In Praise of Bump Club

Today is the final full day before Fictions goes to the printers and I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that I have consumed far too much alcohol in the past week and my brain feels as if it's been pickled - while inebriation may be conducive to creative work, it surely must be in moderation.

The good news is that I just saved a bunch of money by switching my car insurance to Geico. Or something similar. Just when you thought corporate Guyana was irredeemable in their philistinism, I've just been made recipient of the [hopefully inaugural] GT&T publication grant. It makes me feel almost conflicted that the dominant colour on the cover of my book is a bright red.

Now to return again to alcohol consumption. The persons largely responsible belong to a motley crew of young men referring to their Saturday drinking sessions rather uncreatively as "The Bump". Now I've mentioned this group in passing in one post and got a thorough busing out because I happened to casually refer to the consumption of unpalatable animal parts.

Now that cussing out notwithstanding, over the past few months, I've been more or less inducted into Bump membership and the mixture of camaraderie and imbibing has served to help me through some trying times. The only dirty little secret I discovered recently about members of the Bump, the only potentially stigmatic thing, is that the bulk of them are from Queen's College.

As a President's College person, we generally tend to take QC to task for their uppitiness and their penchant for bullshit institutional formalities. This sort of thing is readily apparent at the Bump but they've somehow managed to infuse it with a PC-like coolness, rubbed off no doubt from former PC student Kieron Meredith who made the only major mistake of his life when he
left PC to go to Queens.

That said, I've come to develop a healthy respect for the Bump membership. It feels good to be adopted to a group of young professionals who all seem to be excelling in whatever profession they happen to be in, but are still grounded to enough to get together every Saturday to talk skunt. For me, that is a sign of true pedigree, not the pretentious airs that most QC people have about them.

I am actually looking forward to this weekend's Bump meeting, after the (ahem) reunion last weekend. I can actually hear the stupid singing of that Latin school song now.