16
DAUXCITED
Finishing university is a tricky point in the life of a young Carrott,
because although I had been unanimously voted the friendliest graduate
in SOAS history, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next. I would
lie in bed at night, my mind awhirl with the big questions of life. Did my
future lie in England, China or Korea? Could I bear to be apart from Ollie
again? Do bald people get dandruff? How do you know you know, you
know? Are we human or are we dancer? What’s love got to do with it?
Should I stay or should I go? The clash of options clanged around my
head like a massively symbolic cymbal, and my mind was full of
questions and copyright issues.
I always say life is a journey and we must pass through life’s
phases till the day we leave earth. I don’t believe this at all, but I
always say it anyway. The good thing about being a student is that
there is a routine laid down for you. You go to classes, study, meet
friends, play aerial broomstick games and steal social media platform
ideas from your friends. But everything changes the moment you
graduate, and you wake up on a Monday morning with no idea what to
do or how to fill the time on all your digital clocks. It suddenly hits you
that in three years of world class education you never learned how to
whittle. You can still only disco dance at an intermediate level. You still
don’t really know whether eyebrows count as facial hair. It’s a lonely
time too, even with imaginary vegetable pals to keep you company. All
your friends have gone back to their cities or countries, and you’re not
sure when, or even if, you’ll see them again.
To cope with missing Ollie, Muncho had taken an interest in classic
Russian literature, and most evenings he would force Rex and I to
listen to great passages from his vegetable versions of Dostoyevsky
and Tolstoy. This helped distract Rex, who was pining for Squilla, his
chickpea chiquita, as she was at sea. In fairness to Muncho, War and