Changing my ways

Dear Mum,

Times are hard in the graduate world. I’m a statistic that you will have read in the paper and poor to boot.  

As a result, I cannot spend money unless necessary. Full stop. Lock my credit card away. Don’t let me glimpse a Zara.

I’m trying to come up with new, cheap ways to spend my free time.

So I am reading voraciously, something I wasn’t able to do during my degree. Ironic, as I read English Literature at university.

One of Kate’s friends, who graduated with a degree in English the summer before I started, warned me that I would not be able to read for pleasure for the next three years.

I didn’t believe her and naively packed a box of novels alongside the books listed on my course reading list.

I haven’t touched Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Blind Assassin’ since Fresher’s Week. I will read it soon but, somehow, I cannot bring myself to pick it up. It’s like a time capsule, marked with the point at which I abandoned it for a night out, and I don’t yet feel ready to return to that point in my past.

I have, however, thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Help,’ ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,’ ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’, ‘One Day’ and other such bestsellers since I modelled my mortar board.  

As much as I love to read, however, I want to be seeing some human life and so, this weekend, I ventured to Tate Britain.

We’re very lucky to have numerous free galleries and museums.

But it is equally quite right that they are free. Art is meant to be looked at. Unlike a book, a painting or sculpture doesn’t require a length of time to be invested, nor the same form of concentration, nor any level of literacy.

But, still, I felt a real sense of self-satisfaction that I was able to admire such fabulous artworks, by Burne-Jones, Turner and Van Dyke, for no cost.

I was, however, somewhat deterred by some of the modern art. Perhaps I am narrow-minded and a stuffy traditionalist, but a few tea trays on wheels arranged on the floor is not what I call art.

It’s what I’d call a health and safety issue. The proof being that a guard grabbed my arm to prevent me from tripping over one of these trays as I distractedly gawped in horror at some debauched photography.

I like my art in painting form, where things are recognisable, in colour and, basically, pretty.

This, when I thought about it, as I returned to a Rossetti painting, is a little unfair on modern art.

I was required to study a wide variety of novels in my degree, including modern texts that denied the traditionalism of Dickens. I did not gel with all of these novels but I did always accept them for what they were; literature, in all its varied glory. Similarly, visual art is just as diverse.

Confused, shattered, pensive, I went for a coffee and big cake to mull over these internal thoughts. I should say I bought a coffee and big cake.

Oops, I did it again...