TCD Miscellany

Story.

This post is a little shameless promotion, aimed especially at Trinity College students.

I’m urging you all to go pick up a copy of TCD Miscellany. It’s free and you should find it outside the SU shop, and possibly elsewhere.

I’m the back-page columnist, which is why I’m urging y’all to go pick it up. It’s a very good read right through though.

For people who can’t go pick up the magazine, check out the website where you can read it online.

As for my article, I have permission to throw it up here for your pleasure, so here you go.

“So How Was Your Summer?

Ah sure. You know yourself. Grand.

I look forward to Summer all year long. But after a few weeks of arsing around, you realise it’s actually pretty shit. When you’re off galavanting and doing things with your life it’s good, but that doesn’t happen to me that often.

What’s worse is the pressure to go and do something. Because you just know that in a few months time, people are going to be asking you the question that titles this “article”. Sometimes I find myself doing things solely so I can have a good answer for that.

Can’t I just vegetate in my own filth please?

Similarly, whenever I do something remotely interesting, there’s that little voice at the back of my mind telling me that this’ll make a fuckin’ whopper facebook status. People’ll comment it, “like” it – the whole shebang.

It can be depressing at times. A particular moment springs to mind here. It was a Friday evening, 5pm. The start of the weekend, and I’m a free man. I could do anything I want to. Anything. But there I find myself – unshowered, unshaved. Having not eaten at all that day. Not even dressed yet. On the toilet. Laptop at my feet. Playing ‘Connect 4’ online against someone who’s probably far younger than I am. Listening to old school wrestling music to remind me of my childhood. Times like those really make your day y’know? The times you realise you are totally fulfilling your potential.

And then people go asking you what you’ve done with your day. And I have to lie or at least sugar-coat the truth.

“Oh you know, just chilled really. Took it handy.”

I guess it’d be a tad unsociable to tell them you woke up at 4pm, had half a Moro for breakfast (left over from yesterday), masturbated, went on facebook, lost track of time looking at photos of people you don’t know, then considered masturbating again but got distracted by them asking you on MSN how your day has gone.

I become so utterly useless during the summer that I consider the most mundane of things to be an achievement. Cutting my nails for example. I cut my nails in the morning and that’s it for the day. I’m done. Drained. I deserve a treat. Fetch me a crisp sandwich! The traditional Summer cuisine. Works for every meal.

My summer wasn’t all play though. There was some drama thrown in there. Oh yes. You better believe it.

There was an incident with the lunch I was making one day. I decided to go a bit mad and do some proper cooking. Naturally, I went for beans on toast.

I threw some beans in a cup, and bunged ‘em into the microwave. Stuck the toast in the toaster. Less than a minute later I hear a sort of splashing noise.

Oh Christ.

The worst has happened.

All hope is lost.

It’s a disaster of Chernobyl proportions.

I forgot to cover the beans while microwaving them.

I open the microwave and see bean juice scattered everywhere. Pandemonium ensues.

What do I do first, eat or clean? The age old question.

If I eat first, the bean juice’ll harden and be a cunt to clean. If I clean, the beans’ll go cold.

Then the toast pops up.

I had to make a mad dash for the fridge to ensure I got that butter before it went past the point whereby it wouldn’t melt into the toast properly.

I’m not sure anyone else could so catastrophically prepare a meal of beans on toast. It’s up there with Homer Simpson setting the cereal on fire.

Most of you would think I couldn’t possibly cram more drama into the three months of Summer.

You’d be wrong. Catastrophically wrong.

On, not one, not two, but three separate occasions, a daddy long-legs found its way into my bedroom. I’ve learned that a spider coming into the room is an event that nobody will ever, ever become comfortable with. Every time I see a spider in the room I go into full-on panic mode, as if I’ve just had a gun pointed in my face.

Kill him! No, kill it! Don’t personify what you intend to kill.

I leap up, and then begin the frantic search for a murder weapon. My mind then works out the trade-off between my desperation to kill the spider while it’s still in sight, and my unwillingness to use a birthday card to do the deed. But then, genius strikes. The Argos catalogue. The book given to us by the gods for all our spider-killings needs. It’s probably out of date by now anyway.

And as I scoop the frail little spider corpse into the bin, in what has to be the most undignified funeral the world had ever seen, remorse sets in. Did I really have to kill the spider? He could have had a family. He might just have been looking for food to bring back to the nest or whatever it is spiders live in. Then again, he might have walked on my pillow during the night. Fuck it, good decision.

So that was my Summer. Oh, I also went interrailing. The problem here is that when people hear I interrailed, they get very excited and ask me what it was like, expecting an exciting, potentially life-changing answer. All I can usually muster is a mumbled “Ah yeah, it was good…”.

There it is folks. “It was good.” Isn’t that the exciting answer you were hoping for? Are you all atwitter now? Three words, one syllable each.

IT.

WAS.

GOOD.

Don’t get me wrong, it actually was good – amazing infact, I just feel like a total fraud for not having a more exciting response.

But yeah, Summer’s alright innit?”

Now, can anyone tell me how I actually pronounce “miscellany”?

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