Bibliophylax

I was quietly tutting at the seemingly inevitable misogynistic slant to coverage of a bright young woman doing well at University Challenge. (Even in this relatively balanced story the choice not to include Lauren Schwartzman in the photo speaks volumes.) And I was struck by déjà vu:

Sarah Fitzpatrick, the captain of Magdalen College, Oxford’s University Challenge team, attracts a small but discerning fan club. ‘I’ve had a lot of mail – there are a lot of peculiar people out there,’ she says. University Challenge isn’t usually a showcase of glamour, but 23-year-old Miss Fitzpatrick gladdens the eye of its mordant presenter, Jeremy Paxman. ‘He’s extremely nice – a perfect gentleman,’ Sarah discloses. —Daily Mail, March 6, 1998

Difficult to ignore at the centre of the Magdalen team is the beautiful and horrifyingly clever Ms Fitzpatrick, a team captain who can make the phrase ‘We don’t know’ sound like an invitation to a Mensa pyjama party. Even Paxman falls in her sway, exhibiting moments of unsurpassed sensitivity and gentleness. Fitzpatrick’s right-hand man is a maths genius called Jones. It is to be hoped that this shiny couple don’t ever involve themselves in unprotected sexual congress; the prospect of a strawberry-blonde intellectual master race is too much to countenance at this juncture. —Observer, April 19, 1998

Forget the Spice Girls. Now Britain has an idol with brains. One shining talent blazed through last night’s final of University Challenge when Magdalen College, Oxford, saw off Birkbeck, London in a tense final. Magdalen captain Sarah Fitzpatrick answered a barrage of questions with a charming smile and the awesome rapidity of a Gatling gun. … Her appearances in the series have brought sacks of fan mail. ‘It’s been very nice, nothing peculiar. Most of them have been lovely and flattering.’ —Evening Standard, April 22, 1998

That [Birkbeck] narrowly failed to win was due entirely to the sparkling leadership of Sarah Fitzpatrick, beauteous captain of Magdalen, Oxford. Her unashamed and aggressive flirting achieved what no one in history – not even John Redwood at his most coquettish – had done before: she pierced Jeremy Paxman’s titanium shell to the point at which, even after prolonged Magdalen dithering, the words ‘come on, come on’ seemed to die in his throat. —Evening Standard, April 23, 1998

Magdalen Fitzpatrick looked like a debutante who fronted an indie band in her spare time. The coquettish way in which she mewed ‘I don’t know’ and ‘We don’t understand’ even had Paxman turning pink with pleasure. Her sidekick De Jongh dozed through most of the contest, rousing himself only at a French film question, flicking away his fringe, yelping ‘Catherine Deneuve’ and leering aristocratically. —Scotland on Sunday, April 26, 1998

I can’t decide what irritates me more: that ‘clever girl exists’ is still news, or that in nearly eleven years it’s got no better.

What do you mean?

15 February 2009

Unless I’m very relaxed, I don’t take things at face value. I’m rarely very relaxed. So when I see the instruction ‘list 25 random things about you’ my first thought isn’t ‘I own an expensive TV set I hardly use’ or ‘I have read the Bible cover to cover, even Chronicles’ or ‘my late mother once shook George Graham’s hand’, but:

Random? What do you mean, random? How am I supposed to randomly choose something? This is an act of self-definition, isn’t it, so by ‘randomly’ choosing something I am saying something about myself and in knowing that while making my choices I will nullify the point of the exercise.

This is why I get a different home on the Political Compass every time I try it. Why I don’t know if I’m INFJ or ISTP (I’m pretty sure I’m I—, to be fair). Why I’m surely an outlier whenever YouGov polls me.

I change my Facebook profile most times I see it. For example, ‘Interested in Women’? I get that they’re asking about sexual orientation for people who use Facebook for dating, but I loathe the construction, and I worry ‘interested in’ conveys ‘actively pursuing’. Half the time I loathe it enough to delete it, then next time I add it back in. But is it more self-defining to answer or not to answer? Aaargh.

Self-definition frightens me. And I ‘think too much’, in the parlance of our times. (And possibly I read Rumpelstiltskin and The hobbit too young, but I think learning about true names was a useful survival skill: one less face presented is one less target.)

Be that as it may, I trawled Facebook and GReader for friends’ answers, and some of them apply to me too, so I’m borrowing them (if it’s good enough for Time…). You could call it ‘random 2.0′, but 2.0 is so last year.

I hate confrontation and will go to great lengths to avoid it.
I hate making mistakes. The fact that I made a mistake usually bothers me far more than the consequences of said mistake.
I know very few people who waste more time on the internet than I do.
I will only think I’m truly successful when I hear myself on Desert Island Discs.
I hate being bad at things, so much so that if I cannot be good at something, I will refuse to try.
I value good spelling and grammar.
I cry at sad films. And TV series. And books. All the time.
I am seeking a way to leave the UK.
I like math and I don’t see why anybody finds it hard.
I like moving house, particularly the part about getting rid of old, outdated, no-longer-useful personal effects.
My steadfastness and loyalty have caused me to stick with things (habits, people, jobs, places) I should have given up.

When I grow up

1 February 2009

I want to write image captions for the Guardian. It seems such a fun job!

Here’s a perfectly loopy wire story (apparently “experts said the spirit could be the ghost of a Roman soldier”, rather than “experts said this was bollocks”), perfectly subverted by a cheeky caption: