Cupcakes

At my boyfriend's house today, I started absent-mindedly flicking through a book his Mum owned. It was called '200 cupcakes', and as you would expect, it contained a vast array of different recipes for cupcakes. There were all sorts- honey and banana, frosted flower (yes, edible flower with frosting on it), fruit and nut, all beautifully iced and sitting decoratively on a lovely stand with lovely things like rose petals and stuff adorning them.
And I started to realise something: cupcakes make me uneasy. There is something inherently suspicious and mistrustful about a cupcake. I think that the main trouble is that they look so nice. Their appearance makes you want to eat them because you want to eat things that look nice, but it also makes you feel like you shouldn't eat them. It always seems a shame to ruin some nice piped icing by putting a massive bite mark in it. And if they are decorated with inedible things, like flower petals or plastic decorations, you have to pick them off which makes them look less nice. It's almost as if we're not supposed to actually eat them, just sit and admire how delicious-looking they are, like you're presumably supposed to do with this ceramic one. This paradox is unsettling and confusing and makes me feel weird inside.
Also, underneath the nice smell of vanilla essence, cupcakes give off the unmistakeable whiff of toil. Someone will have toiled to make those cupcakes look so delicious. I would estimate that icing a batch of cupcakes properly and meticulously adding all the decorations and things before arranging them nicely on a stand probably takes an average of 45 minutes. And I would estimate that the maximum time anyone takes to eat a cupcake is probably around 7 minutes. So why the toil? It makes me wonder if the only people who make cupcakes are:
 a) People who are desperately bored and have A LOT of time on their hands and get some sort of sense of achievement from really carefully making cupcakes look just so. (This kind of toil reeks of unfulfilment.)
b) People who like to arrange their food but not actually eat it.  (This kind of toil smells of underlying food issues.)

Obviously I am generalising about the cupcake-making populous here. I am sure there are some people who make cupcakes because they just find it relaxing or something. Also, I do understand that it's nice to eat food that looks good. The thing is, though, that you could probably make a cupcake look alright and pretty appetising with a bit of water icing, which takes about 3 minutes to make and put on a batch of cakes, and some sprinkles, which probably take about 2 minutes to put on some cakes. It seems so needless (and expensive) to whack out the banana chips and the fondant icing and the buttercream and the bits of lavender and whatever.
My other problem with cupcakes is that I don't actually find them that tasty. The icing is so thick and sugary I can practically feel my tooth enamel eroding as I eat it, and this distracts me from any deliciousness that might be contained in the cake. To me, the icing tastes of going on a bouncy castle immediately after jelly and ice cream at a kids' birthday party. Sort of sicky. This leads me to ANOTHER problem I have with them- the 'kiddiness' of them. They are cutesy in an incredibly try-hard sort of way, like a girl who talks in a baby voice to make boys like her. Their cuteness is their only distinguishing feature, really, and I feel that as an official grown-up, (I am 20 and a graduate and my title is Ms so there), I should be tucking into something like a carrot cake or a nice slab of banana loaf. I can at least pretend that these things have some kind of nutritional value and aren't going to make me go 'hyper' for 3 hours after eating them.
After some rooting around on the internet, I have found that I am not alone in my dislike of cupcakes. This facebook group are quite extreme in their hatred, showing the strength of feeling that a cupcake can goad people into. This website takes quite an academic approach to their dislike of cupcakes (and the author would also specifically rather eat banana bread or carrot cake than a cupcake, how weird). This person also hates them. I am sure there are thousands more.

On being always the best of the slightly worse

Ok, so I got my degree results today. I got 68% overall, which is the highest 2:1 mark on my course this year. It isn't quite a 1st though obviously.
It's got me thinking a lot about how I always seem to be slightly less than the best: the best of the slightly worse people. I (and the other people who got 68) am the best of the people who got slightly worse than a 1st.
I recently entered 2 of my short stories into a competition and both of them made the 'longlist'. This is a list chosen by a panel from which the shortlist is selected, and the winners are chosen from the shortlist. The fact that I made the longlist means that, again, I am one of the best of the slightly worse. My stories didn't make the shortlist. They made the longlist, which doesn't have the same ring to it. 'Shortlisted for the ---------- ------------- short story prize' sounds a lot better than 'Longlisted for the --------- ------------- short story prize'. But then, I made the longlist. I wasn't just put on the heap of things that didn't make the longlist. So that's good.
During my A Levels, I took an Advanced Extension Award in English. This was an extra little something for people who were good at English. The marks you could get, in prestige order, were Pass, Merit and Distinction. Predictably, I got a Merit. Not quite a Distinction, not as bad as a Pass. A Merit. My work merited Merit, but wasn't distinctive enough for Distinction. This was typical.
All of this sounds like I might be complaining, but I'm actually not. It's quite comfy here, at the top of the slightly worse people. I'm not astoundingly clever, but I am by no means dim. I am slightly, but not notably, above average. To confirm this, I took a (probably not very reliable) internet IQ test. I got the mark of 117, which is above average but not superior. And I think I'm actually OK with being above average but not superior. I am normal. And if I ever want to feel slightly better than normal, I can tell myself that I am above average. (But not superior.)

Things I've been enjoying lately

It's been a slightly crappy week. I've finally moved back to Lincolnshire and am failing miserably at getting a job, or even some work experience. I am convinced that I am going to be unemployed forever and will still be living with my parents at the age of 30. For some reason when I imagine this scenario I also have a beard. In addition to this, my whole family is going to Glastonbury and I can't go because my stewarding place was cancelled at the last minute. I also get my exam and essay results today, which I am very nervous about. Oh, woe is me.
Here are some things that have been cheering me up:
Reading: Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs.
I'm only on page 62 of this, but so far it's like a hilarious version of A Child Called It, (if you can possibly imagine that.) It's about a boy whose Mum goes mad and sends him to live with her psychiatrist. Who is more than a bit zany. I don't normally read memoirs because I tend to prefer fiction and sometimes they get a bit miserable for me. I'm not the kind of person who likes reading about people's terrible lives because I'd rather bury my head in the sand and pretend bad things never happen. Actually that's not quite accurate. I think it's just that I prefer not to wallow in the misfortune of others. Anyway, this is a memoir and I really like it, particularly the style it is written in. It's a pretty fast read as well- I managed those 62 pages just last night.
Listening to: Fool's Gold. This band came up on my lastfm and they are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. They are from Los Angeles and the music they play is African-influenced pop. I can't really describe it but it's great. There's absolutely loads of members as well, so their album has a kind of Arcade Fire-y feel to it because there are lots of different layers to the melody and lots of different instruments being played at the same time. My favourite songs are Nadine and Poseidon. Also, one of the two UK tour dates they're playing this summer is Summer Sundae in Leicester, so I am considering going to that now. I have tried to embed the video for Nadine below, hopefully it'll work.


Watching: The World Cup surprisingly, because I never thought I actually liked football. The England matches obviously haven't made me particularly happy, but some of the other ones have been quite interesting. I haven't exactly sat riveted to the TV, but have enjoyed dipping into them now and again. I always thought when I watched football I was just humouring my boyfriend, but it seems as if a secret enjoyment of it has crept up on me.

Found this for £5 at a second-hand bookshop

I'm really looking forward to reading The Waves and Jacob's Room. I remember reading Mrs Dalloway in my first year and absolutely hating it, but after reading Orlando and To The Lighthouse for my modernism module, I went back to it and really liked it. It's weird to be reading books for fun now, it sort of feels wrong after having to read them for three years.