Quelle Disaster!

Thomas Clark

2001

Cast your mind back to the University of Glasgow, summer, 2001; or, as you most likely weren't there, let me fill you in. It was gloriously sunny, warmer still in the Philosophy department right down at the far end of the campus, where the thick windows looked out onto the myriad-bookstored roads which led to Kelvingrove. But I, unlike you, was there, in one of the seminar rooms, tilted casually back onto two legs of my chair in what may or may not have been an ultimately vain attempt to look cool; an attempt to look cool which was inspired by the enormously serendipitous stroke of being assigned for my presentation partner the incredibly yummy, tastefully eye-shadowed girl from my Hegel class who never seemed to speak to anyone and who, sitting across from me here, I was now discovering was sweet and shy and self-conscious rather than aloof. The summer seemed likely to stretch off as far as the roof-topped horizon, and just as prettily. Discoursing upon something or other very clever and erudite, the buzz of a seasonal wasp nearly made me lose my balance, cool, train of thought, hopes of yummy, eye-shadowed making-out on the soft couches of tiny cafes. Trying not to even dignify the distraction with a glance, I lazily flicked out the Coke bottle in my right hand, contents long since devoured by dehydrating warmth, in what I took to be its general direction.

The tiny plastic 'Thwock!' was solid and satisfying in even the still and sticky air, the little black dot arrowing with dip straight into the pastel green bin. I knew enough about girls to resist my reactive instincts, which were to jump from my falling seat with my arms aloft and a scream of 'SCORE! Did you see that?! Did you see that?! That was sweet!' Instead, all that passed to indicate my emotional inner tumult was the clatter of my chair's front legs to the floor and the birth, like a cosmos, of an immutable smile of surprised joy on my face. No, of course girls don't find these things as impressive as boys do, best to underplay the whole thing really, but still, it was, as per my initial reaction (which I had had no reason to revise), pretty bloody sweet, anyone could see that.

'Why did you do that?' came the reproachful, wounded voice. 'It wasn't hurting anyone.'

'It... it was a wasp.' I replied with surprise of a different kind, hoping that somehow she had mistaken it for some more benign form of existence, like a bee or a zebra or something.

'You didn't have to kill it, though.'

Now this was a bit much. To have one of the most impressive achievements of my entire life witnessed only with disapproval was one thing; but to have inexplicably become the villain of some pantheistic Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll was quite another. And nor was I going to admit that it had actually been an accident, not when my whole self-image had already found a new prop in my hitherto untrumpeted ability to swat wasps into bins with empty Coke bottles. None of that for me, thanks, no, not today. And then it was all like the writing of some predictable parable of wilful self-destruction, six months of lovelorn pining from a distance about to be swatted like, like a wasp! And from the closet of my myriad personas of indignant self-defence came Just William.

'Well, I s'pose I should've just let it sting me, I s'pose that's what I oughter have done. Yes, I s'pose I should've jus' let it sting me to death, and then I guess you'd be happy, you and your ole wasp, with me dead and you not. Funny sorter an idea that, wasps being more import'nt than people. Funny that there aren't more lors about it, about people havin' to get killed dead off wasps just to keep you happy. Yes, I'm very s'prised to hear about that lor. I'm simply statin' a fact. Huh! Wasps!'

And the rest, as they say, is silence. Silence in the seminar, silence in the hall, silence on the streets and in the avenues and even in the Union, where there was no-one who I knew. Silence. If a bee had buzzed, I would have heard it. And already I had the faintest twinkling of an idea that this was going to be one of those stories you tell yourself about yourself, to stop you from forgetting who you used to be, who you are.

That's it? That's an entire day? Yes, and a pretty full one, for a student. I got up, made an agonising, socially awkward mess of a promising relationship, went back to bed. Probably had a Pot Noodle. Spicy Curry, if you're interested. Poured so much hot water into it that it was just a diluted, liquidy disaster. Threw it in the bin, in the end. It was miserable. Funny the things you remember.