Why lasting cannot last in a week of everyday lasts

I am in the final round of my education. Tomorrow, or today (1.39 am) I commence what will be the last week of proper school days in my life. And I couldn't be less interested.

So over to more exciting things: I have finished THE present and it sits here next to me, wrapped in brown paper, in its full glory, waiting to be shipped and delivered come the end of the week. I feel the pain a mother feels to see her child leave the nest. I put my whole heart into that parcel, and I hope the charming notifications on the outside will encourage the postman to handle it with extra special über-care. I have an intuition that he or she won't, but by then, I no longer hold any control over it. 

Also, I finish work, which is a bit more sad than finishing school, because I really like work. I think I have written about it before. I even had to capitalise it. I will attempt to drown my sorrow in carrot cake: I find that a good measure of sugar always helps overcoming the lasting feeling of interrupted routines. I think I might have written about that, too. 

Camilla I Regina

A lot more exciting is the run-up to Thursday's school event/do, which involves even more sugar, and possibly, a lot of high percentage beverages. It is of course a fancy dress evening (my insistence), and the theme is rather royal. I hope to impress with this charming hat (picture), a blonde flick-wig, and a navy blue dress. I am Camilla I, Queen of England (what else?). I even learned how to smile like her. The rather angelic touch of the picture is due to recently uncovered/discovered photoshopping skills on my behalf, so that now every single image that leaves the Fruit is digitally altered. Bliss.

I won't lie here, you, dear non-existent reader, have probably seen better. You will, of course. But remember the blood, sweat and tears that have contributed to this charming image, and you will award me an Oscar. Or the equivalent for photoshoppers. I really like my costume, the hat is very Edwardian, quite heavy, and will leave me with an irreparable neck damage for the rest of my life, but it's soooo worth it. 

Shallow, you say, non-existent reader? Bah, humbug, that's an Ascot-neck for you. Speaking of Edwardian, I just saw Julian Fellowes' latest effort, Titanic, in an ITV mini-budget, mini-series version. Mini-pleasure. 2 minutes into the program and I KNEW that I wouldn't like it, let alone follow it with the same attention to detail (that is obsession to me and you) that I follow Sherlock with. No, 2 minutes in, and I have not only a massive déjà-vu, I have a bad déjà-vu. While I won't even go into the accuracy debate - I am no authority, but those clothes seem a little too starchy on the stoker - the plot is borrowed from Titanic, the movie, and Downton Abbey, the not-yet-movie. But, haha, it's not just borrowed, it's a bad copy: the story of Jack and Rose, A and B, is retold with a different set of A and B in a slightly different version of the story. In fact, I suspect that one of Fellowes' mates saw the original movie and then, via Chinese whispers, got the message to Fellowes, who re-told the story is an awkwardly upper-class way. Today is the last I have seen of this monstrosity. 

Portraying the servants, yet keeping that distant gaze is what one does, isn't it? It's nice to see that they are there, but that's it. Those filthy creatures are not to venture into the dining room. Let alone the drawing room. Prime example: that French mistress we all know not to be married to that bloke she's with. No, she's married to Mark Ronson, everybody knows that. Uuuuhuuuhh, they are together but not married. Does such a thing exist? Not in Fellowes' world - I very much doubt it. In the land of country houses and posh toffs in morning gowns, people are either married or dead. There is no in-between, Unless you are a man in possession of a good fortune much in need of a wife. Then you may spend a glorious 95 minutes on screen, chasing Keira Knightley (or somebody equally costume drama-ish), without being married to her. You may consider proposing once or twice, in the rain, in a shed, under a table; but never, never for the love of god let that plonker Collins get her. We all know why.

German arachno-musical-operas and lots of boredom

Signs are the new signifiers

It's early March and it's freezing. My nose, fingers and cheek bones are gone already. Gone the Ranulph Fiennes way, soon to be followed by toes, legs and ears. Why is the weather so inconsistent? Why was this Sunday so boring and why on earth can I not find my second Christmas sock?

These are the worries of a middle-class Capitalist. Me. But, today's clutter holds a couple of pearls. Well, let's say well-made costume jewellery. Another completely bored Capitalist from the land of Oz facebooked something about making an opera about the ongoing drama about Spiderman: the Musical. Yay. Because I have neither talent nor education, only a serious passion for puns and lame jokes, I signed up to do the lyrics. In German. Wagner, eat your heart out. I should emphasise, I have no idea what is going on with the musical, I haven't followed the news and I have certainly no interest in Spiderman. In short, I am the man for the job. Woman, woman..... (feminist muttering).

I like semiotic layering - there is nothing as comforting as discovering a second layer of signs after peeling away the first layer with much care and precision. The second, third, fourth etc. layers are for the knowing, you know, dear non existing reader. Knowing is knowing, as George W. Bush might have said, but he didn't, he said something about fooling, which really was just foolish, and he knew. But he didn't know. Knowing goes beyond knowing theoretical crap that fills academic volumes since the invention of the printing press, or rather, since the invention of academic volumes. Knowing now is no longer just knowledge, it is knowing  and knowing how to use the knowledge, where to find it, and what to exclude from our search for knowledge. Take that Victorian toffs and your encyclopaedias. It's knowledge 2.0, where a Twitter status is worth just about as much as the entry for 'screwdriver'. Mind you, it has to be the right status. What I imply is that a lot more intellectual and social weight is accorded to a message less than 140 characters,  airport-tweeted, coffee-break-tweeted, before-descending-to-tube-tweeted or waiting-for-date-tweeted, more or less carefully crafted and then spewed out into the world by the touch of a button. And there it is then, it can be deleted, but it can never be revoked - it exists in cyberspace. Think of an article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica: before it comes into existence, it is checked, double-checked, edited and signed-off and then printed. A tweet only benefits from the Fruit's ghastly spellchecker and autocorrect, which fails to recognise terrible grammar mistakes involving the use of apostrophes. If you can't spare two characters for the benefit of your reader, why bother at all?

Literati should rejoice over Twitter: it is a platform for the essential Haiku, the short, short story and other Hemingway-inspired writings, though mainly about life, not about death. For the witty, Twitter could be the nec plus ultra in their writing career, for the not-so-very-witty, it is yet another platform to display poor punctuation, self-importance and narcissism. Did I mention that I tweet?

Boredom, a subtle change of subject, yet another Sunday spent sitting in the cold, trying to convince people that their taste is NOT universal. I am of course always ready to get the big guns out, hit them frontally with Bourdieu and Hebdige, Panofsky and that other guy, Cowell, but then again, I leave it. As much as my Sundays are devoted to intellectual exchange and Monday's readings, other people's Sundays are devoted to bad fashion and roasts. Those things do not work well together, especially after a couple of pints at the local boozer. If a non-art student then wants you to leave your prejudices behind in favour of a more structural, stylistic or economical view of the world, you get really cross. Yes, I am talking to you, man in the green sweater and woman with the rather heavy perfume. If you don't like what you see, why do you start talking about it in the first place? Both of you, among others, missed the moment to just shut up and keep it to yourselves. Or start writing a blog that nobody will read, or better still, write your comments on a piece of paper and burn it when you're done. Or tweet it, where people have the option of not following you (why would they???).

A little learning is a dangerous thing (Alexander Pope) if formulated in less than 140 characters.