"Only a mediocre person is always at his best." - W. Somerset Maugham

I am sat at the table, sleepily blinking at the animated faces of the people I have known for most of my adult life. These are people I have laughed with till tears streamed down my eyes, people who I have had screaming matches with, who I have slept with and who I slept alongside.  We knew each other through the scrawny, acne-ridden years of puberty, we fallen in love together, lost those loves and cried together. We have shared cars, homes and secrets; gotten degrees, jobs and bank accounts. We haven't spoken for months, only to return to this very same table and find that nothing much changes, really.

I am sat at this table. And I am bored.

I still find myself experiencing a smug sort of pity for people who claim they have lost touch with their school friends. "Not me", I smile. "We're closer than we ever were, and I love every minute I spend with them".
But at this very minute, I couldn't care less about their conversation. I force a smile as I dully ask about jobs and how they spent their New Years. I don't care about their love lives, I will forget what they tell me the minute it slips out from their lips. During these heavy, morbid 60 seconds, I re-evaluate the very essence of friendship; of all those wasted intimacies and emotional investments into a hedge fund that has no interest in returning profit.
I glance down at the beer-soaked wooden table and play with the salt shaker. The most frightening through of all occurs: "Only a boring person can be bored". I know this is not quite true, but years of conditioning have taught me otherwise. Boredom is the greatest sin of all, I have been told. To be bored is to lack the intelligence and motivation to NOT be bored, to find yourself work, play, anything...
And this deep rooted fear follows me to this very table, weighing down my shoulders and filling my mouth with heavy soil so that I cannot speak. I know this creature; he has been carving out a home for himself in the deeper corners of my mind for a good many years now and I have learnt to hear his footsteps and recognise his voice.

You're boring. Your friends only invite you out of pity because they feel sorry for you. You add absolutely nothing to their lives. They've all got paying jobs, meaningful relationships and they're doing something with their time. You have nothing to contribute and nothing to say for yourself. You are stagnation personified. You look like a miserable, boring wretch - sitting there, staring from one person to another with the silent idiocy of a mannequin. I can't believe you even chose that shirt tonight, did you HONESTLY think anyone gives a shit about what you wear and how you look? It's pretty pathetic, actually, how you still cling to friendships that have obviously been dead in the water a long while ago...

Other nights, my first choice of weapon against this voice is alcohol, but tonight I'm driving. So it's just me and him; face to face inside the arena of my own mind. He points out that I haven't said anything in a good while, he replays back to me the look my friend just gave me across the table, it sticks to the back on my skull like ice you have no choice but  scrape off the windscreen before you can start driving again. I blink past it, breathe deeply and put down the salt shaker. When I speak, I strain my voice to shout louder than him.

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes" - Oscar Wilde

'Unwind'; the luxurious verb copyrighted by yummy mummies everywhere to shrug away that second glass, that thrill when the cork pops out of the bottle, the light-headedness that comes from inhibiting all those ghastly nervous cell receptors that keep us towing the line. "Shhh", says the Sauvignon Blanc, "Take some time, put your feet up! INDULGE!"


I've been missing alcohol a lot in the evenings. In many ways, I still tick far too many of the boxes that 'responsible drinking' does not entail. Those boxes were ticked in ink the day I first opened a book by Evelyn Waugh, the day I watched Don Draper slinging back whiskey after whiskey and still being the most magnetic man in the room, the day I realized that little voice in my head could be made to disappear, and all it took was a glass.

'Enjoy responsibly', tells us the advert for Stolichnaya vodka, as beautiful people in beautiful surrounds drift across our line of vision. They're all having a fantastic time; more exciting, more dynamic, more romantic than anything my glass of watery Coca Cola can offer me.
'Drink sensibly', the college nurse tells us on our first day of university. I remember this bitterly as I'm sitting on the outside steps of the college bar later that evening, wondering why all of those strangers inside were having such a bloody FANTASTIC time, making the best of friends and living their Fresher's Week to the full.

The problem with unwinding a tightly coiled spring, is that some materials just don't return back to their former state once the tension has been released. They unravel and lose their shape, they get tangled and become utterly useless for the purpose they once proudly served. It takes but a tiny fraction of the effort to release a spring; allowing it to burst forth in a violent cascade of stored energy,  than it does to painstakingly wind it back, loop by loop.

3 and a half years later, I'm just managing to wind myself back up again. To find that line that I crossed many months ago and remember what it feels like to fall asleep sober.

Rule 1: Know when to stop drinking
Rule 1 (corrected): Know when to START drinking.
Do not start drinking because you can't fall asleep. Do not start drinking when you're anxious. Do not start drinking because it's 8.50am on a Tuesday morning and you're about to having a panic attack at the prospect of leaving your room and walking across town to sit in a crowded lecture theatre.

Rule 2:  Don't drink in secret
Rule 2 (corrected): It's still a secret if you're having a quiet drink with friends and you have to sneak off into the kitchen for stolen gulps of vodka because the amount everyone else is drinking isn't enough to even give you a slight buzz.

Have you ever felt guilty about your drinking?
Yes, doesn't everyone after a night out? You know what makes it go away? A drink.
Can they smell wine on my breath? I hope I remembered to take chewing gum with me. Am I blinking at a normal rate? Am I acting like I do when I'm sober? Better avert my eyes and say as little as possible.
Do they know?

Have you ever lied about the amount you were drinking?
Yeah, but only to health questionnaires. I mean, ask ANY normal student and their weekly average is WAY over the recommended units, right? And they all turn out fine...
Why is she drinking so slowly? Is it obvious that I've had most of the bottle we were going to 'share'? Oh shit, am I slurring? Is she having a good time? I can't tell..
Does she know?

Have you ever felt unable to stop drinking?
Nah, I mean, I'll stop when I want to, right? I just haven't reached the 'right' level of buzz yet. Look: everyone else is drinking too!
I have to stifle the gagging sensation of cheap vodka straight from the bottle. How is half of it gone already? This was supposed to last me the week! Well, tonight's the last night, then...
I don't know.

I can't say I enjoy falling asleep sober, I think that's where most of my nostalgia arises. I dream in colours too vivid to get any restful sleep. I toss and worry about things and people who probably don't think about me at all. My own drowsy brain embarrasses and frustrates me to the extent that I fall asleep with my face stuck deep into my pillow, eyes scrunched and hands covering my ears to block out the laughter and mocking sounds of voices that are already too deeply rooted in my brain.
No, I hate falling asleep sober.
But  I hate the look of my mother's broken face more. I hate not remembering what my best friend said to me last night. I hate my sister avoiding my glance. I hate the insects that run down my arms when I'm carrying a bottle I know I shouldn't have. I hate feeling the X-ray stare of shop cashiers, I hate feeling every gram of their disdain and pity for me (real or imagined). I hate counting coins and knowing how much own-brand alcohol costs in every store. I hate feeling my father's whiskery kiss on my forehead, a seal of approval that stings unworthy skin.

A friend of mine says she's gotten into the habit of enjoying a glass of wine after work most days. I want to cry and pray that she's made out of stronger spring than I am.  

“Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The above is from 'Tender is the Night'; a book that anyone rushing out to watch The Great Gatsby in cinemas these following weeks must bring themselves to read and re-read. And read again.

There's comfort in knowing that not all troubles arose afresh in my generation. That the children of the internet, of cable television, of strip malls and of frozen yoghurt did not dream up their own misfortunes. There has been much talk in recent press of us being the narcissistic, over-stimulated and under-worked youth. Tears have been spilt and hair torn over our callous, selfish selves.

It's a comfort to read about great literary characters who spew the same self-centered, misinformed, over-analytical garbage that we do. After all; these characters do not come from nowhere, and the authors who created them must have had some pretty messed up traits of their own to rustle up something so powerful and accurate as the cruelty that can come from the human spirit. Drunkards, womanisers, criminals and general scoundrels.
Evelyn Waugh was persistently in debt, orchestrating various tax-avoidance schemes, and snubbed the offer of a CBE because he felt he deserved a knighthood and no less. Tolstoy surprised his wife on the eve of their wedding by giving her a list of women he had slept with, one of whom had borne him a child. O. Henry was arrested and jailed for several months of charges of embezzlement. Dickens decided that, at the ripe old age of 45, now was the time to fall in love with an 18-year-old actress and turn his current wife and children out of the house, no questions asked.

These flaws humanise. They tarnish the gold leaf with which we adorn our memories of these men (and women; Virginia Woolf was thoughtful enough to write in her diary "I do not like the Jewish laugh. I do not like the Jewish voice" - and yet still went on to marry one.) Maybe it's a particular frame of mind that finds it easier to associate with the lazy, the weak and selfish. It's much more gratifying to bring them down to our level, than to wistfully observe that we, too, could be great if we only got up when our damn alarm clock told us to.

But I diverge. Something I find myself at fault of often doing is daydreaming. A small crime, sure.. but it takes years to realise of how much it robs you. I'm permanently living in the rosy glow of past amusements (or, indeed, the dark shadows of a previous life) or in the idyllic film-script of my future. I don't exist in the present tense.
There is a fantastic quote from the character of Julia in 'Brideshead Revisited' (which I have recently finished, having put it off for far, far too long) which runs something along the lines of time as pressing in on your from behind and arriving much too quickly ahead of you. One feels suffocatingly pressed upon from both sides and there's no room to live. It's only long after that we can truly recognise the beauty of a moment we regarded at the time as being a mere interval. A nothingness, a wait for something else, something better that, when it arrives; we're inevitably already ahead of ourselves and don't even notice it passing us by.

It's a beautiful day in May. I'm surrounded by good friends, good books, good food and freedom to myself. And the only way I can appreciate it is by removing myself from it and reminiscing about that lovely moment 40mins ago.

"The university brings out all abilities. Including incapability." - Anton Chekov

The Leaden-Eyed

Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.
Vachel Lindsay

It's that time of year again. Jeans and boots are swiftly dropped in favour of pyjama bottoms and hole-infested ski socks. Lunch becomes a daily pilgrimage of duty and desperation; a half-hour laspe in the dreaded time/work continuum. The library becomes a blizzard of strewn pages and open textbooks, a hive of anxious, paranoid, caffiene-addled worker bees who know no difference between day and night. Witty conversation is condensed with lighting speed to worry, self-deprication and hollow retorts of half-hearted moral support from friends who are themselves too far drowned to throw a life ring.
And those faces. Those eyes; straining to focus through days of missed sleep, to see through the barrage of words and sums and diagrams. Like some grotesque version of Google Glass envisioned by Stanley Kubrick in a particularly cruel frame of mind. A face the colour of forgotten marble.

Of course this is all a temporary illness. Merely the height of a fever which, once sweated out, leaves one feeling weak, starved, and yet deliriously happy to be out of the woods and half-alive. In this case: I'm not much good as a bed nurse. I'm standing by the doorframe; sympathetically contemplating the ailing patients progress and offering to bring a glass of water. He must get himself better. Nothing can help him now except to clench his teeth and ride out the storm.

For many of my friends; the storm has hit. They are floundering on the waves of nausea; tossing and turning in a fitful sleep of unfinished essays and forgotten chapters.

And I am waiting. I'm 'slinging beef' (as my friend calls my current waitressing job) and begging tips. I'm polishing cupboards and folding napkins. Living a life so far removed from my university life that I feel like an intruder sitting in the same library. A userper of public justice, a threat to the unspoken mob-culture of pervading misery and masochism. Waiting patiently outside the sickroom for permission to be allowed in.

"It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word" - Andrew Jackson

An aside from posts: I will always crumble inside everytime I spot a spelling mistake I can't take back. You'll have to forgive a fast train of thought and lazy fingers.

"Decieving others. This is what the world calls romance" - Oscar Wilde

Something of a problem has been brought to the forefront of my mind this week. Stemming from one too many shatteringly emotive dreams (which my doctor says are likely to be linked to my medication, if that's the reason, then I'd rather not stop taking it. They're too exciting) and from one too many off-hand comments which happy-go-lucky friends throw out in that nonchalant way that ensure you only realise how hurt you were by it days later.

Attitudes of (even the most normal) UK university students which are destructive to the female psyche:
1. Girls who do not have sex or seek out sexual encounters on nights out are shy, wallflowers who simply don't have the guts to admit to themselves that sex would 'free' them.
2. That everyone 'needs' (and wants) regular sex. This was insisted upon me by two of my best male friends just the other night. No, I do not believe in celibacy. Nor do I believe that people who do not engage in regular sex are in some way abnormal or denying themselves a basic human right.
3. That sexual freedom and promiscuity is in some way related to female emancipation.

This last one really gets under my skin. I am grateful that I live in a culture where it is acceptable to have relations outside of marriage. But I am infinitely more grateful for a offshoot of this cultural shift - the fact that most of my friends are guys, which is something I can't imagine having any other way.
I cannot but whince inwardly whenever one of my female friends uses any of the following phrases: "I need a guy", "We need to find hot guys", and - my personal favourite - "Don't worry, we'll find you a boyfriend!"
Good. Whew! You had me, lyk, seriously freaking out there, bbz..

Of course, I admit to my fair share of weakness and apologise to the rest of my sex for ever drunkenly yelling at my male friends that they NEED to be my wingmen.. when the only help I needed that night was getting into my own bed without being sick anywhere I'd regret later. But that's another story.

Moreover, I will not deny myself the heart-wrenching thrill that comes with actual attraction.When that happens; the entire spectrum of emotions avaliable to mankind will be buzzing through me and I will become just another silly girl who can't maintain eye contact without her mouth going dry. But in the meantime, I need to find some witty comebacks when someone thinks it's their business to express their concern as to the state of my sex life... "I find I'm pretty good with my hands - know anyone who can do better? No? Shame.."

"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays." - Henry Youngman

Restaurant customers are one of the most peculiar populations of people.

There are the singletons.
Maybe they're lone tourists; at the sight of these I can't help but feel a wrenching pit of sadness in my stomach. How far away from home are they? What happened to their travelling partners? What does it feel like to pay £40 for lunch without speaking a single word to anyone but your waitress?
It could be the woman taking a working lunch. These gals have fabulous hair and are surgically attached to their Blackberry. Or maybe they've spent years perfecting the 'pretending to text' performance.

There are the families.
They never tip. They're too busy trying to deliver puree into the mouth of their suited, booted, bundle of joy in between sips of Chardonnay. They leave you with a 3 mile radius of napkins, cold chips and bendy straws to clean up afterwards. But, oh boy, are those chubby cheeks a sight for sore eyes.

There are the gaggle of friends. These folks vary with age.
The students who make more noise than sense. The mid-life crisis women who spend 20mins arguing whether it's acceptable to order a side with their meal and subtly bully eachother into smaller portions whilst crying out "Order what YOU want!" to the whole restaurant. The working men whose idea of a night well spent involves asking me for sexual favours in the general spirit of merriment. ("We're paying you - play along, darling")
And the old friends - these are my favourite. They sip their Malbec slowly and think fast. They sit back and spend several weighty hours of a late afternoon sitting at a table of memories, of quips and jokes, of knowing each other too well to discuss trivialities and fuss over ordering. These are the people I want to be friends with when I'm 63.

Don't get me started on the couple. A different species altogether.
The teenage romance - awkward and tender. Who pays? What shall we order? No fuss, just nice to have a posh dinner out.
The young professionals: one of two types. The drunken, laughing couple who don't regard my presence as a burden on their lives; a pleasure and make the evening go quicker. I almost look forward to serving them. And the macho guy with the plastic arm candy. I'm being cruel, of course - but the barbie doll will pipe in with complaints whilst he orders for her. At least one of them will send their steak back. Overhearing their conversations makes me want to drive nails into my eye sockets.
The married couple on date night. It's been a few decades of putting up with someone else's annoying habits, so these guys don't demand a cocktail or steak which requires more than 30secs of explaining. They'll be quiet, polite, a bit sad. Unless they're one of those strange couple who are still blissfully in love - in which case they'll order four rounds of cocktails, he'll move across the table to hold her in his arms and they'll steal kisses when they think no one's looking or because maybe they just don't care anymore.
And the couple whose kids have moved out years ago, who will pay with a voucher, she'll put on make-up for the first time in months, and he will tell me that he'd like to pour the wine himself. They will sit for exactly as long as it takes to eat the food, they will speak little and stare around the restaurant blankly. I imagine them going home and having sex with the same blank, clinical manner of going through the motions. It makes me want to slap them back into living, back into colour and movement and emotion.

Restaurants are fishbowls. Maybe the fish are happy when they're eating mulch and swimming around the same familiar 30cm.