Well, I have done it. The die are now cast.
I have managed to put in an application for the MSt degree.
I do not think that I am at all likely to succeed, and a part of me is not exactly sorry about this. It is a bit like cleaning the bathroom, it is lovely to have a shiny bathroom, but scrubbing black mould out of the silicone and picking hair out of the soap is tiresome labour.
I would like to have a piece of paper that attested to my genius but have got no use for one whatsoever, and it is going to be very, very hard work to get it.
It has been hard work just putting in the application. I have had to come up with all sorts of literary wofflings, some gubbins about my ambitions, a history of my failures to date, and a proposal for Great Novels I Have Not Yet Written.
There are loads of the last.
In the end I scraped together a piece about making apple pies, and the beginning of a short story that I really must get around to finishing, about what happened to Cinderella after she got together with Prince Charming. I have always thought that living happily ever after is entirely improbable. I bet Prince Charming wasn’t as patient as Mark, and we have never managed Happily Ever After. We have done quite well to manage Not Arguing Today at some dire and depressing moments of our union.
I concocted a CV which was basically truthful, since I didn’t think there was any point in making things up, and told them about some stories I have never quite got round to writing, and I have left them to it. I have got to be better than nine other people to get a place, since there are ten applicants for every place. It is a tall order, because every single one of them will have paid more attention at school and be better qualified than me, so if I am being honest I think it is extremely unlikely.
That will be all right. I will just have to make myself successful and famous.
I have got an essay to write before Monday, and a book to read. I have not read it because it has not arrived yet, although I have checked the doormat hopefully several times. There were two books to read, but last night was so quiet on the taxi rank that I actually read the other one of them whilst I was at work. I had thought that it looked dull, but in the event it turned out that it wasn’t at all, and kept me so much on the edge of my seat that I was practically squished up against the steering wheel.
It was about a chap who went around strangling people, although it was an old book so no gory details were given, and if he did other smutty and unpleasant things to them as well, we never found out.
I love the reading list for the course. It will be very sad if I don’t get on the Master’s’s course and have got to think of my own reading again. It has been a joy to have all of these inspirational books sloshing everywhere.
Mark has had to put another bookshelf up this afternoon. I was glad about that because books are piled about all over the place at the moment. The landing is beginning to look like a jumble sale, all we need is some comics and a couple of odd wellies and some knitted crinoline loo-roll covers and the image will be complete.
In other news, I have finally got a working telephone. I have not bought one, since it is January, season of mists and taxi fruitlessness, but I have dug out an old one of Oliver’s which works a bit, enough to make calls at any rate, and put my old telephone number into it. If you wish to call me I am now once again part of the cyber-web of humanity.
I quite liked not being. Life has been very peaceful.
I might just leave this one in the cupboard.
