“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well,” Virginia Woolf tells us, “if one has not dined well.” Cutting to the truth of the matter as ever, Woolf nevertheless gives me cause to quibble. The formal, candle-lit, smartly-dressed connotations of ‘dining’ are smugly satisfactory in their own way, but dinner is not the meal through which we can really achieve the balanced fulfilment Woolf envisions. 

Dinner marks the closing of the day; there’s no new hope in it. Once one has settled down to dinner, one resigns any right to carpe diem – one instead seizes the carp and tucks in. Its communal ideal is what we find in Woolf’s To The Lighthouse: “Some change at once went through them all, as if this had really happened, and they were all conscious of making a party together in a hollow, on an island.” The rich food of dinner time ties us to sleep and to each other.

I could say a great deal about lunch, but little of it would be complimentary. It has always struck me as the most difficult of meals, coming as it does in forms as varied as a sandwich wrapped in cling fi lm or a steak with all the trimmings. What is lunch? I leave this dilemma to other pens.

Breakfast is, of course, the most important meal of the day. All my worst days begin with a bad breakfast. It is the meal that promises a whole new day ahead, and it must be attended to with care. But breakfast taken alone at an early hour can feel perfunctory. The truest unification of reinvigoration, communality, and inspiration comes in breakfast’s sexy younger brother, brunch.

First suggested by Guy Beringer in 1895, brunch is the perfect solution to finding breakfast too light and lunch too heavy. It brings people together but it also provides the individual with a way to recharge and regain confidence for the week ahead.

I learnt the craft of brunch at home. I have memorised the recipe for American pancakes, and found the perfect time to boil eggs. My father rises early on the weekends for a bike ride and by the time he returns my mother and I are wandering the ground floor in our dressing gowns. We make eggs with cheese and spinach, coffee is poured, and the three of us eat together at the oversized dining table. We delight in it more than any other meal, buying treats to go with it like smoked salmon or brioche.

When friends visit, we lose all sense of proportion and ridiculously over-cater. Some of my most vivid childhood memories involve laying the table for a huge eight-person brunch. In the kitchen, the adults would battle spitting fat to produce bowls of bacon and sausages. A basket of pains au chocolat was passed around. These could last past midday and even require a refill of the large cafetière, but we were still left with the entire afternoon to dispose of as we pleased.

In brunch, time does not exist in the same way that it does elsewhere. It glides on in measures of “one more coffee” rather than minutes. There is no strain to achieve in brunch. Satisfaction is reached through the completion of a crossword with friends, or the slant of the sun through the window, or the discovery that there are indeed more hash browns. At Somerville, brunch is served for twice as long as any other meal; the concept of midday becomes so elastic that it can be spread to cover several hours of reading, talking, eating, and drinking.

Going ‘out’ for brunch is, I grant you, a different experience. But what it loses in affordability and homeliness, it makes up for in luxury. Breakfast foods are among the easiest to prepare, but there are certain things that I will never have the inclination nor the imagination to produce. Professionally made French toast or eggs Benedict are a gift worth paying for. 

In this setting, the natural community feel which comes from brunch at home or college is put under strain. Instead it is replaced by an air of celebration. This is a tool to be used as frequently as possible. I have comforted old friends in hard and hungover times by taking them out for a reassuring full English. I have forged new connections through a mutual appreciation of eggs Royale. I have been for countless birthday brunches in London and Winchester and Portsmouth, each of them with a group of people I want to see happy and well-fed.

Brunch is not just a meal, it is an experience. At over 100 years old, it is still relatively novel to us, and to some is still appears unnecessary. This is precisely the point. I do not need brunch, but its very uselessness removes any pressure on the meal. Instead, one can relax, refresh, and enjoy.

As an Oxford student with an accent, I am frequently asked upon meeting people, “So, where are you from?” To this blunt query I have three possible answers: Somerville College, if I’m feeling sarky; Scotland, if I want them to like me; and Glasgow; if I don’t. To say that Glasgow’s got a slightly different reputation to the rest of Scotland is an understatement. The latter seems invoke for most Southerners a magical, Macbethian world of castles and ceilidhs and Glenfiddich and faeries, the former a gritty city full of tracksuited Buckfast drinkers committing knife crimes all over the place (while teenage and pregnant). Though it may be true that Glasgow is very different to the rest of Scotland, these reputations are, somewhat, unfair. Trainspotting was, as any indignant Wegie will tell you, set in Edinburgh, and though they may have their fancy castle, it’s Glasgow that has the culture.

Described by Vice as “a paradise,” and not just because of the cheap and abundant drugs, Glasgow is not-so-secretly a cultural hive. With one of the best and most beautiful art schools in Europe and more hipstery music and theatre venues than lamp posts, there’s always fifteen things you could be doing right now, and they’re all less than twenty minutes away on the genuinely excellent bus system or adorably miniature one-line underground system. You can seek out cool house, electronic and techno club nights in semi-refurbished warehouse and train arches if that’s your thing (the latter even has a FunktionOne soundsystem), or you can down one pound Jaegerbombs to the sounds of the Sugababes in one of Glasgow’s many LGBTQ+ or friendly clubs. 

Whether you take your tea with scones or shisha, party White Lightning or White Russians, eat veal or vegan, you’ll always find your fix. I’m not exaggerating – the Willow Tea Rooms on Buchanan, the main shopping street, let you enjoy high tea in the beautifully preserved rooms designed by the internationally renowned Art Deco architect Charles Rennie MacIntosh. Tchai-Ovna serves over 100 types of tea and offers hookah pipes for rent. Although voted Britain’s vegan capital in 2013, you don’t even have to leave the train station to find top quality Angus beef steaks – just pop into Alston Bar & Beef.

Glasgow doesn’t just have things to do, it has things to see: due to its immense wealth accumulated through its involvement in shipping and trade, the second city of the Empire is packed with beautiful Victorian and Art Deco buildings. There are a vast selection of museums and galleries that showcase not just the work of international artists but many of our own making. While the Turner Prize exhibition on right now is not to be missed, neither are the beautiful and culturally critical works of the Scottish Colourists and the Glasgow boys, to be found at Scotland’s oldest public museum, the Hunterian.

If this all gets a bit overwhelming, you can always find some peace and quiet in one of Glasgow’s many lush and gorgeous parks, such as the Botanic Gardens, home to the iconic Kibble Palace hothouse and the Bard in the Botanics outdoor Shakespeare productions in summer. If that isn’t enough of an escape you can drive the hour it takes to get to the infamous Loch Lomond, surrounded by the The Trossachs protected National Park. Once you’re up there, you may as well drive a little further and pay a visit to Loch Fyne, along with its famous fresh oyster bar (Madonna’s favourite restaurant in Britain).

Glasgow may not quite evoke the glamour of the other cultural meccas of Europe, but it doesn’t have the prices, either. For a cheap, trendy, busy weekend away, it’s the perfect unexpected location.

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.