Lily Eastwood
Welcome week is just a kick in the face and further evidence that my sense of fun is draining. Freshers’ week would be fine, because I don’t feel bad about not having fun. Do you know why? Because I am not a Fresher. Welcome week on the other hand. Welcome! That cruel universal world welcomes us all – but to what? “Hello third years, welcome to exams, welcome to the year that counts, welcome to making up for all the times you slacked off in second year even though you knew it counted.” Freshers’ week was just harmless pressure to binge drink. Welcome week is smug.
There is nothing cool about third year. First year is a happy blur and in second year campus is yours. It felt like you only saw people you knew. We were established and justified then. Course friends, college friends, random every week in Ziggy’s friends… Third year begins and the strange faces start creeping in. I’m not seeing those I know anymore, I’m seeing everyone I don’t. I may not have been a big fish last year but I am a tiny fish now, and the pond is massive.
All this makes me very serious and not at all fun. I can barely even spell flippant. Every social engagement I have descends into depressed silence via some overly serious conversation on the credit crunch, third world debt or marriage. I even had a serious debate with someone over our preferred choice of burial, taking into account financial and environmental aspects. All in a half hour break from the library. (Mine, by the way, is not at all. Burn me and scatter me to the wind.)
Either there is an epidemic of anti-fun sweeping third year or someone needs to give me a good slap now so I can snap out of it while I still have some friends. I am too young to be this boring.
But it’s more than boring, isn’t it? It’s old. I am aging before my time and falling rapidly behind the trendy generation. The other morning, as I scraped at my dry weetabix and counted the hours before I could legitimately go back to bed, I made the mistake of turning on E4. E4 stands for fun, edgy, sexy young things. Their adverts are for fun, edgy, sexy young items. The advert I saw was for fun, edgy, sexy young perfume and showed, in all it’s stringy saliva-tastic glory, a man snogging a girl’s elbow. I’m just… no.
I’ve spent my life being treated as a boy by my male friends and now popular culture has completely eclipsed my sense of sexuality. I may as well abandon any remaining femininity and go and join a convent. Let’s face it. I wasn’t that good at flirting to begin with. I like to see it as being a young superhero. All young ladies have an untapped and difficult to control ability to flirt. One day I could master it and rule the world, or at least my own love life. In reality I accidentally send “shag me” signals to weirdos and spend the rest of the time staring into the middle distance.
I was out in a bar for my 21st birthday just a few weeks ago and a very squat bald man tapped me on the shoulder and told me I’d ruined his evening. For the record, I thought I’d been doing an excellent impression of being fun, edgy, sexy and young – maybe even feminine. Anyway, I’d ruined his evening, with my dancing apparently. I inquired as to how my fun, edgy, sexy and young moves could possibly be so intrusive on his evening? The man replied that they were not intrusive but wanton and provocative: I had been leading him on. Not the whole room, but specifically this bald man. I had, so I was informed, given him a “look” when I was at the bar. This was also wanton.
This is the height of my flirting skill. My friend who (to my unskilled eye) was acting the same as me had a man approach her with a similar line. Her man, however, was about 25, gorgeous and able to string sentences together. My (middle-aged) man came up to my shoulder, had a face that looked like he smashed doors into it for a living and a very limited vocabulary. Where did I go wrong?
And now, now not only do I have to be wary of my weirdo magnetism but apparently my elbows could be wanton. I may never go out again, and if I do I’ll be the one shuffling around, eyes to the ground and hands over elbows.
I think I’m actually the last person to give up on my female identity. No, not my female identity: just my ability to successfully cohabit, platonically or otherwise. Just this summer my own father said to me: “You don’t need people as much as me, your mother and your sister. You won’t ever depend on a long term partner.” Won’t I? Am I an empowered female? More likely he was just preparing me for the reality of spinsterdom, which I deserve for being old, boring and not remotely turned on by elbow snogging. Bring on the cats.
This week, Lily will mostly be
Avoiding becoming as iconic as James Bond and the victim of excessive product placement. The sheer amount of stuff I can buy that will turn me into James Bond makes me nervous. Drinking Coke means I get Bond girls, wearing Avon perfume means I am a Bond Girl – thank Our Lady Dame Judy Dench that I can’t afford an Omega watch. I am becoming hyper-aware of my own product identity and I am beginning to hear voices. (Cue kitsch-camp and happier if not holier than thou presenter voice)
Lily lurks in a dark corner of the library wearing an oversized Marks and Spencer’s sweatshirt and matching oversized grimace. She’s not unwashed she’s “grunge” and that’s not pen on her face – that’s a fashion statement. Remember to differentiate between lurking and skulking: skulking is for special occasions.
Lily now shuffles down Tang Hall Lane draped in a “vintage” scarf and a cool air of discontent. Notice the holes in her tights as she deftly dodges a chunder pile. Tres punk, anarchy lives on in her dishevelled attire. As she glowers in your general direction notice the dark circles under her eyes, that’s really “now”.
If you were to rifle through her bag you’d mainly find a lot of Kleenex man-sized tissues, for her man-sized cold. To really get inside the Lily look it’s important to be suffering from low-grade illness from October to March. Make sure you’ve got some broken bic biros, a “retro” Sony Ericsson and last week’s lost satsuma complete with biological community.
Running for the bus Lily falls flat on her Maybelline-maybe-she-wasn’t-born-with-it-face. Not for the first time today she realises that she’s actually quite far from a James Bond lifestyle.
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