The Vile Voyeur

Epiphanies only occur when you are backed into a corner and forced into making them. When time is running out, there’s nothing more satisfying than converting to Catholicism or becoming a member of the Green Party. So, faced with the impending death of my second year, about to be consumed by a five headed sphinx of unintelligible questions, I desperately searched for a pre-exams epiphany, or at least an oblivion. 

At some obscure moment in the depths of last week, I woke up entangled in a mirey swamp of duvet. My desk was covered in confetti and dried pasta, my Macbook keyboard appeared to be floating in a sparkling lake of Bombay Sapphire. Demure-levels were only maintained by the fact that I hadn’t yet found a Gardi’s lollipop still clinging to my right breast (the classic Tab wake-up call).

With roughly a week to go before exams, I felt the pumpkin had gone; the glass slippers were smashed into a powdery substance that could be metaphorically sold to hyper 14 years olds as a mephedrone substitute. Safer, and less likely to dissolve a spoon. (There’s a niche in the market right there). Someone had nailed a glove to my window and I wondered if it was a death threat. Everything needed to change. 

So, leaving the desk to wallow in what seemed to have been a premature wedding celebration, I swerved to lectures, hoping perhaps to be sighted on the Sidg by a wealthy bachelor who would sweep me away from this lowlife of exams and maintain me in a small palace, potentially in a woodland area with dwarfs and faun friends. No such luck. ‘Brothers Grimm’ I may have looked, but I knew in my heart of hearts that fairytales were for pussies. 

This brief outing only highlighted that I had pathetically become a ‘lecture-leaver’: neither bored, nor confused, nor uninterested, I still found myself stumbling out of the room halfway through. On reaching the door, I turned and gave one last, longing look to the crowded room, bowing my head briefly to indicate that I may or may not be about to throw myself from the hallway window to become embedded in the concrete of the criminology department. I knew that there was no reason for my absence. Just as there was even less reason for my presence. All in all, I assumed that I had experienced the epiphany earlier that morning, and was now trotting towards the oblivion.

Where had I been over the last few working weeks? Not exactly absent, but certainly not present. If Cambridge University had decided to call a virtual register, I would have been the one who sneezed instead of saying ‘here.’ But, to what extent does this really matter? The question applies to anyone who has ever found themselves celebrating May Week in May. 

I should have felt the morbid regret of someone who boils an egg and then realises it had a chicken inside it (Sainsbury’s Basics, don’t go there). In fact, the realisation of fatal error was more of a release. There’s no point regretting that you haven’t worked. You’re likely to work harder in sudden bouts after having a lapse of loucheness. No time should be lost in losing time; for something to have been a ‘waste’, a conscious decision has to be made that this was the case. 

Anyway, this revision marathon has been far too drawn out. It’s lost its panache; there’s no longer fear, just blind boredom. Things have plateaued, like a diagram of rabbit population patterns in late spring; time is speeding on and we just want them over with, to exterminate all those rabbits and turn them into prêt á porter fur coats. 

So, maybe consider having a pre-exams epiphany, but settle for a comfortable oblivion. Time speeds on. Treadmill it, but don’t forget to fall off now and again.