Finals of a Diarist...
As a finalist, your conversation becomes severely limited. You spend most of the time in a library, and when you escape to squander a few precious hours in the afternoon sun the only question people can ask you is "How's the revision going?" It's not their fault. They know there's nothing else in your life. In the second year, at the peak of your powers, your chat was so good that in the streets the passers-by slowed perceptibly to hear your wit. And your life was so good that people asked you "How's the sex going? or, "How's the ongoing party that is your life going?" or, "How's your plan to take over the world going?" (although I think the latter question was because of my physical resemblance to Brain from the children's TV series, Pinkie and the Brain). Now you can only say, "Its alright" or "It will all be fine once I've shoved those pencils up my nose." The most exciting thing that happened this week was the appearance of two pigeons in our library. I think they had come for sex, but were embarrassed to find the place occupied on a Sunday night, and just performed a few fly-bys. Then they forgot how they got in and flew around a bit more. I attempted to anaesthetise them by reading them my revision notes, but after this failed we opened all the windows and they finally escaped. More than one of us saw them fly away and were consumed with jealousy. They may have only been pigeons, with less developed brains, a reliance on scavenging, and the company of mad women, but damn-it, they were free.
A week is a long time in finals. Subjects are collapsing around me like so many tower blocks in Coventry. The end is in sight. What then? ("What are we going to do today Brain?") Everyone says you just want to sleep when you finish, and don't know what to do with yourself. Fuck that. I have formulated my plans in considerable detai l- it's amazing just how much time you have for that sort of thing when you are revising. I crave things that take ridiculous amounts of time. I want to peel an orange so completely that there is absolutely no white stuff left on it. I want to sit and listen to an entire Bob Dylan song. I want to grow an enormous beard, weave it into my pubic hair, and strum it like a harp.
I have found inspiration in other finalists, well, a couple in particular. St-Annes-New-Man told me about a two Physicist mates of his, who, at the start of this term, when even their tutors admitted they had nothing left to do, went out the night before everyone else's collections and got hold of a park bench and a crate of beers. St Anne's boasts a glass-sided hall, and they carried a park bench round outside it to face the rows of desks. The next morning they arrived on the bench in their dressing gowns, sat down facing the rows of students, and proceeded to get shit faced. But I saw something even better this week. A girl and a guy, sub-fusc adorned in red carnations, balloons, champagne, slight dazed looks, walking up Turl Street. Suddenly the bloke stops, so the girl does too. "For fuck's sake" he says, "I've fancied you for three years."
"What" says the girl looking shocked. "Well why didn't you say? I've ..."
Suddenly they come together, desperately, obliviously, snogging like teenagers who don't know how in the middle of the road.
So if you are a finalist, and, what the hell, lets narrow it down, you actually read this column, I wish you all that success, both in your mind-warping public examinations, and once you finally get outside in the sun shine. As for me, what am I going to do? Same thing we always do Pinkie. Try to take over the world.
1st Jun 2001