Bitch club

So last night I went to a new book club, solely because they were reading this book, which I found relentlessly interesting and also sometimes funny and very clever and inspiring. I was excited about attending the new book club, although I made the mistake of meeting up with Ses for a quick drink beforehand, and we got talking about boys and when 18:30pm came around, my desire to stand and walk down the stairs of the South Bank Centre (Southbank Centre?) and join my fellow readers had waned somewhat. But like a good little struggling intellectual, I did what I'd said I would do, and took my place in the circle of strangers. It was a good mix of nationalities, ages, genders (well, only two of these as far as I am aware) and characters, and we had a frisky, wide-ranging discussion over the course of about ninety minutes. None of this, however, was aided by the lady who compered the evening. An employee of the South Bank Centre, she is, I'm sure, a well-intentioned and clever individual. She seemed really quite attractive too, if writing that will make up for the vitriol I am about to unleash. Goodness me, she was the most excruciatingly bad book club compere in the relatively short history of such a role. You know how, when people are pseuds, and trying to discuss something, and they want to appear as though they're just weighed down with the sheer burden of the fascinating concepts and ideas that are stored within their grey matter, and they scrunch up their eyes and/or rub their foreheads in an attempt to massage out the wondrous truths within or perhaps in order to ease the pressure on their straining temples? And they speak in a very specific language of crapademic half-baked guff, i.e. "I was particularly interested, y'know, in the way in which the concept of nation kept coming up in the book, and boundaries, and, y'know, I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but is it possible that... y'know... I mean, going back to what you were saying about football, and tribalism, and that idea that, I mean, picking up on Mike's point about travel and fear, and then thinking about, y'know, the identity of the writer, his Polishness as opposed to his desire to be seen as an African, compared to, as we said earlier, his status as The Other when he was in South America... I mean, would anyone like to take that further?" In between eating handfuls of free crisps, I was left with the burning, heart-pounding desire to start commenting, "I'm particularly interested, y'know, in the fact that you think we are so, y'know, overawed by your status as compere that we won't, y'know, notice that you're talking absolute shit, and trying to use intellectual concepts in order to prove to us that you know what you're, like, doing?" But I didn't. Honestly, though, is it too much to hope that someone might be able to string a coherent sentence together once in a while? Growl. It was fun though. And breathe.