The Vile Voyeur

The Last Week of Fun [Insert exclamation mark according to how much fun you’re having]

Caesarian Sunday exam term girton gymslips Suicide Sunday Wyverns

Ever since the Greeks thought it was a good idea to memoralise their more innovative sexual antics on terracotta vases, and Dorian Gray became the hallmark of kids trying to be edgy, debauchery has been imbued with an undeniable aesthetic. Nowadays, no longer hampered by any more artistic skill than that which can pay someone to douse a shark in formaldehyde, and opium-induced experiences confined to the dampening chat of gap year nostalgics (‘I was clinging onto the floor..!’), our capability for applying an aestheticism to depravity has been significantly lowered. Where beauty fails, tackiness is the next resource. The brittleness of Cambridge life, nestled within the firmamental eaves of buildings which have filled the pages of tourist coffee-books for centuries, is the only inspiration. Therefore. A story:

The days of revision stretched out before me like prisoners on death row. But luckily, some organised fun arose on the horizon. Ahoy. 

From time to time, exam term requires a cultural movement from hermit-like asceticism to the glorious aestheticism of getting your baps out, with or without the presence of a barbecue. Cambridge has a strange tendency to group things into specific ‘fun days’. You wonder if there is a great demiurge behind all this, probably an economist, who has punctuated our terms with a schedule of days on which the minions flock to his bidding, feasting on Sainsburys basics’ vod and pimms (but in cans) – the only jugs to be seen are those of the Girton Gymslips. On the other hand, the whole system seems to be under a code worthy of Dan Brown (minutely intricate or sickeningly heavy handed; up for interpretation). 

In any case, there seems to be a coded system reminiscent of the Catholic church, with feast days often falling on a Sunday. On Caesarean Sunday, the cardinals of drinking societies lead their flocks to the rich pasture of Jesus Green, only mildly disguising its true reality as a slaughterhouse. The parish looks on, appalled. The Daily Mail looks on, delighted. The Daily Mirror sees in the sight a reflection of itself. I’m not making a moral judgment. I can see the aesthetic value of a severed pig’s head as much as the next person. There’s a highly cathartic level of vomming (‘Emily, I thought you didn’t have a gag reflex?’), as the cardinals test the ‘almost religious’ dedication of the new converts. Epiphanic revelations all round. 

In the beginning, there was the Slur. And if there hadn’t been, then there would be very little else other than a few words cobbled together from various lectures. Cambridge needs its primitive ‘fun days’. They allow the cynics to have something to snarl about, the public to have another remarkably dull story about ‘tipsy toffs’, and for the etiquette-bound, porter’s lodge controlled masses to forget their responsibility to ‘intellectual’ values. There’s sublimity in a sudden and overdetermined inversion, and also a rather charming element in the knowledge that most people will work double the next day to make up for lost time. No amount of typical Cambridge work self-deprecation can conceal this – (‘I’ve literally done, like, basically no revision yet’).

Suicide Sunday is undoubtedly the most concentrated example of this ‘Day for Fun and Pointedly Unaesthetic Escapism’. The jauntily affixed ‘Suicide’ is strangely unquestioned. Essentially, it sounds as cringe as ‘lashwagon’, ‘banter-express’ and ‘bevs bus’. Talking of buses, that was exactly the mode of transport to the Wyvern’s Garden Party last year. Very ‘jolly holiday’. Singalong songs. Singalong Vom. Yet these events often feel the need to cling onto some vague memory of feudal aestheticism. Why, last year, would the Wyverns have chosen the location of the dubiously named and slightly dilapidated ‘Anstey Hall’, giving you the impression of being one of several country squires at an agricultural show, surveying some choice haunches of meat. Good with cranberry jelly. 

All in all, these ‘fun days’ seem rather too organised, bearing similarities to a quiz on a cruise ship, or American holiday camp obstacle course – the fun bit before one of the children gets eaten by a Montana bear. And at the end of the day, the unseen character behind all this, the chancellor of lash-champions, goes home warm in the knowledge that he has given hope of normality to all of us drugged by teachers’ flattery into applying to Cambridge. Maybe I should insert a moral here. Perhaps a Youtube video standing in for a moral. But I’ve caught the apathy now, and any moral should almost certainly involve a copy and pasted tale about a wolf, a lamb, a camel, and the dangers of drinking. My concern is more about the dangers of organised fun, but I don’t think any fables have been written about that yet – apart from that one involving the pig.

So, the moral of the tale: catch the apathy.