‘Don Juan’ gets outdone yet again by the unique, one-of-a-kind cultural critic par excellence, Ray Umbrella.
This morning — a fine morning indeed — I found myself roused from a deep slumber to the sound of what sounded somewhat like a fire alarm. Hmph. Forbidding one the ability to smoke in one’s room is less than inhumane — it is to deny what makes one human. I ought to bring this up in front of the United Nations. I make a mental note to do this after lunch, before putting a cigarette in my mouth and pretending to light it for theatrical effect, which I will keep there for the rest of the day.
Upon wresting myself from the cocoon of 17th-century guides to animal husbandry I had been perusing the night before, I decided that today, I would be French. Not only would I converse exclusively in the language (I put forward a stellar, groundbreaking performance at GCSE — it was only the dullard teachers who couldn’t appreciate my avant garde command of the infinitive), but I would also conduct myself in an exclusively French manner: abstruse, pseudo-academic, and excessively rude. So, no change from usual. I also decided to adapt to the French time zone, though, to avoid cliché, I intend to use the French Polynesian one, ten hours away from the present day. Imagine those poor French Polynesians — always living in the past! I ought to write a book about it.
After glaring at a coffee so hard it evaporated, which took around 5 hours, and a quick glance at an illustration of a croissant, I took a brief perambulation around college for the rest of the morning (by which I mean the evening) wearing a coat which I borrowed indefinitely from the collection of the National Theatre. While on my walk, I visited the mail room, and saw my pigeonhole empty. Empty! Whatever had been intended for me must have been misplaced. I then proceed to spend the next hour rifling through every other pigeonhole to find out wherever my letters have gotten to. Aha! A letter — this one addressed to ‘Henry Jaspars’. What a funny way to spell my name! I go back to my room, and, with my mid-nineteenth-century pearl letter opener, reveal a ticket to the Master’s Lodge.
I am not usually disposed to such trivial displays of pomp and circumstance. But at this point in the mid-afternoon (or should I say, the middle of the night), and, having cancelled my private viewing at the Tate after a slight misunderstanding with a Mondrian, it appears that I am, very uncharacteristically, at a loose end. The horror! After having rotary phoned my entire rolodex, and hearing no one pick up (the fault is all theirs; nothing to do with the fact my phone isn’t even plugged in), I decide, against all my better judgement, to attend the ceremony for the benefit of all you readers. A noble sacrifice, indeed, but this is the merely the job of a critic: to inform, selflessly and bravely, regardless of the cost to himself.
So, after donning my new contribution to formal attire (a sheer Laotian kimono accompanied by a Luxembourgian tunic and beret made of Croatian goatshair — all terribly expensive and completely ironic), I once again leave from my room — through the window (the door is too gauche) and waft three floors down. Upon dusting myself off, I make my way to the scene — the front gate of Trinity College, Cantab, my former alma mater (I have resided in Whewell’s for the past year, unnoticed — I am so thin that if I stand side-on I am completely invisible). After a misunderstanding with the porter, who did not understand, despite my repeated explanations, that ‘Henry Jaspars’ is just a slight misspelling of ‘Ray Umbrella’, I was forced to join the cattle class — the hoi polloi— the public! — outside the college, like a misbehaving dog. No one treats R. Umbrella, Esq., BA (Cantab) like that and gets away with it.
After some unimportant business with an old chap in some kind of red robe waiting for yonks at the gate with some gentleman who looked suspiciously like the Head Porter and some babbling from within, I have had enough of waiting, and rush forward to knock on the door. The crowd, awed by my presence, go silent, while the Porters, desperate for an autograph, run towards me at lightning speed. I know the effect I have on some people. I knocked, once, upon the Great Gate, with all the strength I could muster, and then once again for dramatic effect. The gate, a gigantic wall of wood (everything reminds me of him…), opened as if by magic, and there I was: like Moses parting the Red Sea, the way opened out in front of me, to the adulation of the scholars junior, senior and in the middle. Finally — an entrance appropriate for me, myself and the proverbial I.
This moment of elation lasted for the briefest fraction of a second, before I was — rather roughly, might I add — knocked down by what can only be described as a colossal scrum. Presumably there was some credible threat upon my life (most likely by a disgruntled theatric), and the porters, scholars, students and most of the public had kindly taken it upon themselves to save a national institution — by which I mean, of course, me — by tackling me into a large black car and driving me off to somewhere as far from Trinity as possible. I am rest assured that Trinity knows how to treat a man who has contributed to the lettered life in such a way as I have. Faux pas? I don’t even know what that means.
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