In recent times, this column has become a bastion of male homosexual erotica. I’m here to change that.

Cast your minds back to the sultry summer days of Trinity Term 2015. I, a naïve (ok, well not really) young Classicist, arrive at my first meeting with my tutor that term. When I walk in, tutor and students alike are giggling about another, rather eccentric, Keble don, who just happens to be my favourite evil genius around. One undergrad is particularly on point with acerbic quips. I glance across the room at the purveyor of such flawless banter. She is on the cute side, but with that evil glint in her eye that makes me want her there. 

And it just so happens that Sarah will be my tute partner this term. The difficulty in achieving my classical fantasy is that I have already spent a steamy night or two with the majority of her best, male, friends. On one of these occasions, my unlucky night-time companion was deaned for noise complaints relating to the proximity of a certain communal bathroom to a junior dean’s bedroom. I assume that to her I seem like the towering pinnacle of heterosexual promiscuity. Little does she know that my interest in ancient history isn’t limited to uprisings; I’ve always had a distinct penchant for Roman and Greek (non-Platonic) caves.

I spend my next few tutorials giggling a little too much at her sardonic back-and-forth with our tutor, each tute moving steadily closer to her side of the sofa. Sadly, it seems she’s more interested in flirting with our professor than she is with getting to know the finer details of my… personality. We do, however, share a number of not-too-fleeting moments of eye contact. Could it be that she knows that I’m yearning to see something more than her tutorial notes?

The next week, following another round of repartee in the don’s room, Sarah casually slips into the conversation that she is in fact very queer. My face, and elsewhere, lights up; is she suggesting that, like me, she’s interested in a more hands-on approach to peer criticism? I decide to take the plunge at the ball we are both attending that night.

My evening becomes devoted to hunting her down. Eventually, I find her in the main stage tent. She’s looking amazing in a black dress that clings to her great body. Her personality and wit aren’t her only huge assets. We dance together for a while, hands finding their way to unknown territories. The sexual tension is mounting, and we finally kiss, hotly and sensuously. We make the excuse of needing to get a tampon and quickly make our escape to the bedroom.

Almost before we’re through the door, our ball gowns are on the floor. She pushes me onto the bed and climbs on top. My intrepid classical adventurer begins to explore my southern hemisphere with fearless pleasure. She’s definitely done this before, and her graceful fingers quickly lead to noise levels that could easily result in another deaning. Sated, we lie in each other’s arms as the sun rises over the post-ball carnage outside. 

We continue our dalliance for the remainder of our tutorials together. I wonder if our professor is aware that his two students’ fingers aren’t spending most of their time typing up essays. Our tryst is great, but I inevitably feel the pull of my voyage of sexual discovery, and by the end of term I’m back in the Bridge smoking area with one thing on my mind.

Suffice it to say, though, that Homer isn’t the only thing I’ll remember this term.

I, like the vast majority of my university attending social peers, have a Facebook account. Like my particularly sneaky peers, I also have a second one under a slight variation of my name that I will not put in print for fear of people finding it. It’s stocked with slightly embarrassing childhood and family photos (including an entire album dedicated to school picture days in which my siblings and I sport an exciting range of mismatched polo shirts) and whichever whistle-clean pictures of me and my friends having wholesome fun I could find. Now five years old, it has served its purpose well. Throughout high school I could fearlessly allow myself to be tagged in edgy (and usually anxiously posed) house party pictures, even if they included such shocking props as cigarettes, mini skirts, middle fingers and even (gasp!) Smirnoff Ice. I could smugly watch the likes roll in, safe in the knowledge that my family, all blocked, would never see them. My personality front of a lame, tame, well-behaved mathlete was impenetrable, all thanks to my computer skills being slightly better than my parents’.

Over the years, as my family members either died of old age or got slowly less technologically incompetent and more unwillingly tolerant of my teenage behaviour, I found myself unblocking them one by one from my side account and adding them on my main one. Lucky them, I thought, getting such privileged glimpses into my super-cool life as a high school going-on university student. Naturally, the thought that most of them didn’t particularly care never occurred to me. This narcissistic obsession of mine was only encouraged by my great aunt Elaine’s enthusiastic commenting on anything involving recognisable Oxford objects or backgrounds and my mum calling me once a month to list the various boys I had been tagged in pictures with to see if any of them were now my boyfriend.

Eventually, I had so few people left on this second account that my only activity on it was one annual logging on in August to reply to my Grandad’s solitary birthday wishes. The bastion and final upholder of my family’s once proud working-class social conservatism, he had never really let go of the politics of the late 70s, or the innocence of my seven-year-old self. Considering his fury when I once offered him a “facon sandwich” – referring, of course, to the delicious vegetarian meat alternative; he had misunderstood me as swearing with a heavy accent – I never thought he’d approve of pictures of me getting bop juice poured into my mouth while dressed like a French maid, or being put in the bin outside the Rad Cam (shout-out to any prospective employers reading this).

I’ve like to claim that I acquired enough maturity and humility to approach The Final Unblocking on my own, but that is sadly not the case. I was instead prompted to by my sister, and more specifically, by a picture of my sister at a house party wearing a miniskirt and drinking Echo Falls. Being considerably cooler than I was at her age, she was even sitting on her boyfriend’s lap. I was thus shocked to see that my stern granddaddy had not only liked this picture, but commented. And what was this comment – a severe reprimand about delinquent behaviours? A passive aggressive expression over concern for her welfare? No, merely, “LOL.”

I immediately called my sister to ask if he’d ever brought up her Facebook activity with her, convinced this couldn’t be his entire reaction. It wasn’t. She told me that he’d told our mum he was worried about her drinking, and that he strongly disapproved of that Jack Davidson character who kept cropping up. But what could he do about it? Impose a curfew from his flat in Spain, or get another, more well-behaved behaved granddaughter? She’d rather that he knew about this stuff and not approve and love her anyway than barely know her at all. Sheepishly and in awe of my little sister’s great wisdom, I unblocked and added him, only to find that he’s got old photos too. We like each others’ pictures every so often, but I’m not sure I approve of everything he did in the 70s

After three years spent studying for a BA in English Language and Literature at Oxford, I came home to my parents this June with a first class honours degree and scabies.
“It’s not an STI,” I repeated desperately, as I handed over the cream which the pharmacist had given to me for the whole family to apply. At first, I found it all quite amusing, to have contracted such a bizarre, archaic-sounding, contagious disease. It felt like the icing on the cake of what had already been a comically stressful year. However, when it came to the actual logistics of ridding the household of these irksome mites, my humour began to vanish. As I furiously shoved yet another load into the washing machine, my mother told me off for slamming the door.
“I’m sorry mum,” I apologised. “It’s just that I’ve been feeling kind of down lately because, well… I’m twenty-one and unemployed and I have scabies!” Embarrassingly, I burst into sudden, uncontrollable tears, prompting my bemused mother to inquire as to whether I thought I might be suffering from a small bout of depression.
And thus began my life as a graduate.
For the following two months, I spent the majority of my time complaining about My Future. I was rejected from an internship at a major publishing house after two interviews for having too little experience (by which I think they meant unpaid experience). I was rejected from Pret for a part-time job making sandwiches. I whinged endlessly about the job market whilst applying for all sorts of unsuitable positions. Needless to say, I did not receive many positive responses (as a raging vegetarian, I was never going to have much luck in my application for the role of Features Writer at Meats Trade Journal). Frenzied, I drew up various charts entitled things like ‘Ella’s Graduate Plans’, containing sub-headings such as ‘Travel’, ‘Employment at Home’, ‘Employment in London’, etc. Variables included ‘Masters’ and ‘Money’ and ‘Debt’. Sometimes there were even illustrations. Given the immense thought to which I initially gave planning my graduate life, it seems peculiar that what I then eventually decided to do was chosen on such a whim: I moved to a houseboat in Paris to become an au pair.
I think I chose it because it sounds good. It sounded good to tell a friend with a scholarship at Grey’s Inn that I would be spending a year sailing on the Seine. It sounded good to tell an ex with a training scheme at Goldman Sachs that I had escaped to Paris so I could finally write my novel. And anyway, to me, it sounded better than fermenting at home for any longer. I did not know what I wanted to do just yet, and this way I would be – quite literally – floating.
However, I was to find that gay Paris was not quite what I had imagined. You know that expression, “It’s like working with a child”? Well, I know where that comes from. I always thought I was quite good with children, but my respect for childcare workers has increased exponentially since my employment as an au pair.
Homework was the worst. Whenever I would open the little boy’s homework diary, he would invariably roll his eyes at me and loudly bellow, “Oh la laaaaa!” Writing two sentences would take us an hour and a half and a series of increasingly scandalous threats. Lego was confiscated. Pudding was compromised. His very own iPhone 6 was banned for two weeks. Another source of boundless conflict was dinner time. To my great distress, I was to discover that these miniature French people liked neither ratatouille, nor brie, nor garlic. All they wanted was pasta, which I would have been happy to provide for them, except that it would have been deemed unacceptable by their parents.
My life had spun rapidly from The Graduate to The Nanny Diaries. I thought it was going to be like Amélie.
Intimidating power-parents like the ones I worked for colonise the streets of gentrified Paris, brandishing their chihuahuas and Chanel and chic live-in au pairs, and masking all trace of familial unhappiness. In my case, what eventually threw me overboard was the criticism I received on child-rearing from these people who, within a few days of me being there, had left me – in all respects, a stranger – to bath their kids. There were several other reasons why I decided to leave: the lack of wifi in my room; the repeated nit infestations; and just generally having to live with someone else’s family after three years of independence. However, it was mostly because of the way I was made to feel like The Help. And so, I threw in the towel.
Now, I am about to return to my childhood home, jobless and clueless once again, and while I acknowledge that I am incredibly fortunate to have a home to return to, it nevertheless feels somewhat disappointing. In my four months of graduate life so far, I have been unemployed, a drop-out, and periodically contagious.
In Paris, I did not succeed in finding my Nino (like Amélie), and nor did I write my magnum opus. However, I have learnt that: a) I need a job which I find intellectually stimulating, whatever that may be; b) Paris is a beautiful city and one day I would like to return not as an au pair; and c) I will never live on a houseboat ever again. Also, now more than ever, I have such an immense feeling of gratitude towards my own parents for the way that they raised me (themselves), for their continual presence even in their absence, and for putting up with me through the tantrums, the angst, and now the uncertainty.
Fundamentally, I think my problem over the past four months has been that I do not know what I want to do with my life. I do not have a clear path, like my Grey’s Inn lawyer friend, or my Goldman Sachs banker friend, or my Teach First teacher friend. And I hope that it may be a comfort to others to know that even people who may seem like they have the brightest prospects are sometimes still left in the dark.
However, our generation will be working well into our seventies, and I want to find something that I will love spending the next fifty years of my life on. So, for now, I am choosing to be happy, even though this means taking some time to make the choice. And, until I come to a decision, I am going to look for temporary employment at home to tide me over financially, and spend a little time with my own family. In a house. On land. Where I can eat as much ratatouille and brie and garlic as I like.

Since it’s #VeggiePledge month, it’s important to raise awareness of meatreplacement meals which will help even the most committed meat-eaters fulfi ll their hastily made pledges. Tofu is a very versatile ingredient which deep-fried in dirty egg batter is certainly a good way to cut bacon out of everyone’s favourite sandwich. The most diffi cult taste to replicate is certainly the salty tang which bacon brings to any party. However, using this batter, tofu becomes a salty and chewy heaven of guilt-free meat replacement.

Ingredients:

4 slices of (firm) tofu

Lettuce

Tomato, chopped

Mayonnaise

Bread (for sandwiches)

Plenty of sunflower or vegetable oil

Soy sauce

1 egg

Flour

Salt and pepper

Wrap the tofu in a tea towel (or kitchen roll) and put a weighted plate on top in order that the excess water comes out of the soya. Wait 30 minutes and it should be ready to fry. Whisk soy sauce into your egg and put in a small bowl. In a separate bowl, mix flour with salt and pepper. Dip the slices of tofu into egg and then into the flour. Having already heated up the oil in a pan (deep enough to submerge the tofu slices) place (carefully, so that the fat does not spit) the tofu slices into the pan. After a couple of minutes (roughly 1 and a half) turn the tofu slices over and let the other side cook. Once both sides are brown, take the tofu out of the pan and place on kitchen roll so that the majority of the excess oil comes off. Place all the ingredients between two slices of bread, as with every sarnie. The sandwich will, I promise, remind you of bacon, as the crispy, salty and peppery batter bears all the hallmarks of bacon without any of the moral, environmental or calorific guilt.