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.

this week during free moments, i've carnivorously devoured information to compensate for the numbing tedium of constantly revisiting the change in atmosphere between Yalta & Potsdam, or the differences between dr. faustus and the tempests final soliloquies.Finished Mcewan's Solar and feel that broadcasting my opinion on it won't amount to much as its generally conforming to that of everyone elses. Whilst it might have been an entertaining challenge for him as an author to craft such a loathsome, vapid and egotistic protagonist as Micheal Beard who sustains his repugnance for 300 pages, for the reader stuck in the company of this slothlike aging, balding, serial philanderer it is a lot less enjoyable. The general effect is roughly analogous to being hemmed in by the window seat next to such a person on a train who proceeds to declare their innermost thoughts, however superficial or unfit for public testimony, on their mobile phone to the entire carriage at great volume for the duration of their journey. Also, to again slavishly regurtigate an often cited criticism of McEwan, the research taken for the novel often appears to be stitched onto the story as an afterthought; however meticulous the authors acquired knowledge of quantum theory, and environmental physics might be the passages which exhaustively release this don't actually contribute that greatly to the plot apart from to further add to the readers growing antipathy towards Beard. Out of the McEwan i've read i found his novella Amsterdam (which similarly deals with the plight of two antiheroes caught in extensional dillema's) a lot less overwrought and much more satisfying. The partitionment of the book into three separate timeframes during the noughties did give him a vehicle for some welcome social criticism.Ultimately then Solar left me recovering from that anti-climatic hangover you are burdened with after leaving an unsatisfactory novel that is strangely absent in the case of a film or record. I think its the intimacy and commitment of a read that leaves you faintly resentful towards the writer who leeched of your time, whilst you persevered on through compelled by a sense of obligation to see through what you've begun.

No such feeling was apparent in the Godfather however which my zapper-finger remained monogamous to for the entirety of the 3 and a half hour running time. Having overcome the preliminary discomfort with what sounded to be an emphysema blighted Marlon Brando i preceded to find it gripping, funny and stylish. Its the moments of cinematic lunacy and flagrant extravagance that made it such a thrill. Such a scene in Mikey casts a fleeting glance at his newly beloved getting to grips with the steering on a voluptuous black 1930's chrysler as she laughingly skids on the gravel and he makes to go inside having being recently informed of his brothers death at the hands of a rival gang. Then, as he draws his lingering glance away the camera shifts to rest on a sheepish looking gangly youth taking a backward glance on a runaway down behind the veranda. Just as we twig it's the mob the shiny black curvature of the vehicle with its jubilant brunette inside is engulfed by an enormous explosive fireball, and before the ring of the BOOM has disappeared with unintentional pathos the shot is faded into another of a ballroom. etc etc...

Ode To Allen (first draft)

Bon voyage bonhomie

We’re bounding out from the shadow of days

sun dialled by the clink of yellow porcelain.

No more, will the fall of sand be

Ushered through by snide remarks.

Where laughter echoes,

And vendettas are ordained

On strangers

From our swelling colony

Just off the mainland

In this regency court of

Caffeine fuelled jesters entertaining

Never

More. Shall we sidle up

To

The wizened omen

That lurches behind the counter.

Here, time is idled with

Alarming precision.

Where endless hours

Have been stolen on a

Kaleidoscopic

Wurlitzer of

Talk.

People arise and are seated

In fitful bursts like the brass valves of trumpet imitation Tuesday, 20 April 2010 (or was it Thursday I forget)

Columbus’s and Walter Scott’s arrive and harbour themselves

But can’t deter us from our headfirst propulsion into the void.

On Salinger’s passing, an elegy I cannot recall,

But still his epitaphs scrolled in affected cool.

The ladies come and go, talking in acronyms.

To those excluded from the eye

(Where sunlight filters through in patches)

Its best to deride.

Shivering beyond the

Reaches of air revolving doors

Into an empty foyer

Stand hordes of taciturn civilians

Wielding pitchforks,

Casting scorn,

On the blood sport still enacted

In our cerebral coliseum.

Subterranean, to wit, (to who?)

A dank yellow habitat for

The Harringtoned Buffoon

Or perfect ping-pong,

The designated

Quarter of the rohypsters,

Pretentious Wanker’s

Bear hair (swoon),

PZ’s, non-descripters,

Our new-conscripters

And the veteran hipsters,

Soon will arrive the midday swarm,

Of plaid and caps

Whirlwind regiments of Leggings and plaid

Soaring golden legs, marching out of step

Bohemia’s lost tourists.

Furrow browed Femme fatales,

Bourgeouis conformists, Sullen

Beauties and aspiring Casanova’s

Facing in opposite directions.

Narcissus sitting, narcissus fixating!

On the quivering reflection in his mug.

All filing habitually from the mouth to the

Gullet to the stomach of Allen,

Then stewing in the broth of searing exclusivity

That haunts the confines

Of this most pedestrian café.

From the epicentre we have heard and have not disclosed

The breach of heart

and stammer of soul.

Final gasps of dropouts

With their fading 60’s rhetoric

Breath held captive as they preach,

Portraits sheltering from a torrent of strokes.

So as you search for your future in

The sediment of this drunken broth

Keep an emblem of our wasted days.

And if it all becomes too much

I’ll amble back to when

We sat out there and basked beneath cloudless sky’s

Spiders jailed in pacing round an enormous empty glass.

an ending to my autumnal coloured daydreams of life on campus

Eyes open, then rubbed , fall out of bed , walk down the stairs, roused from lethargy to see father eagerly wielding official envelope at me like he is brandishing a hand-grenade, but oh no much worse, my fate is sealed in that cardboard coffin, envelope opened with haste, father waiting with apprehension, scan through the stock response, yadda yadda yadda, third paragraph, 'unfortunately..', letter dropped, definite lunge felt as organs resume their original positions, mounting stairs , nose streaming, cranium resounding with an ominous, amplified, blood-curdling ,hoarse, war-cry of 'fuuuuuuuck'.

So i have not made it into oxford, and having soaked it up, just about, am possibly relieved. I'll admit It has bludgeoned my ever more frequent autumnal palleted day dreams, of life amongst the dreaming spires in a scarf, jacket, thesis and library loaned books clenched under armpit, corrugated coffee mug warming my other hand wearing a veneer that i could barely sustain at the open day. Have heard numerous rationales from family and friends today, and am beginning to feel incredibly guilty for the surge of relief that soared when i heard of a fellow applicants dismissal. My aunt told me of the surprisingly low level of intellect she studied amongst at cambridge, and of the oxbridge tendency to favour regurgitator's . Academic rejection however civilly phrased is still a dent, albiet temporary, to entertainment of my future prospects. Decided though prefer the egalitarian aesthetic and overall idea of studying at UCL if i don't get in there, then will have to resort to taking up bridge jumping.

Have reavulauted performance in H.A.T, perhaps radical indictment of anglican and catholic church for remaining to be overtly misogynistic , in response to a 14th century testimonial from a monasteries monk wasn't the best idea. Also bitter critique of capitalism

am currently deprogrammed,

a human pyramid collapsed under its own idiocy in the crowd at the bloc party gig in truro on thursday, breaking my fifth metatarsalin the process, so given that my house is of the tall and narrow build, i am stationed on the bottom floor sofa for the forseeable future, sharing sleeping quarters with the dog.

Being once again cast in the role of an invalid, it takes a bit of effort to prevent diving into the welcoming embrace of despondency and inertia. Given that, its probably not best that my reading material for the last week has been Kafka, the trial.

If ever a book is likely to conform the inescapable curiosity that 'the man' has secured our fate, and that we're all destined to march placcidly to our preordained execution for a crime we're not aware of having committed, it is this one. Alongside the solemn tiding's of kafka, i brushed up on my frankly abysmal art history and read Gombrich's comprehensive, if impersonal, standard 'the story of art'. although admittedly i skipped the chapters on cave paintings in a race to the rennaissance.

sadly these two wheren't in it.

From my woebegone chamber i havent just consumed highbrow material though i've watched the frankly shit haiwaain shirted crime capers of Ocean's eleven and twelve on consecutive nights. I've also prescribed daily doses of Malcom Tucker's bile and venom in the form of the thick of it boxset, as well as making a valiant effort to immerse myself in the shady world of the baltimore drug barons and narcotics squad in the wire. Its taken about 4 episodes to now truly be able to track the narrative through the dialogue, given that a) it has brought home to me how unbelievably white i am and

b) conversation is conducted at breakneck speed, something not often encountered in cornwall where speech tempo is set at a meandering 6O bpm. Alongside this i can just about withstand the journey from the sofa to the kettle, giving rise to numerous cups of drained coffee growing amongst the detritus around where i'm sleeping. I have listened to extortionate, maybe even lethal quantities of fleetwood mac this week.

The man denied an entry through the door to the law by the doorkeeper, his hope never diminishes, his light at the end of the tunnel is not extinguished until all his reserves are used up until he has exhausted all his physical stamina, obscure as Kafka is if i persist i'm sure i'll find that lesson useful.

out of the chaos will inevitably rise order which will dissipate into further chaos, until, visible upon the horizon through my rose-tinted binoculars, i shall hobble across the finishing line into the fracture clinic and have my cast removed.