I don’t know about you, but this
Idler’s totally spent. In fact, since
this is a newspaper, grossly overspent.
In times like these, I am
empathetically reminded of Tingles,
my gout-ridden pet chinchilla, for
whom the nice man in the white
coat prescribed “a good long sleep”.

Indeed I day-dreamt such a
‘sleep’ would be my lot during the
supervision I just attended. In the
event, the occasion more closely
resembled a Nuremberg Trial than
an elitist academic privilege, except
I had neither shiny buttons to admire
nor the excuse that I had been
ordered to commit my crime of
copying and pasting the entirety of
my plagiarised introduction into my
(now doubly plagiarised) conclusion.

It’s not my fault. I have, quite
simply, been here for too long. I
even conducted a nostalgic inspection
of a tree the other day just to
remind me of what salad looks like.

And yesterday I hailed the Head
Porter as “Dad”, and inexplicably
intimated to him that I could no
longer remember which way round
boxer shorts should be worn. How
am I supposed to function academically
and extra-curricularly, when

I feel about as on top of my game
as a dormant owl which is being
roguishly defecated upon by a roving
band of bran-flake-munching
dormice (dormice: game; get it?)
Nor am I the sole contributor to
this orgy of loathsome lethargy. I
was recently informed by the captain
of the newly-formed Blues procrastination
team that a despairing
clique of academics have channelled
their pedantry into a mischievous
bid to add ‘lecture hall’ to the entry
for ‘dormitory’ in Roget’s latest
thesaurus. Similarly, I hear that
unprecedented demand has driven
Sainsbury’s to strike a lucrative labour
deal with the Cambridgeshire
Constabulary for assistance from

convicts to package microwaveable
macaroni cheese.

Eight weeks is an unreasonably
long time. It is too long. It is unacceptable.
Put in context, even Anne
Widdecombe’s mother, I’ll wager,
didn’t have to undergo eight weeks
of labour. Drug companies would
have twice the number of shareholders
if the competitors of the
Tour de France had to endure an
eight-week cycle. Someone should
do something about it.

Terms must be shortened
dramatically to fortnight-long
duodecimesters, with a strict ban
on work imposed on Fridays to
dodge the detrimentally disgruntling
implications of fifth-day
blues. Work materials should be
categorically confiscated between
duodecimesters to prevent the
keen injustice of clandestine scribbling.

Proctors should be retitled

‘Delocutors’ and perform the
sole duty of arresting the larynx
of anyone discovered toiling in
contravention of this measure: in
all probability the culprits will be
the bastards who ask questions in
lectures. Lastly, I propose a ban on
Cliff Richard records. Cliff Richard
is an idiot.