such a capricious climate was then something to be proud of, all because people from sunnier climes had come to visit, and inasmuch as our weather being worse than our food like a bark is worse than a bite, it was still something to show off as being ours. Such a great length of absurdity could only have been aroused by having guests over to stay.

Coincidentally enough we were watching N--'s copy of French & Saunders, specifically a sketch about a neurotic housewife (that aptly enough was also neurotically long-drawn) having guests over and then fussing anxiously and interminably about the comfort of her guests, but probably also the impression that she was giving them, (that is, one of a severe and incurable illness of mind). Much like the real French & Saunders, such a situation was funnier re-enacted than when watched.

We did, in the end, impress by rolling out a three course meal and tipples, at great material and mental cost that would put a significant portion of costly and sub-standard eating establishments here to shame. At the end of it all I was thinking about why the hospitality industry didn't have a much higher suicide rate than say, the rock music industry.

Our labours were not pre-meditated of course. Even if they were, we would have to deny them vehemently, like accusations of homosexuality, because in most circles taking extreme care of guests is a defunct and unfashionable practice. Though coming from backgrounds where an almost comical abundance of devotion towards guests, even the most unwashed and unwelcome, is a staunch tradition, it had never consciously occurred to us that we would ever abide by that custom if the need ever arose.

Though I think we might subconsciously have done it. Even if one is not filled with an almost fanatical devotion to the place that one lives it there seems to be this nagging need tugging at one to at least make it seem like a pleasant enough place, if not because one has at least a smidgen of fondness for the place then because one wants other people not to think that one is living in a figurative hellhole filled with burning figurative gasoline.

In being particularly hospitable then, we might also be being particularly mindful of the image that we are projecting to others, not of course to a neurotic extent. Our almost profligate generosity this time might have been due to a sense of goodwill towards our particular guests, but in painting a rainbow over the rain-swept landscapes of C-- I felt for a while a sense of inadequacy, like going behind a magnificent facade and sitting amongst the forest of scaffolding that holds it together. Naturally, like the stinging hail, this quickly cleared.

While I may have to eat the words I might have muttered over the past days, at least I have a glass of pride to wash them down with.

(Of course, you might have noticed that this is second in a series of insecure self-rationalisations and has totally nothing to do with anybody visiting at all.)

Mouse Trap

Normally, you wouldn't catch me dead anywhere near a Disneyland resort, panting at the gates waiting to start my magical day out. But at £200 a pop, the opportunity to leave my cramped, claustrophobic quarters for a long-unvisited world of double beds, minibars and Jacuzzis, given the somewhat Faustian catch of it having to be sited in a perfect world of manicured lawns and heavily costumed staff (much like Trinity College really), I really could tolerate just that much saccharine sweetness.

Before long we were on the Eurostar train shooting straight into Disneyland Paris, though it seemed I was already overcompensating for the nauseatingly lovable and syrupy environment by experiencing stomach-ransacking indigestion. Indeed, even as we stepped out into our themed hotel with minutely-researched colour coordination, I was already overturning the notion of it being a land of kitsch comfort, where princes and princesses have no need to eat, are never ill and where everything runs flawlessly like they were on the rails of the multi-various roller-coasters.

Having recovered slightly after some time, I was to briefly become sick to my stomach again about the entire park being an exercise in capitalism where everything was expressly designed to eke out the maximum dollar from its visitors, and where the irony of having a warm, friendly and reassuring atmosphere being executed so clinically, like a spark plug factory, was lost on most of the diminutive, restless and colicky guests. Of course, such a cynical attitude would have ruined any enjoyment that the park would have to offer, the Great Time that I would have, so, probably, much like the furry mascots that ply their trade on the boardwalks, I hid it under a loud, brightly-coloured outfit with requisite bells and whistles and set off, perhaps, to rediscover vestiges of my childhood. After all, it's a very short time in a child's life when they believe in princesses and fairy tales with happy endings.

We pushed out with the thousands of other inhabitants of this kingdom on the warmest afternoon I'd had in three months, and knocked straight into a parade floating down Main Street, tens of Disney Characters waving benevolently downwards from their pedestals festooned with miles and ribbons and a galaxy of stars and sequins; the Snow White, arm-in-arm with her handsome prince; Cinderella and her inch-thick makeup, and all the others going by in their golden carriages, their courtiers bowing and dancing behind. As I stared out the sun-glazed window, it reminded me somewhat of the days far behind when I used to watch these characters on scratchy VHS tapes on the television, though that was shortly followed by remembering a quote from Fight Club that "…are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world," to which I chuckled more than I should have.

Naturally, we were looking for some more "adult-oriented" fun, which could only be provided by the supposedly white-knuckle rides that turned out to be a walk-in-the-park on the roller-coaster scheme of things, which was only to be expected, because people don't throw up in the magical kingdom, and such dissidents are rapidly spirited away for not playing by the rules. A common theme of conversation was thus about the various aspects of the park that sought to redefine what we had come to expect by the words "sweet" and "mind-numbingly, world-destroyingly cute".

The overt salesmanship weighed heavily upon all the visitors, like a shocking pall of capitalism over the pink and golden turrets on the horizon. Everywhere one was funnelled into some shop or another, to marvel at all the merchandise one thought one never needed, and mountains of Minnies and piles of Plutos. If I were not so distracted by the shimmering attractions I might also be lamenting the stranglehold Nestlé had on the ice cream market and the massive shameless external sponsorship from the juggernauts of capitalism like McDonalds and French Telecom and the like.

But in the midst of such a charade (but such a pleasant, enjoyable charade it was) it begs the question whether the world would be better off if there was so much more innocence in it, especially the "It's a Small World" ride, where Arabs were playing drums and smoking pipes instead of shooting guns and rifles, and the Irish weren't busy burning things down, and so on. In such a faux plastic world with its one song soundtrack, they might not have a life, but there was no death either. It induced for a short moment hazy dreams of a peaceful co-existence until, fittingly, the boat jolted as it bumped into the one in front, and once again tempers were raised in the interminable queue outside.

I returned with a fair bit of merchandise, having lived the high life (as high as it could be in a Lilliputian world made for children and their somewhat bored parents) in good company. Indeed, travel doesn't have to be all about discovering new worlds, sometimes ones that we've just forgotten about.

The Pied Pyper

No faculty would be complete without its requisite jester, executioner and bug-eyed person who sits in a dark corner; eccentricity has always been welcome relief from the social norms that we relentlessly obey despite them being stifling sometimes, like a scratchy necktie. So then the highlight of the term must have been having Dr. P—(whose identity has been cruelly unmasked by my thirst for a catchy title) to teach us Physical Chemistry.

Already, images begin to coalesce in the head about what such a peculiar person should look like, as I had been forewarned by word of mouth. I imagine a debilitating baldness, wispy white hair, and horn-rim glasses, and because social expectation works in mysterious ways, I was absolutely correct. Dr. P—is, as most people like to say, "a fossil of a man". Staring down his tweed jacket and Victorian-wallpaper tie, I felt transported momentarily to the Ascot during Thatcherite Britain, in the mid-decks amongst the crushed betting stubs and people rubbing their foreheads with large handkerchiefs, hoping to return home a richer man. But of course, appearances are deceiving.

Having furiously and waveringly rearranged a single pencil and a pad of print-out paper on the desk before him, Dr. P--, finally satisfied with his handiwork, hastily excused himself to go buy a coffee. Naturally, I was already raising my eyebrow with a higher frequency than usual. Not too soon he returned with a cup of the palest coffee I have ever seen and a bar of Kit-Kat, and after rearranging that into some sort of cipher for what must have meant "I am a little funny in the head, but don't mind me", he cut to the chase about Thermodynamics.

Now Dr. P—is obviously terribly intelligent (and is ambidextrous!) but one must also understand that what we were learning had not changed much since the 1960s. Dr. P—still lived in that era, fondly recalling the days where the Boltzmann distribution was taught at the GCSEs, and it was of course apparent from the way he did things.

Disrupting my internal giggling at his apparent silliness, Dr. P—asked if I had an eraser, so nonchalantly I picked out my mechanical eraser (everyone knows what I'm talking about right?) and handed it to him, whereupon he gawked blankly at it, calling upon 30 years of chemical training to figure out how to use the damned thing. Quietly, I then slipped him my good-old-fashioned rubber, and his eyes lit up as though they had glimpsed fantastic ideas from a great distance. Of course, this was worth a little exchanging of dirty looks with my supervision mate.

Time wore on, and Dr. P—reached into his green basket (no doubt a prized possession, as on the first day he had told us to hand up all assignments by putting them into the green tray, and when some students casually nodded he wheezed "Come look at the green tray, you won't know what it looks like if you haven't seen it!" before pulling them over, panting heavily, like a man introducing his bride to people who would not look at her) and said that we should look at some recent examination papers as he pulled out several sheafs of yellow, crinkled paper. It read 1979. "Maybe we should look at more recent ones," as I secretly hoped to see some paper that had benefited from the relatively modern technology of photocopying. "Ah," as he extracted another yellowing sheet which by then I thought I could see printed on it the words "Germany surrenders!", and it turned out to be from 1983.

I reached over to peer more closely at the question, gently folding down the corner of the stapled sheets, anxious that they would crumble like ash between my fingers. Immediately Dr. P-- snatched the paper away and began babbling about students always trying to fold his papers for the past 20 years, and yelping as though someone had dug up his garden and filled it with used condoms. We were soon ready to leave, and I felt like raising a salute to him, like in the good old days of Rule Britannia.

What would we do without such people? Anachronistic and irrelevant as they seem to be, they do tell us about what things were like back then, like a microcosm of ages past and a living time capsule, and as odd as we think these things are, we still relish the prospect of being given a glimpse of some historical era through the entertaining but sometimes bothersome act of interacting with its last remaining bastions. After all, a day will come too, when I think that 2004 was a recent time.

Humdrum Conundrum

Feeling a smidgen of responsibility to write something, yet not possessing the requisite creativity (there being only so much undifferentiated creative progenitors to distribute amongst curious and abstruse forms of expression that usually turn out to be embarrassingly bad) to produce something decent (penning a bad piece of writing seems almost like birthing some hideous, chronically deformed monstrosity and exposing the world to the horror of its entirety), I scratched around in the dry lakebeds of my mind searching for some morsel of inspiration on what I could possibly write about. Because of some subconscious urge to dodge all things related to my personal life, the subject matter that I could pull out of a hat, and a small hat at that, had been dwindling ever since I began writing "seriously", as serious as a "blog" can get, and so I found myself being totally unable to come up with anything (except this pathetic apology piece which can only get more painful, like a hysterectomy).

But there is only so much that can capture the fleeting attention of people. I could muse about the zeitgeist and general student life here, but it would only ever be about the crazed and drunken antics of the students here, which by themselves are quite a golden basket case of ceaseless amusement; I could describe, with full details, everything I did everyday, though it would mainly consist of a vicious cycle of webcomics, Physics and wine. It would never work out, as I would collapse onto my keyboard faster than a small child on Rohypnol (or like a falling boulder, if you didn't get the shockingly bad analogy).

So instead I tweeze some unexciting topic out of a magical box of unexciting topics (I imagine this to be a velvet-lined box; it is, if you were wondering, red velvet) and proceed to beat the daylights out of it, milking it like a sugar cane, um, "cane", crushing it between the relentless rollers of poor word choice and a bad disposition until enough mild-flavoured juice had been collected and dutifully served up (and spat out like it were urine, probably).

This is why so much "personal" writing has such a limited audience – because people's lives are boring - except when they start to interfere with each others'. That of course, is the sort of material we are after, at least our chatty, Tupperware Club alter-egos. Naturally, I would be scant to offer such material, mainly because there is none (none that anyone who at least knew my name enough to pronounce it correctly, would ever be interested in)

So once again, by churning the churn of letters and spinning the wheel of words I again have something to write about. In fact, this is almost like people who hack out a schpiel of everything they've done and the people who've cheesed them of and the songs they listened to and the ketchup sachets they used and the size of shoes their sisters wear, and so on. It's all very "forced", like literary bulimia.

Instead, I retreat back to reading authors who obviously know what real writing is about, and it has been most fulfilling, reading palatable, funny, ironic prose rather than tapping one's fingers at the keyboard being unable to "get it up" (yes, in exactly the same way as that). Probably some time I'll observe something I truly feel like writing about, instead of merely bullshitting about.