Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Semester Two, Week Thirteen-ish
Do you ever have one of those days?
No, not bad ones necessarily. Just the days when something very odd occurs to you?
For instance, I'm coming around to the theory that the British university system is a lot like Bleach. The series, not the cleaning product.
Here's the thing. Bleach deals with a high-school student plucked from obscurity by virtue of a misunderstood talent and an encounter with a Soul Reaper, which leaves him doing the soul reaper-y work. Eventually, he travels to another world, infiltrates a secret society and exposes the corruption going on therein before another afterlife secret society comes after the first one, and fighting ensues. Lots of fighting ensues. Lots and lots of fighting. Wall-to-wall, in fact.
The first afterlife afterworld is called Soul Society. This consists of an outside world - Rukongai - where all the souls of the dead are reborn - and Seireitei, the walled-off enclosure at the centre where only those with high spiritual pressure, i.e. those who have the ability to become soul reapers, go to be trained and sent back into the real world to do the aforementioned reaper-y duties. Rukongai is organised into districts (80, if I remember rightly), with 80 being the roughest all the way up to an unforseen 1. Never mind about Rukongai District 9, of course.
Here's the first similarity, at least in terms of the way people treat students; if you're at university, you're expected to be intelligent enough to be there and talented enough in one area to progress through the course. It's not literally walled off from the Real World, of course - although some act like they'd like to be - but one thing that makes me want to bash peoples' heads together is when you get the stereotyped Student Elite who think they're above Normal People by virtue of education. I've seen them, I've met them, and they never get any better. So if the wall isn't literal, it's attitudinal and intellectual, then.
Within Seireitei, the soul reapers complete their training and are then assigned to a division (within this analogy, an academic discipline), where if they're really talented they become a seated officer, and if they have the necessary power they become a captain or a vice-captain. The morass of unseated officers is never really portrayed, but think of them in terms of the morass of undergraduates; some will stay on and be smart or tenacious enough to be postgraduate students, some of these will then go on to do P.h.Ds, and when that's completed, they can work their way towards being a lecturer, a researcher, or - shock and horror and shock - maybe even the department head one day.
The first year at university has felt kind of like this; a seething, roiling mixture of undergraduates, some of who care about their degrees, some of whom don't; some of who do the work, some of whom don't; some of who will go on to do well, some of whom won't, etc, etc. It's seeding and weeding time, ladies and gentlemen; the lecturers, after twenty-eight weeks of dealing with us, know who speaks up in class, who doesn't turn up, who does the work, and, thanks to immensely lax security systems, who's taken what out from our library when.
(Seriously. The library computer system is open and unsecure here. A more devious person than me could check out their fellow students' reading habits without muss, fuss or even bother.)
Whoever's worth the effort can consider themself seeded; they can go to ask for help, or advice, or anything without fear of being shut out. Those who are being weeded, then, either drop out or plod on, and on, and Ariston.
I know it's not the best analogy, but it's all I've got of a Friday afternoon, and coming up on the end of the year, it feels righteous somehow. Granted, it'd work a bit better if the worse students were eaten by Hollows, but hey, you can't have everything.
It's testing and exams for the next few weeks, script kiddies; expect fun.
Friday 30 April 2010
Monday 26 April 2010
Because I just set them up to knock them down
Our Director Writes
Diary of a Mature Student: Semester Two, Week Twelve
It's probably time to talk about The Girl.
It's been about eight weeks, after all.
Mature students get an odd perception when it comes to the opposite sex, dating and further such alien concepts. On my first go on the merry-go-round, there was a mature student - who ended up an object of mild ridicule thanks to his strange pony-tail and trying to relate punk to Shakespeare, sometimes bold, sometimes just odd - and he ended up dating what was One Of Us at the time, and they seemed... Very happy together. It helped that they were both functionally the same personality type, i.e. Alphas, really, ignoring anyone else's point-of-view if it didn't mesh with their own.
I don't know what happened to them. I hope nothing particularly tragic.
I have no romantic expectations upon my return to university, because being an Old Man surrounded by eighteen and nineteen-year old girls is a strange enough experience to begin with. Seriously, it is; it's difficult to put into words, somehow.
Maybe it's because I went back to university to, well, study; friendships are great, I've met a lot of people on roughly the same wavelength as me, and that's really good. But romance? Love? Tales of the heart? Oh no. No, no, no.
Part of this is because - charitably - I'm really not a catch. Chunky body type, prematurely grey temples, broke, student; ladies, I know the line stretches around the block, but you'll just have to wait your turn, because, obviously, I'm a busy man. [/sarcasm]
So it was kind of a shock when I ended up the object of some strange mildly romantic fascination, albeit all-too-briefly. A friend - a good friend, the sort who you can make laugh with only a few words, and who you can make light up with the right sentence - went from being friendly to being complementary, then being overly complementary, about my looks, my style (hah!) and various other personal attributes. Don't worry, I did check if she'd had a sight test recently.
After this, there was a day's grace, then the always amazing Let's Just Be Friends email.
And, curiously enough, I was okay with this. Because, as I say, Not A Catch as far as prime male rib goes. So I thought that was that done with, and we could just go on in some altered form and live with it.
Except, not so much.
I don't want this to be the sort of tale where I make myself sound perfect and the other person sound broken. I really don't. So in all honesty there were two awkward weeks where we still talked to each other - stilted, strange sentences, for the most part, with nothing personal or open to misinterpretation. At the time, my main thoughts were, well, such is life.
So when I thought it would thaw out after a while, I didn't realise quite how much of an error that was.
There then followed six weeks of the most blistering awkwardness I have ever experienced. It was like going straight from meeting someone and getting along to the post-divorce inevitably difficult interations without anything in between. For choice, she would not speak to me, and when she had to, I often wished she hadn't bothered. While helping a friend on a short film, we ended up in the same room for twenty minutes alone. In the words of Don Mclean, 'not a word was spoken'.
This continued up until the easter holidays, and I'm assuming it's continuing now because I haven't seen The Girl since then. Technically, before the end of the semester I will have to interact with her - i.e. be in the same lectures - three times. Which is going to be difficult, frankly, if things haven't changed at all. It would be nice to think that absence would make the heart grow fonder, but... It's just not going to happen.
It's been eight weeks of towering awkwardness, which is do-able; but the idea that I can't make this person that used to matter to me laugh anymore, or light up like she used to, is even more difficult to live with.
But live with it, obviously, I must. Let's put it to song;
Besides, what would my employers and my patron think if they thought I'd just gone back to university for the dating opportunities? That's a hell of an expensive dating service, even when you amortize the cost of camera hire...
Diary of a Mature Student: Semester Two, Week Twelve
It's probably time to talk about The Girl.
It's been about eight weeks, after all.
Mature students get an odd perception when it comes to the opposite sex, dating and further such alien concepts. On my first go on the merry-go-round, there was a mature student - who ended up an object of mild ridicule thanks to his strange pony-tail and trying to relate punk to Shakespeare, sometimes bold, sometimes just odd - and he ended up dating what was One Of Us at the time, and they seemed... Very happy together. It helped that they were both functionally the same personality type, i.e. Alphas, really, ignoring anyone else's point-of-view if it didn't mesh with their own.
I don't know what happened to them. I hope nothing particularly tragic.
I have no romantic expectations upon my return to university, because being an Old Man surrounded by eighteen and nineteen-year old girls is a strange enough experience to begin with. Seriously, it is; it's difficult to put into words, somehow.
Maybe it's because I went back to university to, well, study; friendships are great, I've met a lot of people on roughly the same wavelength as me, and that's really good. But romance? Love? Tales of the heart? Oh no. No, no, no.
Part of this is because - charitably - I'm really not a catch. Chunky body type, prematurely grey temples, broke, student; ladies, I know the line stretches around the block, but you'll just have to wait your turn, because, obviously, I'm a busy man. [/sarcasm]
So it was kind of a shock when I ended up the object of some strange mildly romantic fascination, albeit all-too-briefly. A friend - a good friend, the sort who you can make laugh with only a few words, and who you can make light up with the right sentence - went from being friendly to being complementary, then being overly complementary, about my looks, my style (hah!) and various other personal attributes. Don't worry, I did check if she'd had a sight test recently.
After this, there was a day's grace, then the always amazing Let's Just Be Friends email.
And, curiously enough, I was okay with this. Because, as I say, Not A Catch as far as prime male rib goes. So I thought that was that done with, and we could just go on in some altered form and live with it.
Except, not so much.
I don't want this to be the sort of tale where I make myself sound perfect and the other person sound broken. I really don't. So in all honesty there were two awkward weeks where we still talked to each other - stilted, strange sentences, for the most part, with nothing personal or open to misinterpretation. At the time, my main thoughts were, well, such is life.
So when I thought it would thaw out after a while, I didn't realise quite how much of an error that was.
There then followed six weeks of the most blistering awkwardness I have ever experienced. It was like going straight from meeting someone and getting along to the post-divorce inevitably difficult interations without anything in between. For choice, she would not speak to me, and when she had to, I often wished she hadn't bothered. While helping a friend on a short film, we ended up in the same room for twenty minutes alone. In the words of Don Mclean, 'not a word was spoken'.
This continued up until the easter holidays, and I'm assuming it's continuing now because I haven't seen The Girl since then. Technically, before the end of the semester I will have to interact with her - i.e. be in the same lectures - three times. Which is going to be difficult, frankly, if things haven't changed at all. It would be nice to think that absence would make the heart grow fonder, but... It's just not going to happen.
It's been eight weeks of towering awkwardness, which is do-able; but the idea that I can't make this person that used to matter to me laugh anymore, or light up like she used to, is even more difficult to live with.
But live with it, obviously, I must. Let's put it to song;
Besides, what would my employers and my patron think if they thought I'd just gone back to university for the dating opportunities? That's a hell of an expensive dating service, even when you amortize the cost of camera hire...
Sunday 25 April 2010
If it's worth having, it's worth fighting for...
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Twelve
What would be nice right now would be a fully-functional online environment.
Deadline week(s) are approaching, script kiddies, and the essays are growing fat; so naturally, on the last week possible for the weekly assignments to be submitted, the Online Coursework Service (OCS) pitches a fit on a Sunday morning, rolls over, and plays dead.
In some ways, one can see it as one's own fault for wanting to catch up on their work; if one had done it previously, this would be much, much less stressful. But currently the site is alternating between not working at all, working then stopping working, then working very slowly. Hence I have the time to blog, although given that this blog is basically a person in the middle of a forest, talking to themselves, even that becomes slightly inconsequential.
If a blogger posts and nobody reads it, does the blogger post at all?
In fact, the entire internet service in my area appears to be going, slowly but gently, up the pole.
Such, as they say, is life.
Here's an interesting point. (Your milage may vary on the key word, 'interesting', of course.)
Video Camera hire, for an average, entry-level camera, costs, on average - i.e. the websites I've just been checking out - around £100 a day, +/- £20 for the quality differential.
Hiring an edit suite costs, conservatively, around £50 a day for just the suite, i.e. Do It Yourself editing.
Let's say as a conscientious student, who wants to get the most out of their degree, that you make four short films over the course of a year. Each film requires at least five days shooting. For each day shooting, you need at least - at least! - three days editing.
If you weren't a student, therefore, you would end up paying approximately £650 for camera and suite hire, before you even add on travelling and catering costs and anything else involved.
If you make four short films - and let's hope you do - you would be looking at, again approximately, £2600 in hire costs assuming nothing goes wrong.
The tuition fees for universities currently run at around £3,400 per year for two or three semesters of full-time courses.
It is slowly becoming my way of thinking - and this is kind of heretical thinking, granted - that the 'degree' part of a film degree is actually an ancilliary benefit; if you spend your three years making short films, as long as you pass the other course units to the best of your ability and are respectful to the technical workshop so they let you use the cameras often, you have access to materials that would cost as much in The Real World without the benefit of doing the degree in the first place, i.e. the fancy letters after your name and owing the government thousands of pounds in student loans.
I didn't arrive at this conclusion independently. Third year students I have spoken to have said that they realised they could pass their courses and make short film after short film after short film of gently increasing quality and treat the actual Degree side as a kind of necessary neutral evil.
Don't misunderstand me; I love the degree part. I'm a closet academic (which has made for some awkward admissions in the past), and I love writing essays, even though at some points this year I've had to phone them in a little. And don't forget that our student year includes some other academic types who shy away from actual filmmaking and prefer to study film theory and methodology, and the best of luck to them, for they are the future.
But put me behind a camera, and I'm happy. And that's why even though the coursework is looming, the tests are coming up and there isn't even a technical module this semester, that I've spent at least a day a week this semester filming.
Like I say; happy.
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Twelve
What would be nice right now would be a fully-functional online environment.
Deadline week(s) are approaching, script kiddies, and the essays are growing fat; so naturally, on the last week possible for the weekly assignments to be submitted, the Online Coursework Service (OCS) pitches a fit on a Sunday morning, rolls over, and plays dead.
In some ways, one can see it as one's own fault for wanting to catch up on their work; if one had done it previously, this would be much, much less stressful. But currently the site is alternating between not working at all, working then stopping working, then working very slowly. Hence I have the time to blog, although given that this blog is basically a person in the middle of a forest, talking to themselves, even that becomes slightly inconsequential.
If a blogger posts and nobody reads it, does the blogger post at all?
In fact, the entire internet service in my area appears to be going, slowly but gently, up the pole.
Such, as they say, is life.
Here's an interesting point. (Your milage may vary on the key word, 'interesting', of course.)
Video Camera hire, for an average, entry-level camera, costs, on average - i.e. the websites I've just been checking out - around £100 a day, +/- £20 for the quality differential.
Hiring an edit suite costs, conservatively, around £50 a day for just the suite, i.e. Do It Yourself editing.
Let's say as a conscientious student, who wants to get the most out of their degree, that you make four short films over the course of a year. Each film requires at least five days shooting. For each day shooting, you need at least - at least! - three days editing.
If you weren't a student, therefore, you would end up paying approximately £650 for camera and suite hire, before you even add on travelling and catering costs and anything else involved.
If you make four short films - and let's hope you do - you would be looking at, again approximately, £2600 in hire costs assuming nothing goes wrong.
The tuition fees for universities currently run at around £3,400 per year for two or three semesters of full-time courses.
It is slowly becoming my way of thinking - and this is kind of heretical thinking, granted - that the 'degree' part of a film degree is actually an ancilliary benefit; if you spend your three years making short films, as long as you pass the other course units to the best of your ability and are respectful to the technical workshop so they let you use the cameras often, you have access to materials that would cost as much in The Real World without the benefit of doing the degree in the first place, i.e. the fancy letters after your name and owing the government thousands of pounds in student loans.
I didn't arrive at this conclusion independently. Third year students I have spoken to have said that they realised they could pass their courses and make short film after short film after short film of gently increasing quality and treat the actual Degree side as a kind of necessary neutral evil.
Don't misunderstand me; I love the degree part. I'm a closet academic (which has made for some awkward admissions in the past), and I love writing essays, even though at some points this year I've had to phone them in a little. And don't forget that our student year includes some other academic types who shy away from actual filmmaking and prefer to study film theory and methodology, and the best of luck to them, for they are the future.
But put me behind a camera, and I'm happy. And that's why even though the coursework is looming, the tests are coming up and there isn't even a technical module this semester, that I've spent at least a day a week this semester filming.
Like I say; happy.
Sunday 11 April 2010
This dream must end, this world must know / We all depend on the beast below
Our Director Writes
Diary of a Mature Student, Easter Break point Two
For a film student, I realised that the last, oh, say, twenty entries or so haven't actually been about film. There's been realisation, and complaining, and at the end we all hug and such, but for a film student not to talk about film is like a goldfish not to talk about water.
I mean that in the most literal sense; studying film means living and breathing it, until you know the complication/resolution structure off by heart and narrative no longer holds any mystery. It's kind of like peeking behind the curtain of the theatre and seeing the actors being made up and the magicians practicing their tricks; there's no suspension of disbelief any more, but how that affects you is up to you.
So let's talk about television. First, go watch the latest episode of Ashes to Ashes on the iPlayer. I'd link you, but for some reason it won't let me.
Ashes to Ashes is fascinating because right now they're actively working on torpedoing what made both Life on Mars and the original series' of Ashes to Ashes great; that mythical beast, Ambiguity.
Ambiguity is actively hunted in modern fiction, because people don't like it; humans like a definite conclusion, closure, an ending, because that's the way we are. Don't knock it; it's not a bad thing. But Ambiguity has it's own place. Consider the ending of The Italian Job - the original, not the remake - and how Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels references it; the protagonists have just about got everything they wanted, but whether they get to keep it or not is an entirely different matter.
Ambiguity can be beautiful. Whether Sam Tyler existed in 2006/7 or 1973/4 was never fully resolved; once Tyler managed to 'return' to the modern day, his existence was demarcated by an absence of feeling, which made him believe 2007 was the hallucination. In order to access 1973, then, he apparently committed suicide, but awoke in the reality he felt happiest within, having made the hardest possible choice.
This was referenced within the first series of Ashes to Ashes, and relatively cleverly; Sam Tyler had apparently died after some years working for Gene Hunt. This established the 1981 reality as concrete and concurrent with the 1974 reality; if it was a hallucination, it was a consensus hallucination with the same characters retaining the same traits. If it was real, Sam Tyler was dead, Alex Drake was alive and hallucinating her memories of 2008/9, and...
... It gets kind of fuzzy from there. But the first series' conclusion was truly interesting; it was about Alex's closure and learning the true identity of her parents' murderer, as hard as that was. Season two closed in a similarly interesting fashion; having been shot, and woken up in 1981, Alex was then shot - accidentally - in 1982 and woke up in 2010.
In series 3, Alex lives some kind of life - with hallucinations of 1983 - in 2010 - until she wakes up, once more, in 1983. There are persistent images of a scarred, young policeman, and suddenly Gene Hunt's plot armour is cast into doubt, because there's someone after him and aiming to take away everything he holds dear for reasons that will remain undisclosed, at least for another six weeks at most.
But suddenly Sam Tyler might have been murdered, or might have disappeared. and it may have been Gene (or, on the outside chance, Ray) that was involved in his death/murder/disappearance/skipped the light fandango.
Ambiguity is being hunted down, and it's only a matter of time before Gene Hunt is exposed as the Devil/an Angel/A force of salvation/a Consensus Hallucination (delete as appropriate), Alex is established as Dead / Alive / In LimboHeavenHell / In a coma / Actually in 1983...
... It goes on. I don't understand why Ambiguity has such a big target painted on it's back, but hey, here we are, on the raggedy edge...
The new series of Doctor Who - even if I keep wanting to call it Dr. Who, though - has proved to be curiously impressive. Curiously, because the Tennant Doctor garnered so much praise (primarily because he inhabited the role with grace and hyperactivity) that following him up must have been a monumental task for Matt Smith.
The first episode, then, was fun, in a kind of earth-will-be-destroyed way. The second episode, however, for all it's Britain IN SPACE trappings, was amazing. I reserve superlative praise for television shows that aren't The Wire, so it's nice to get the opportunity to use it every now and then, but the second episode on iPlayer for another week, fact fans! - contains character, Ambiguity, and, of all things, heart. In fact, let's not just italicise that, let's underline it too; heart.
I don't want to spoil it - and it's been a long time since I've felt that about a show, especially since they killed Stringer Bell - so go watch it yourself. And if you're not happy by "Got you", then I'll personally refund the money you spent watching the episode for free.
It's nice when something turns out to be good, instead of middling, mediocre, or bad. Who knows? Maybe it'll happen again sometime soon...
Diary of a Mature Student, Easter Break point Two
For a film student, I realised that the last, oh, say, twenty entries or so haven't actually been about film. There's been realisation, and complaining, and at the end we all hug and such, but for a film student not to talk about film is like a goldfish not to talk about water.
I mean that in the most literal sense; studying film means living and breathing it, until you know the complication/resolution structure off by heart and narrative no longer holds any mystery. It's kind of like peeking behind the curtain of the theatre and seeing the actors being made up and the magicians practicing their tricks; there's no suspension of disbelief any more, but how that affects you is up to you.
So let's talk about television. First, go watch the latest episode of Ashes to Ashes on the iPlayer. I'd link you, but for some reason it won't let me.
Ashes to Ashes is fascinating because right now they're actively working on torpedoing what made both Life on Mars and the original series' of Ashes to Ashes great; that mythical beast, Ambiguity.
Ambiguity is actively hunted in modern fiction, because people don't like it; humans like a definite conclusion, closure, an ending, because that's the way we are. Don't knock it; it's not a bad thing. But Ambiguity has it's own place. Consider the ending of The Italian Job - the original, not the remake - and how Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels references it; the protagonists have just about got everything they wanted, but whether they get to keep it or not is an entirely different matter.
Ambiguity can be beautiful. Whether Sam Tyler existed in 2006/7 or 1973/4 was never fully resolved; once Tyler managed to 'return' to the modern day, his existence was demarcated by an absence of feeling, which made him believe 2007 was the hallucination. In order to access 1973, then, he apparently committed suicide, but awoke in the reality he felt happiest within, having made the hardest possible choice.
This was referenced within the first series of Ashes to Ashes, and relatively cleverly; Sam Tyler had apparently died after some years working for Gene Hunt. This established the 1981 reality as concrete and concurrent with the 1974 reality; if it was a hallucination, it was a consensus hallucination with the same characters retaining the same traits. If it was real, Sam Tyler was dead, Alex Drake was alive and hallucinating her memories of 2008/9, and...
... It gets kind of fuzzy from there. But the first series' conclusion was truly interesting; it was about Alex's closure and learning the true identity of her parents' murderer, as hard as that was. Season two closed in a similarly interesting fashion; having been shot, and woken up in 1981, Alex was then shot - accidentally - in 1982 and woke up in 2010.
In series 3, Alex lives some kind of life - with hallucinations of 1983 - in 2010 - until she wakes up, once more, in 1983. There are persistent images of a scarred, young policeman, and suddenly Gene Hunt's plot armour is cast into doubt, because there's someone after him and aiming to take away everything he holds dear for reasons that will remain undisclosed, at least for another six weeks at most.
But suddenly Sam Tyler might have been murdered, or might have disappeared. and it may have been Gene (or, on the outside chance, Ray) that was involved in his death/murder/disappearance/skipped the light fandango.
Ambiguity is being hunted down, and it's only a matter of time before Gene Hunt is exposed as the Devil/an Angel/A force of salvation/a Consensus Hallucination (delete as appropriate), Alex is established as Dead / Alive / In LimboHeavenHell / In a coma / Actually in 1983...
... It goes on. I don't understand why Ambiguity has such a big target painted on it's back, but hey, here we are, on the raggedy edge...
The new series of Doctor Who - even if I keep wanting to call it Dr. Who, though - has proved to be curiously impressive. Curiously, because the Tennant Doctor garnered so much praise (primarily because he inhabited the role with grace and hyperactivity) that following him up must have been a monumental task for Matt Smith.
The first episode, then, was fun, in a kind of earth-will-be-destroyed way. The second episode, however, for all it's Britain IN SPACE trappings, was amazing. I reserve superlative praise for television shows that aren't The Wire, so it's nice to get the opportunity to use it every now and then, but the second episode on iPlayer for another week, fact fans! - contains character, Ambiguity, and, of all things, heart. In fact, let's not just italicise that, let's underline it too; heart.
I don't want to spoil it - and it's been a long time since I've felt that about a show, especially since they killed Stringer Bell - so go watch it yourself. And if you're not happy by "Got you", then I'll personally refund the money you spent watching the episode for free.
It's nice when something turns out to be good, instead of middling, mediocre, or bad. Who knows? Maybe it'll happen again sometime soon...
Tuesday 6 April 2010
And the thought of you is burnt on my body like a curse
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Easter Holidays
In the end, it was paper cups that convinced me that everything might just be all right, in the end.
Well, kind of. When I was younger - so much younger than today - coffee shops were places of china or mugs and were fairly rare outside of the metropolitan centres. Coffee to go was instant coffee, in a plastic or paper cup, with or without milk or sugar.
But all the times I saw American culture - via television or films - they always seemed to drink their coffee out of paper cups. If they were in New York, they were white paper cups with a blue design on them, which looked, oddly, Greek somehow. That, and they always ate Chinese food out of paper cartons, either at home or leaning on a car, talking, looking effortlessly cool.
If you did that in Britain, you'd be eating soggy chow mein out of an aliminium carton, and where's the romance in that? I can say that, having done it, it's nowhere to be found, especially when you buy it from the stall just outside of Oxford Circus and then have to carry your admittedly nice Chicken noodles into the tube.
Now, suddenly, coffee shops are everywhere, although slightly less so since the whole crunchy credit thing. But coffee shops are a sign of western civilisation's own breed of humanity's ability to change, however slowly, into a more efficient - and, admittedly, costly - form. Now you can get a smile with your coffee to go. In my day - and I shudder to think that I can actually legitimately use the phrase - it just wouldn't have happened. Maybe a chemical-tasting cup of tea from a machine, or an equally foul instant coffee.
Now? Thirty choices of coffee, hot or cold, small, medium or large, shots, flavours, half-fat, no-fat, decaf, half-caf, soy-milk, whatever the hell you want.
This is an odd proof that humanity can adapt, but proof it is, nonetheless, and for now, I'll take it.
Diary of a Mature Student: Easter Holidays
In the end, it was paper cups that convinced me that everything might just be all right, in the end.
Well, kind of. When I was younger - so much younger than today - coffee shops were places of china or mugs and were fairly rare outside of the metropolitan centres. Coffee to go was instant coffee, in a plastic or paper cup, with or without milk or sugar.
But all the times I saw American culture - via television or films - they always seemed to drink their coffee out of paper cups. If they were in New York, they were white paper cups with a blue design on them, which looked, oddly, Greek somehow. That, and they always ate Chinese food out of paper cartons, either at home or leaning on a car, talking, looking effortlessly cool.
If you did that in Britain, you'd be eating soggy chow mein out of an aliminium carton, and where's the romance in that? I can say that, having done it, it's nowhere to be found, especially when you buy it from the stall just outside of Oxford Circus and then have to carry your admittedly nice Chicken noodles into the tube.
Now, suddenly, coffee shops are everywhere, although slightly less so since the whole crunchy credit thing. But coffee shops are a sign of western civilisation's own breed of humanity's ability to change, however slowly, into a more efficient - and, admittedly, costly - form. Now you can get a smile with your coffee to go. In my day - and I shudder to think that I can actually legitimately use the phrase - it just wouldn't have happened. Maybe a chemical-tasting cup of tea from a machine, or an equally foul instant coffee.
Now? Thirty choices of coffee, hot or cold, small, medium or large, shots, flavours, half-fat, no-fat, decaf, half-caf, soy-milk, whatever the hell you want.
This is an odd proof that humanity can adapt, but proof it is, nonetheless, and for now, I'll take it.
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