Claudia Blunt: Week 7

Act I

Life, Sunday 3^rd of March 2013

CLAUDIA: “I’m taking my coat off! I’m going to ensnare him!”

CLAUDIA re-applies her lipstick.

Tumultuous applause from the occupants of the Ladies’ Loo.

CLAUDIA exits stage left.

We see this week’s man of her dreams embroiled in a passionate dance-floor embrace with another, faceless woman.

Despite the stifling heat of hundreds of undergraduates grinding wildly, Claudia flings her coat over her shoulders and walks solemnly to the bar.

Her coat swishes in a manner reminiscent of Cruella, as she bats people out of her way à la Dowager Countess of Grantham.

CLAUDIA: “I’ll have a large pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea, no ice – just the one straw, please.”

Fade to Blackout.

________

There are many problems that fill the head of this author. Why are there no employment prospects for PPS students? What precisely is management consultancy? What will happen if, yet again, I don’t get a 2:1? Am I ever going to earn enough to pay off my loan? Why, in every photograph taken of me, does my nose look like it’s falling off my face?

And perhaps the question that occupies too much of my head, and too many of my friends’ heads: Why in the bloody hell am I still single?

It makes very little sense to me. Cambridge is riddled with thoroughbred, brain-filled beauties. And too many leggy princesses spend too much time wondering why they’re still limping home in heels at the end of an evening that required painstaking preparation, given that it ended in the usual cheesy chips with their girlfriends. Why, indeed, are the only men that are a constant in my life Uncle Frank and my DoS?

The women of Cambridge will go on to become CEO’s, G8 Leaders, Academy Award and Nobel Prize winners. Why, then – will someone please enlighten me – has the male population of this town not realised that they’re sitting on a gold mine?

If you’ve managed to snap someone up, well bloody done. Congratufuckinglations. Skip down King’s Parade doing a rendition of this and live happily ever after.

At this juncture, I’m going to avoid the inevitable Tab trap of using this column as an extended personal ad. I will, however, share nearly three years of experience on the locations I have scoured in my quest to make someone to fall in love with me.

The ADC: Affectionately known as the Gay-DC, this is where I began my Cambridge career. All the good ones here are sadly too good to be true, and are also trying to find a man with an appreciation of musical theatre. You can spend a fortune here, sampling the boutique gins of the week as you attempt to decipher whether there are any straight men left treading the boards. Inevitably, a few of them are. But they will almost certainly have been snapped up already, or will be complaining that they identify too much with Hamlet and Ivanov and are thus stir crazy and best avoided.

Sportsmen: If, despite drinking bans and ladsladslads culture, you manage to find a sensitive soul who is prepared to stop playing with his balls for a minute, then bully hooray for you. You are wonder woman. Because, as a friend so aptly put it the other day, “Why does owning a blue jacket make you God’s gift to womankind?” Indeed, ladies, if you have ever been branded Blue-Tac, then I salute you. Natural selection dictates that it is inherently normal for you to wish to procreate with a man that has bigger biceps than you have thighs. You are, after all, only human.

The Pitt Club: Full of choice individuals, these boys never fail to do anything without style. If you’re really lucky, you might get a post-bosh letter. But that will invariably be the last you’ll hear of the gentleman in question until you are summoned via pigeonhole back to Jesus Lane for round two.

Drinking Societies: Fathom this for one second, would you, dearest reader?

Child: “Daddy, how did you meet Mummy?”

Daddy: “Well my dear boy, Mummy showed a room full of people and unsuspecting waiters her good pants but it wasn’t until I smashed a poppadom over her head that I really knew it was love at first sight.”

I don’t fucking think so.

Perhaps if I’d spent more time sat musing over my battered copy of Leviathan in the library, then some tall, dark, handsome intellectual stranger might have snapped me up by now. Perhaps I should have used my terribly expensive Union membership a bit more and someone would have wanted me to be his First Lady. Woulda, shoulda, bloody coulda.

No more iffing and butting, if you please, gentlemen. The combination of boobs and a brain is deadly, but nothing to be afraid of. Indeed, – and without wishing to sound like an even more embittered old finalist hag – grab yourself a girlfriend, because these women are the best of the best. Every gal in this place is a catch, and the sooner you lot realise this, the better.

Otherwise, we’re all going to dance off into the distance, clutching our degrees and remembering what pricks you all were. Until next week then, my friends; I’m going to summon my gaggle of gays and my jubilee of Queens, and sing this loudly at them. TTFN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0niwn2pOEno