En fait c'est un peu comme la seduction de danguer.
WARNING: what follows is by no means consequentialist, more than likely well felt but not well meant and the epitome of hypocracy:
Two ideologies, both alike in dignity, in fair Manchester, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny...
On the one hand, it'd be great to live the essentially selfish life of an academic: Living in an ivory tower surounded by books and the all encompassing warmth of scholarship. On the other, perhaps the homelier charms of a steady family life are the real draw of existence.
As you may have gathered, this blogger is about to break, Von Trapp-like, into new musical lyricisist verbosity.
I've just had the time of my life. I've never felt this way before. No. I swear. It's the truth. And I owe it all to youth. (Man, this is the sort of eloquence and poesy Arundathi Roy and Tracy Emin dream of... Maybe in my time, I'll be the enfant terrible of the establishment, and my blog posts will sell for *millons*. I'm like Keats, but insincere, and therefore comme il faut.)
There comes a time in a young man's life when university is far behind, the youths of today no longer revel in the lost Mancunian wonder of Oasis, unless in some retro club or other where air conditioning preserves those who don parkas for fashion deliberately counter-cultural faux pas. They're just doing things I used to do that they think are new.
"That's right. I look like an arse. But isn't it ironic don't you think..."
All that's left to those that are old of heart is the vague happy memory of the youthful exuberance that Sex in the City once afforded, (before Kim Cattrall stooped to pose for a modern Titian... are they worth a hundred million pounds?), and the rememberance of lost time. Who knows: somehow lying on the sofa watching iPlayer and Channel Four on Demand isn't the same as lying in bed in your mother's house reading the papers, slowly accruing the words and phrases that will one day make Swan's Way and your name in the world.
Indeed. These are no doubt the bile infested mental meanderings of a soul not so much in torment as subjected to that horrific middle class feeling that the intellectual twilight is upon him. When suddenly the bus is infested with the undergrads with their inescapably tight trousers and their Mighty Boosh. The terrible realisation that perhaps no longer am I young enough to partake of the bread and the wine of bang-up-to-the-minute finger-on-the-pulse living. It's time to slow down. Take stock. See what life is worth. Surrender yourself to the NYTimes Quarter-life-crisis.
Mais bien sûr: j'ai bu un peu trop. But this is the last refuge of a soul with nowhere else to go. At least liver-addling addiction greets me with open tobacco-stained Red Bull'n'Vodka-quivering arms. Life on the other hand throws curved balls and gives no quarter.
If you're desperate to know how it feels, think Thomas Beddoes meets de Quincey.
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