The Vile Voyeur

Less Lolita, more Struwwelpeter.

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Less Lolita, more Struwwelpeter. 

I’ve been given this weird blank cheque that I don’t know what to do with. Time’s free. But ‘free’ suddenly seemed a bit twee; of the ilk of ‘buy one get one free’, a bit www.freedomltd.com. Now that exams are more-or-less over, excusable angst is defunct. Freedom allows homogeneity, and can therefore provoke irritable and pointless mutiny more than it allows relaxation, a hyperactive need to differentiate yourself from people in times of solidarity.

I initially considered being beset by industriousness in the face of idleness, so that maybe I could write an article in the vein of ‘hey y’all, it’s crazy, I did nothing* throughout the whole of the exam period, and now I totally miss academia, dontcha know…!’, anchoring this strangely acquired Texan writing-accent with a commercially classical sound bite about carvé rien or whatever it is. But then I realised that although compulsive Topshop buying may count as fueling an industry, it certainly doesn’t count as industriousness.

Luckily I had managed to save this ostensibly chilled materialist exterior with a show of aloof morbidity, which I like to think did actually fall short of ‘emo’. As I finally walked out of the exam hall, a friend came sprawling towards me, brandishing/ branding her token Malboro Light in my face: she addressed me as buddy, she said let’s get lashed. I said, get away from me, gash-face, I need to escape from this rat race. Actually, I didn’t say that, I just slowly held out my pink plastic umbrella as an understood gesture of defence, and gave a quiet nod. She turned towards the friendly faces of some more socially adept land economists, and I strolled away in my outfit made almost entirely of black suede… shame about that pound-shop pink umbrella. I suppose I just felt that immediate celebration seemed a bit synthetic in the context of five weeks of sluggishness. I might have achieved an ASBO though. One step forward and that umbrella would have been in her eye. 

The resulting guilt, or rather a motherly self-concern, caused me to turn to rigorous psychological analysis. The recent episode of the BBC’s ‘Child of our Time’ has an alluring title: ‘Personality Test’ [!!], paraphrasable as ‘Diagnose Your Own Personality Disorder’. The concept was perfect: kitsch TV plus the mustachioed sincerity of Real Scientists. However, what might have been an hour spent dreaming of preening my own [unborn] children into scientifically proved child stars, turned into nightmarish series of self-realisations, etched in my mind like epitaphs. Child after child had their had their personalities epitomised and proleptically ordained for future years. ‘Our personality test this year confirmed Megan as medium-to-low ill-agreeableness’. Megan had well deserved this all-encompassing condemnation. TV audiences were no doubt shocked at seeing her five year old self refusing to share a cookie with her sister. What a bitch! However, Megan is set up for high entrepreneurial success, despite potential familial estrangement. Camera zooms in on Megan, now aged ten and located in the brightly lit studio. Her eyes are filled with relief. Robert Winston’s meritoscientific analysis has saved her from a sure future of ‘ill-agreeable’ spinsterhood. 

These children may be about to be cast into the wasteland of child stars with no fame-strings, sharing a slum house with the post-sixthform Harry Potter, or maybe in the waiting room of the adult Oliver!’s osteopath clinic. But I wasn’t even famous, and so dreaded an even greater ignominy. A void which can probably be defined as ‘awkwardness’.

In America, awkward has been cool for some time now: when Napoleon Dynamite became passé, Tavi took over (www.thestylerookie.com). A friend’s Facebook info proudly states ‘Aim: hi i am awkward’. The general idea is that if you pre-empt peoples’ fears, you can’t lose. Then why do the British, who undoubtably invented the concept of awkwardness (cf. Hugh Grant’s earlier character collisions with Richard Curtis), still treat their inherent characteristic like a lurking, but generally suppressible case of herpes? 

All in all, with less than two weeks to go, it’s probably better to fill in a blank cheque of time than a ‘Child of our Time’ online personality test. And, seeing as I left my debit card as a bookmark in the exam hall copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, that blank cheque might come in useful. 

Revelry, lechery, potpourri.