Too many brains spoiling the broth

University application fear-mongering has predicatably spiraled into a frenzied maelstrom of dread, the impression i've harvested from the media coverage in the last week being that every decent university is founded on elitism, nepotism and an undue slavering reverence for the * .Meaning, of course, that in spite of record high-achievements vast swathes of intelligent state-school ‘yoof’ will be left coughing the dust from Angelica’s SUV trail into Oxbridge, as public school applicants dominate proceedings..

Instead of the donkey-jacketed nomenklatura (who now cite the fact that they had to read Beowulf as part of their English literature syllabus, given the benefit of hindsight, as being indicative of the intellectually stimulating and enriching education they were granted) having to concede that the ‘most examined generation ever’ are actually more adept at passing exams than them (n.b. not smarter than) They have instead resolved to degrade the qualifications now yielded by 98% of Britain [statistics vary according to the level of make-believe] as dramatically ‘dumbed down’ whilst at the same time surreptitiously accompanying each of these somber articles with a photo of 4 beaming, incidentally sexy, 18 year old girls thrusting their results sheets towards the camera.

So the introduction of the asterisk to the grade sheet at A level has further delineated the gulf between the have’s and the have’s lots. What struck me, was the way this was reported as though it was a major expose that Ox,Durham, Cambridge, St Andrews, Warwrick et al overwhelmingly have a social makeup similar to Notting Hill Waitrose or the Yachting club. Of course, given that I’m about to embark on a university application myself this morbid fascination of the papers has had what was presumably its desired effect, and I’m utterly terrified I’ll become like the poor chap used as the human interest column in the Daily Mail the other day ( “John Smith, recipient of 3A*’s, 4A’s and blessed with what his economics lecturer calls ‘economics virtuosity’, unable to achieve a place at university!” Shock! Abhorrence! Turn the page with trembling hands…) It’s undoubtedly a frightening time to be targeting the upper echelons of a system still disappointingly embroiled in class politics, but I will exile any such thoughts from my mind during my application and instead prepare with the diligence and perpetual fear of sodomy which seems to elicit such wonders from Rupert, Harry and co.

views on casual racism that prevails in cornwall

Bunch of decrepit, mumbling, miserable, bastards do they not have homes. They’ll frequent every bus stop between here and john o groats with their idle diatribes upon the lives of the drivers, and their caps that inform me that they’d rather be fishing. And their blue rinsed, coffee stained, mole ridden heads with the bumbling enunciation that trips over its self on its stealthy exit through the corner of their perennially glistening mouths. They feel the need to interminably inquire about information as though the signs and official documents, and testimonies of others are all one giant conspiracy that the whole fucking charade partakes in to deceive them. So they’ll stroll up to the drivers cabin ask him where’s going six times, demand an affirmation whilst tutting at his lack of courtesy upon providing the same answer for the sixth time and then they’ll walk away. Once the slab of bigoted farmer with white hair spiralling out of his ears like smoke from a burning house, gets down to the seat in front of me he shifts his titanic plaid-festooned load in pursuit of a comfort which will never be rewarded him from a seat patently so constrictive. Infuriated by the impunity of seat-designers in the 21^st century this man turns to his wife crammed into the window seat beside him in her pink cardigan, and begins to incoherently conspire into her similarly hairy ear whilst gesturing with his giant orange paw towards the women in the aisle ahead. I detect one word from the slobbering drivel that he pours in her ear (given the proximity I unfortunately hold to the couple) ‘…paki’, at the sound of which his wife contorts her rubbery features into a stern expression of agreement. Still shifting the plaid monolith begins to track glances at the girl with what his elephantine presence evidently deems to be refinement although its nothing of the kind, whilst his wife abandons any such tact to align her malevolent sneer permanently on the girl, who having detected the farmer and his wife’s attentions shuffles tighter in next to the window and adjusts her headphones.

By this point I’ve become inadvertently marooned within the feeble territory of the passive-aggressive British liberal predicament, too infuriated that two people could continue to harbour such intolerance having endured a lifetime of cultural integration initiatives to not intervene whilst aware that any intervention or accusation I will make will be misconstrued, caught in my throat, vigorously denied or cited as article one in the list of evidence to prove that I should mind my own fucking business. I look around; the man who’d rather be fishing adjusts his cap and plucks absent-mindedly at a brow that slopes forth like a wisteria adorned porch, the lady with the parted hair sits behind him engrossed in a paper by a Murdoch demagogue. Where’s my alibi? No else has noticed, perhaps once more I am joining arbitrary dots to while away time on a bus journey. After all perhaps I misinterpreted their slur as anything other than the ‘affectionate moniker’ that people of such esteem and impeccable upbringing as our own future monarch use (grandfathered, let it not be disavowed, by the best, the most chummily recognised and affirmed of our high-profile bigots!) I am prized from my meander through the outlandish and wittily phrased eye-openers I am imagining delivering to the couple by the announcement that I’ve almost reached my stop. Am I not colluding with them in a sense by instantly reaching the judgement that their gestures, points, mutters and grimaces where anything other than the entirely innocent responses of those who have lived more secular, guarded lives shielded from multiculturalism when confronted by somewhere of Pakistani origin? No of course not, I resolve, if people have fastidiously preserved the ‘no blacks, no dogs’ mantra of the 1940’s into the modern age whilst being all to willing to adapt their ever widening range of appliances, subscriptions and technologies then I can not exploit that loophole as a way of avoiding confrontation. Why not amend some of their archaic preconceptions about the world. Surveying them for an instance, I am once more caught by the demand that liberal righteous indignation has for them to do something more overt, to transparently expose their bigotry to the whole carriage, to vent out loud the words bellowed from their gestures, I become perturbed by how the very idea commands a strange excitement. Blighted once more by middle-class passivity and the perverse chokehold of manners I resist subjecting them to this auto de fé because I talk myself into taking proverbs about not teaching old dogs new tricks as sacrosanct when in reality its because I’m all too willing to recount my offence right now across this page but couldn’t muster the courage to reprimand someone for an insinuation. I left only shooting them a look of disapproval and the girl a look of camaraderie, which I instantly regretted, and spent the whole journey home dwelling on my course of action, where I now sat down and wrote up what I was sanctimonious enough to think but to cowardly to voice.

moving house

Cosmetically enhanced born anew,

The white casket from which a home grew,

Is opened and leases the birds from their cage.

As brushes erase the census gaps left by

The purge of cupboards, drawers and shelves,

In await of the incumbents approval.

By night, exiled to the attic,

Life folds to a foetal coil across a

Stripped double bed, two matt white tresses

And it stirs in a cavernous, emulsion, womb.

And carrying a bag through the rooms dust foliage

Scatters a legacy of doors, ajar.

Gulliver awakes hung-over, on a mattress sandwich

A prince locating a pea.

Sneezing violently as he recalibrates.

Anchored by lethargy, he

Tracks the sun’s cantilevering behind those chimneys,

In rapture with the light an, inauguration of the new

Illumination of brass tendons and

Crumbling plaster, cast aloft on a Georgian child’s

Jenga structure. Wolf (big and bad) approaching.