Flashback: Michaelmas Column 3

Full issue found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue3.pdf

Everyone – I must call your attention to a terrible injustice. I have been wronged, dear reader, by the abomination of... a picture.

It is not right. Why, one might ask, do I resemble someone with a helmet of hair, much like Donald Trump or Margaret Thatcher? Why is my chin so unreasonably large? Why, I want to know, do I look so much worse in reality than in my hazy view in the mirror of a morning?

Really this is because I usually don’t have my glasses on when I look in the mirror so everything appears as a pleasing blur in which spots are miraculously banished by the simple virtue of being wildly short-sighted. I can’t a fford contact lenses for everyday use. They fall out in the pool at water polo and for some reason the dailies are run like hooch, in a racket at extortionate prices, but without the redemption of a Lawless-esque Tom Hardy figure and his swoonworthy cardigan. 

So when my glasses aren’t on I feel like I’m pretty much Miranda Kerr, minus Orlando Bloom and an adorable baby son. Turns out I’m actually not. Turns out that I no longer have the same body I had when I was 18, or even 20. I play much more sport now; I pack muscle on through weights training. I am solid compared to my flighty 18 year old self, and I quite like it because when someone gets tackled by me on the pitch or in the pool, they know about it. Which is good. And cycling out to Homerton for my lectures is no trouble at all. 

The side e ffect is that I feel like a massive heifer when I stand next to the current second and third years, who all appear to be made from shapely twiglets, all lithe limbs topped with coi ffured hair. You wouldn’t know it from the picture, in which it appears to have been GLUED TO MY HEAD, but my hair is normally rather large, in the style of Caitlin Moran or Solange Knowles. Usually I wear it even bigger, in the hope that like wearing a rather large hat, what appears between the hair and the floor might look slimmer. This logic is usually infallible and can be the only reason why I look so much . . . larger in my headshot.

I’m even blaming the headshot for my complete lack of success at the Freshers’ swap this past Sunday. Not only did Fresherss eyes glaze over when they realised how old I was, but I spent two hours (TWO HOURS THAT I COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING ‘STRICTLY’) flirting with someone only for him to call up the headshot and my column on his phone and then promptly turn around and latch himself to someone else with his mouth, like a leech, or a lamprey eel. So please, Editors. It’s di fficult enough dealing with the competition and the age thing. Just give me a chance to prove that my hair is not actually cast from Plaster of Paris.