THIS week, I've discovered that freedom is rather like a JML Nicer Dicer, or a blunt-cut fringe — you covet it for weeks but it is only once you've attained it that you discover a) you have no idea what to do with it, and b) you didn't want it all that much in the first place.
They promise a small-scale revolution, the personal overhaul you've been waiting for ever since the semi-perm and magi-tweeze kit failed to deliver an existential epiphany.
(Another unifying characteristic of the two is that they demand more clea
ning, preening and general upkeep than your standard NHS ward, while freedom leads you in the opposite direction, to believe wholeheartedly that showers and deodorant are necessary only when your day involves an expedition into the realms of real people; Betty at the corner shop and Jeremy Kyle are afforded no such fragrant treatment).
This week, I have found freedom. I have finished my exams. Which is a lie, but I just wanted to type it and pretend I do a real degree that can't be poached entirely from Wikipedia — I actually finished my exam. Singular. Just the one.
Which means this term has constituted possibly the least pressured academic period since year seven, when a particularly testing project book on the great fire of London threatened to disturb breaktime cartwheel practice on more than one occasion.
In my defence, the exam was six hours long and entirely in Middle English, but when it doesn't involve tea-staining any paper you consider yourself lucky*.
So now I have woken up, shaken off the RSI and gone, "hmm". Then I stared blankly at my curtains for several hours, drew a doodle of Boris Johnson being engulfed by an enormous toffee wearing a top hat, played with some blu-tack and said, "hmm" some more.
The possibilities are endless, but not in the fun, Fisher-Price-slogan way. I'm looking at a massive, empty, metaphorical notebook page and I can't even find a Biro to scribble on it with. I'll probably end up using an old eyeliner, from the bottom of a handbag, with fluff stuck to it.
Of course, I could go shopping, or go to the pub, or watch America's Next Top Model on YouTube, or make lists of reasons for exterminating Catherine Tate with a sonic screwdriver, but those are all things I did while I was revising anyway, and strongly suspect that without the spinal shivers and occasional guilty nausea of impending doom, they won't be half as enjoyable.
I could read books for pleasure, a concept I think I vaguely remember from my Judy Blume days, but might have just seen on the telly.
What I cannot do, unfortunately, is talk to people. Not without having a soil mechanics textbook thrown at my head.
Because while I dance on the roof singing along to my freedom playlist (Born Free, Free Nelson Mandela, All Right Now and any others you might care to suggest), everyone else is still holed up in their rooms revising. And crying. And will be for the next month or so.
They emerge only at mealtimes, when my "hey I know, why don't we rent pedaloes and go to Belguim for the day?!" suggestions are met with the kind of looks Paxman would consider over-withering.
Perhaps if I packed a nice picnic they'd change their minds. I could do a good salad with my new JML Nicer Dicer…
*Tea-stained paper was an art. Different techniques were the mark of family lineage, handed down from parent to cousin to daughter to brother like an old kit bag full of fail-safe house points.
Some favoured Tetley, others branched out with splashes of Nescafé or lemon juice for added visual texture. Highest kudos, however, always went to the lucky kid whose lax parents allowed them to play with lighters and achieve that authentic, singed look around the corners.
There was always one sad specimen who tried to do his after he'd written on it, reducing the Battle of Bosworth down to a sploshy lake of Berol handwriting pen.
Content was, of course, irrelevant — it was your tea-stained paper that got you the grade.
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