snobs

This is something I have learned during my time at uni: English Literature students are the most inimitable snobs. That is, when it comes to pen and paper.

Writing materials, granted, are something of a necessity when attending any course at university, but never have I seen such a glorious array of handmade, embossed, and leather-bound notebooks and fluidly elegant pens than when scanning a lecture theatre full of English Lit students.

You can tell when someone has forgotten their pen - they heave their shoulders in a great sigh of consternation and begrudgingly enquire if their neighbour has a spare. The trouble is that it is not a question of merely borrowing another pen, it is the dismay at having forgotten your own hand-picked implement of perfect weight, nib-size and ink type; the pen which, after trawling through and trialling endless others, you finally rested on as the perfect vehicle for transferring your flourishing ideas to paper. The ink which does not blot, spread or seep through your page, but skates uninhibitingly across its surface.

The page which, naturally, is the perfect size, thickness, and hue to complement your pen of choice. The page bound within the book which you weighed in your hand before making the decision between lined or unlined, and thereby constraint or liberty. 

Then there is the thin margin between quality and ostentation, refinement and frivolity. There is an unspoken principle of vanity which dictates that one's writing is worth reading, and therefore the writing materials should display these luminary ideas in a manner befitting their worth. It is not mere scribbling, it is a masterpiece. We are not mere students, we are Writers.

Honestly, we'd use quills and parchment if we could.

English

Ok, so Facebook has - once again - changed its layout. Or, rather, the layout of our profiles. Now, I think Facebook is great (despite the somewhat sinister The Social Network...) and I've been a relatively avid user since I was persuaded to join when I was 17 (ish).

I do actually quite like the new profile layout, although I don't like the fact that the "education and work" section comes before the "about me" section (it smacks a little of LinkedIn and smug middle class-ness. But anyway...), but I do like the little row of pictures and details under our names (because, in my smug middle class-ness, I rather like having my university course and languages that I speak under there...).

But it was when I was filling in my "languages" section that I came across that ubiquitous linguistic loophole: "English English." That's right. I was able to choose between speaking "American English" or "English English." Is this really what it's come to?!

Now, I do concede that there are some inevitable (if incorrect... *gasp* that's right, I said it) differences in the spellings of perfectly commonplace words such as "colour" and "recognise" that Americans seem to have adopted, but surely - surely - we're still speaking the same language?!

Granted, at times, the Americans may seem mumbling and lolling in their speech, but surely we can sweep those differences aside and say, definitively, that "Yes, brothers, we are united in our speech of one common and glorious language."

Either that, or I'll just refuse to put "English English" under my name on my profile.

Disclaimer: You Americans are lovely really. I love your trilling, honeyed voices.