Now, my mum is a good mum, but sometimes she can be a cunt. She went ballistic when I failed my thesis. In all fairness, it wasn’t a real dissertation, just a collection of vague ideas of what a dissertation might be about. I could have chosen something shorter than Proust, though, a Baudelaire poem, like Isa, or a Marguerite Duras novella, like Karl. No, I had to prove something to myself. I had to read all seven of the books, in French, annotating everything, avoiding all people, avoiding all fun. I spent a big chunk of my life writing it, and it was such a waste of time. It did nothing for me, except for changing my life.