Patrick Leigh-Pemberton: over the last couple of weeks

Over the past couple of weeks, a lot of time has been spent by one and all preparing for what lies ahead. The dreaded scourge of Summer Half exams is back upon us, and whilst knees knock and teeth tremble from the library to small semi-detached urban villas a ten minute bike ride from Tescos, students settle down to discover what exactly it is they are meant to have learnt this term.

Exciting times they most certainly aren’t. Bleary eyed, we stumble hither and thither looking for that elusive multiple copy of the textbook that the library server keeps telling us is still in the building, thoughts of murder crossing our minds as we realise some sneaky little bastard has managed to bypass the gates of hell and remove that last shred of hope. You cry out in despair, return to your carrel and bury your mind in facts and figures, praying that the subjects taught by the lecturer with the incomprehensible accent don’t come up. You plough on through, and come out of this little bit of respite time confident that you and your highlighters have finally managed to nail this module. Nothing can stop you now.

Maybe that last part isn’t true and maybe you are, like me, one of those people who are more likely to be procrastinating than revising. Which seems possible, given that you have chosen to read The Stand column section in your spare time, which (unless you are doing an anthropological study on the views of the idle and feckless) does not count as revision. You will, at the end of this revision break, probably emerge still a little uncertain what the whole course has been about but with an incredible knowledge of Cara Delevigne’s approach to illicit narcotics/small bags filled with artificial sweetener that all supermodels keep about them in order to prevent them growing to a normal size.

But don’t worry, help is at hand. Because I refuse to read the Dailymail website – not for any real moral reasons but because I know that once you’re in you will never leave – I have taken to procrastinating in ways somehow subtly linked to my subjects. For instance, most of yesterday I spent staring at my own navel. This may sound a little weird, unless you are an Hesychast (a member of a small sect which sought spiritual enlightenment by staring at their own belly button in order to meditate). By staring at my own navel, I was immersing myself in the mindset of an early medieval heretic. I was not, in any way, avoiding doing revision. Similarly, this morning was spent reading much of what Tolkien has to say about the development of Quenya, having stumbled across the words “aiya eärendil elenion ancalima” scribbled across an old book of mine. This was not a waste of time, because it turns out that many of the words in Quenya are derived from similar Anglo-Saxon words. Helpful if they decide to throw an untranslated section of Anglo-Saxon literature at me. Admittedly, this last scenario is unlikely, almost impossible, but it is very important to cover all bases, and procrastination like this, if well justified, can in fact make you feel productive. This is what it is all about.

So stop funding Paul Dacre’s next holiday and read about something absolutely insane for half an hour, and spend the next two hours trying to justify it. It is much more fun.