Tuesday 18 September 2012

Decadence, Debauchery and Hedonism

Yesterday, whilst watching The One Show (because it's cool to be a middle-aged woman, ok?), I caught a brief article on Freshers Week, and as a upcoming Fresher (T-minus 5 days and counting) I found what they said rather interesting.

Youth in the British media are routinely portrayed in a highly negative light. We are uncouth hoodie-wearers who hang around on street corners drinking and swearing, our singular goal in life to disrupt the lives of those adults around us, and corrupt the minds of the innocent. Girls tend to get it even worse. Boys are expected to be a little bit mischievous, girls have to be the symbol of maturity. However, we are slutty, have no respect for our bodies, provocative - both in dress and manner. We lack the grace and elegance of the elder generations, who would never have, not in a million years, drunk as much as we do or gone out as much or kissed as many boys (or, heaven forbid girls) as we do.

(And don't even get me started on how every year, when we perform better in exams than the previous year, we aren't congratulated, our success (and the success of our teachers) isn't celebrated. Oh no! The exams must be getting easier, the markers must be getting lighter. We, the decadent youth, cannot be more intelligent than the elder generation, with their endless wisdom.)

However, this One Show news clip was comparing how we might find our Freshers week as opposed to how our parents experienced them. I am the first person in my family to have gone to university, although Dad does have a degree he studied from home when I was a baby, so nobody has ever spoken to me about their Freshers experience. The parents in the clip were saying how they thought that in their time at uni (in the mid 70's) they would have been much more hedonistic than we are. Pints were a mere 13pence rather than the £2.50 they are today, for example, so they argued they would have been getting much more drunk much more regularly than university students of this generation. Equally, university was free. They weren't going to leave with goodness only knows how many tens of thousands of pounds worth of debts, so if they didn't quite achieve the grade they wanted they didn't mind as much, so they wouldn't take studying as seriously as we would. Therefore they would go out more, party harder, not give a damn about missing the odd lecture due to a hangover.

It is very rare that I get to hear an intelligent article about how the youth of today, my much besmirched generation, aren't that much different from the previous ones, who were just as pleasure seeking, just as uncouth and corrupting as we are. I was a really nice change.

Speaking of youthful excursions, last weekend was one hell of a weekend. It started on Wednesday night, when I hosted a "Come Dine With Me" style party. Which, in itself, doesn't sound too cr-azy. However, the quantity of alcohol consumed was slightly alarming. 6 people came to the party. Three of whom drank wine. We got through 3 bottles. One of whom drank cider. Again 3 bottles. Two of whom drank beer (4 bottles) and gin. Woke up the next morning with a bit of a fuzzy head to say the least.

Thursday was my besties birthday - 19! Crazy! - so we went on a pub crawl around our local villages. We started off at 1 in the afternoon and I left at 9pm, we the rest of them carrying on till 12am. I feel sorry for my liver just remembering it!

Friday I had to work at 7am till 1pm (and didn't even get my break!) and then I was off into Norwich to buy a birthday present for another bestie, pick up some mates and take them to his for the weekend. Friday night was so much fun! We stayed up till 4am drinking and dancing and playfighting and having deep conversations with new-found-friends about physics vs English and rape and pants and stuff.

Saturday, once we had sobered up, we went for a swim in the river, the boys in their trunks, us girls in our bras and panties. Diving in was exhilarating, and the amount of times one of my friend got pushed in was hilarious - he soon learnt to stand away from the endge. The highlight was probably one of my new-found-friends finding a frog in his pocket, which another on of my friends then put in his mouth before letting it hop out safely with the words "I thought it was a prince" or maybe me getting slung over one of my mates shoulders and him jumping in or maybe even new-found-friend diving in to save a conker dropped by a small childin a passing canoe.We bought some nice food and cooked ourselves a delicious pasta dish, before settling down to watch Doctor Who (which I may have napped through a little and will probably write a review of becasue I don't think it was as awful as everyone else thinks it was) and some basket-ball film starting Will Ferrel (which I also napped though) and wait for midnight (and my mates birthday) to roll around. We then had mightnight Martinis and played the worst game of Top Trumps ever, before calling it a night.

Possibly one of the best weekends ever, well until I had to go to work Sunday morning!

TTFN! xx

Currently Reading: Flappers and Phillosphers (Kindle Edition) by F. Scott. Fitzgerald

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