Highly desirable

All graduates from this MPhil should emerge as highly desirable candidates for policy, corporate and academic careers.

This line comes from a poster currently advertising the MPhil course in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge.

All graduates should. I wonder if much thought was given to this wording. This is the kind of matter that philosophers and characters in Alexander McCall Smith books ponder for hours on end. Saying all of them should doesn’t guarantee that all of them will. It’s a neat get-out, but it’s still a get-out.

What would have been the most balanced, considered wording of this sentence?

Most candidates will? No. The problem here is that most denotes a specific, quantifiable number, i.e. the majority of the group, and that surely cannot be guaranteed.

Many candidates will? Well, that assumes that many candidates will do the course in the first place, you might argue. What does many mean anyway? And on the basis that many is a less emphatic word than most, it is to be avoided. Hints of the weasel word.

Some candidates will? You might as well write All candidates are capable of failing the MPhil. It’s a modal minefield.

I think, all things considered, I’d have gone for Some candidates won’t. Not only is it brutally honest, but if you go into the MPhil expecting the worst, everything’s a bonus. An approach that has worked for me all my life.

Who wants a policy, corporate or academic career anyway? I don’t know what two of them even are. Policy isn’t an adjective, and corporate sounds very woolly. The assurance that the completion of the MPhil might leave one unfit for a vague future career in the pen-pushing industry would doubtless increase its appeal. I’m tempted to draft an application.

Chain blog post

The Argumentative Old Git has very kindly nominated me to participate in a meme/chain letter-type thing. Well, I customarily pride myself on my adamantine resistance to chain letters, exhortations to ‘post this as ur facebook status for 1 hour’ and the like. But I can’t ignore a meme. Thank you kindly, Old Git.

It is now incumbent upon me to:

1) tell everyone something about myself that nobody else knows

2) link to a post that fits the following categories: most beautiful piece; most helpful piece; most popular piece; most underrated piece; most pride-worthy piece; most surprisingly successful piece; most controversial piece

and, finally,

3) nominate 7 other bloggers to participate

Let’s get going.

1) Hard, this. If you’ve read this blog before, you will know that writing about myself is probably my greatest preoccupation, and one from which the existence of a presumably infinite number of more fascinating subjects has seldom distracted me. But, having racked my brains, there is one thing I have not mentioned before. When I am watching television on my own and see someone being interviewed, I sometimes pause or mute the television and answer the question on their behalf. If it’s a sporting interview, I can usually be assured of providing a more interesting and/or erudite response than the interviewee. But the other week I was Sammy Davis, Jr. for a short period. A bit presumptuous for a middle-class white boy, but that’s the way I roll. My shameful secret no more. I suppose it arises from the lamentable fact that nobody is asking me questions on TV, in spite of my periodic desire for them to do so, even if it’s only about how City failed to find the net in the second half despite the two-man advantage.

2) A rather narcissistic exercise, but it will be over soon, and perhaps you would like to google some pornography afterwards to cleanse your soul.

Most beautiful piece: this is my most beautiful piece, and will remain so until such time as the YouTube video embedded in it is removed. It contains a lot of Brahms and not very much of me, and that is as it should be. Click on it and press play before continuing.

Most helpful piece: if this blog is ever helpful, it happens by accident. Certainly my intention is to misinform as much as possible. But it is nice when people come across it by chance because it provides something of particular interest to them. I think of welcome comments on my posts about the sculptor Georg Ehrlich and Eric Linklater’s novel The Wind on the Moon.

Most popular piece: 10 Beatles songs. I suspect this has been the most popular post in terms of hits because of referrals from Google Image Search. Still, some good stuff there.

Most underrated piece: a couple of pieces I am fond of, both of which refer tangentially to L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, have been spectacularly underperused. They are Memory triggers, in which I successfully predicted that Carlos Tévez would score away at Blackpool, and A fantasy, which at a measly 5 hits is my least loved blog post. Perhaps it’s just that Hartley isn’t cool.

Most pride-worthy piece: I suppose I’m happy when I write something that rises above the mundane. There are a couple of moderately successful poetic pastiches here and here.

Most surprisingly successful piece: there was quite a lot of traffic when I wrote about the final of BBC Young Musician of the Year 2010, perhaps because so few other people appeared to be doing the same. Until last month, the day on which I posted it was the blog’s busiest one.

Most controversial piece: oh, you’ve got the wrong blog. But I imagine this would ruffle a few feathers if it got into the wrong hands.

3) Forgive me for neglecting to nominate seven other bloggers to take part. It’s not that I don’t care. But if you would like to, please follow this example. It’s been fun looking over the past couple of years and finding things I’d quite forgotten I’d written. Shalom.

Two ideas

Idea #1. Short story. Christmas morning. Child wakes up to find stocking unfilled. Mother/Father have fallen asleep. Dissolution of myth.

Idea #2. Novel. Anthony Chandrasekara is the director of a major cathedral or collegiate choir. One day he receives a chorister audition application from 9-year-old David Chandrasekara. This is his own son, who died three years previously in a road accident. Something happens after that.

You can see why I haven’t been posting recently – mind going at 100 miles an hour etc.

Commuter Poem

In his house in leafy Edgware,
In his bedroom warm and dark,
At the sound of his alarm clock
Drowsily awakens Mark.

To the bathroom, tired, he trudges,
Following the old routine.
Listerine and Colgate Total
Keep his gnashers fresh and clean.

Early start for early meeting,
Business suit for business man,
Crunchy toast and crunchy Frosties
In his kitchen, open-plan.

Marching out through Penshurst Gardens,
Grandiose behold him stride,
Lloyds and Abbey, Greggs and Nando’s
Passing by on either side.

To the tube he then descends and
Joins the wild, amorphous form
Jostling for a private corner
In a carriage dark and warm.

Thirteen stops from Edgware Station
To his work he daily goes.
As the tube pulls into Hendon
Mark permits his eyes to close.

Camden Town, King’s Cross St Pancras,
Angel, Old Street, Moorgate, Bank.
Dozing still, he snores discreetly,
Shoulders slumped, expression blank.

Borough, Stockwell, Clapham, Tooting,
Southward spans the Northern Line.
Terminates the train at Morden
As he wakes at ten past nine.