2008-01-30 - 4:49 p.m.

English tutorials tend to be a stuffy court where half-dead received opinions are batted about with lifeless fervor. It’s up to you, the cardigan-clad agitator, to stir things up a bit. The first step is to fill your Volvic water bottle with gin or vodka. This way, you can slowly get toasted and it’s your little secret. This not only helps to pass the time, but it imbues the clandestine drinker with a certain amount of confidence with which to hawk up his utterances into the collective maw of academia. Drinking from a water bottle is a popular activity amongst students and teachers alike. Learning all this stuff is a thirsty business that should not be attempted without sufficient refreshment, clearly. They’re a useful prop, these water bottles. You can take big gulps from them when things, as they often do, become too glum.

I perked up momentarily the other day when the badinage alighted upon the platform of Western capitalism. I had read the stuff on the reading list and I was horrified. You wouldn’t believe the shit they’re trying to teach these kids. All the reading material was written by snooty French scholars who seemed to think that globalization with a Z is a bad thing and America is to blame for this corruption of our socialist values. Shame on you, Mickey Mouse and Coca Cola! As if George Bush comes back from jogging and orders seven new branches of McDonalds to be opened in Egypt or else. ‘But don’t you think there’s a political dimension to Hollywood?’ asked my tutor. ‘No, not really’ I stammered urgently. Then, fortified with righteousness, I swept my paper pad aside and swung my feet up on the desk. I retrieved a cigar from my breast pocket and lit it up with my Zippo in one fluid, magnificent motion. Smoking is frowned upon in tutorials these days, but if you perform the activity with sufficient devil-may-care insoussiance it goes all but unsaid. Chomping away, I posed the killer riposte: ‘But sometimes you have to say that our way is better.’

A hush fell upon the room. All eyes were upon me, the crazed capitalist maverick. They were rapt, confused, excited as I revealed unto them their manifest destinies. By this point I had begun to pace while waving my cigar to indicate a certain convicted nonchalance. I quoted the greats - Smith, Darwin, Thatcher, Nash, Friedman, O’Rourke – and made numerous witty asides as I felt my audience melting into acceptance. Hearts swelled and trumpets blew as I sallied forth on my wave of joyous optimism, explaining why the only reason for poverty was not enough capitalism and how environmentalists were the new phrenologists. Reader, I enlightened that room like some kind of crazy truth arsonist. I brought Christmas to Capetown, stole fire from the heavens. There is an unspoken rule in English tutorials that you can say anything you like so long as you sound reasonably confident in doing so. Well, I went one better. I set the bar at a dizzying new height. Not only were my words spoken with love and pride, but they contained nothing less than the narcotic wisdom and truth of the ages. As the applause grew in volume I took a moment to embrace my swooning tutor before bowing out gracefully, wishing not to milk it. I emerged into triumphant sunshine and got the bus home.

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