Graduations are made for everyone but the poor sods who are actually graduating. Families get to be proud of little Johnny/Mary and reel off countless films taking pictures of them resplendent in their cap and gown. Professional photographers make stupid amounts of money doing their trade and Lecturers get the satisfaction of knowing that every graduate is +1 on the success list.
As for us lot whose success we are supposed to be celebrating... we sweat in our uncomfortable costumes, force smiles for hours on end, then pick up a piece of paper. To me, the sense of occasion is far overtaken by the intense hyperbole of the event. For months I've been non-ambivalent. Bizarrely, I woke up this morning feeling nervous. What the fuck?
However, this nagging thought was justified whilst queuing up for my cap/gown rental (the cost of which adds another group doing well out of this experience), talking to Victoria, or Vic to you and me. Vic is a nearly a foot and a half shorter then me and is bouncing around in anticipation. Turning round, she notes my looming frame with a peculiar sense of having almost missed me.
"Oh, hi! I’m so nervous! I couldn't eat my breakfast this morning!"
Which makes me feel a little better obviously. But this is the last time I’ll think of Vic for a long, long time as she’s a peripheral character at best. It’s not a slight against her, but in the context of the story of my life so far she doesn't really feature outside a few drunken conversations that I try not to remember for fear of unbalancing the context of my biography in so far as I know.
"No, me neither." I offer in reply, then suddenly from nowhere
"Same here!"
Bill, cocky London cunt that he is, is has barged right into the whole scenario so I turn back round to face my parents whilst trying not to engage in any conversation. Thankfully this is the last time I have to put up with this knobhound from hell. A friend and me have been talking about beating the living shite out of Bill for nearly two years now and my mind is going through the possibilities of ramming his smug looking features into the wall. Almost the perfect way to sign off my university life. Then I remember who I’m with and say that yes, it really is a lovely day for it.
Later on, and looking the prize prick but relieved I’m one in a big bag of them, I’m standing in what might well be - to someone not familiar with this part of the world - the main contender for ‘World’s Ugliest Cathedral’ prize. However, to anyone who’s spent any time in this neck of the woods, it’s a perfect exclamation mark of a city obviously designed by people who liked wanking over their Maths kit.
I’m not sure if the Luftwaffe did a fly-by round this way. Maybe they should have. Coventry can use that excuse for it’s dull greyness of a city centre where tramps beat the shit out of each other for a Big Issue selling patch. This place is a mess of the contrasting styles of a modern shopping centre - complete with (fast) Food Court where teenagers can terrorise everyone else with their bad acne, cheap gold chains and creative swearing - and narrow side streets hinting at a Tudor past.
Think Milton Keynes crossed with York after nuclear fallout.
Anyways, I digress. This wonderfully hideous cathedral is our setting on this fine summer day. The actual graduation has failed to emblazon itself on my mind, much in the same way weddings or funerals do. I hate occasion. The crux of this story is the revelation that hit me standing on the back row of a grandstand knocked together (somewhat rapidly, I worry) for the big picture of every graduate of the Faculty of Art and Media, 2002.
The revelation is this: I’m not going to see most of these people ever again.
I was right, too.
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