Clocking Off

19th Feb 2010

End­ings are not absolute when superceded by good mem­o­ries. Laura Hewitt is not ‘run­ning away’

‘THIS is the end. Beau­ti­ful friend, the end.’

The begin­ning of Apoc­a­lypse Now is an ironic one. The haunt­ing sound of The Doors encap­su­lates per­fectly the hazy hyper-reality of Viet­nam and Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s choice of song has been sub­ject to much mean­ing­ful inter­pre­ta­tion. Yet why start singing about the end at the begin­ning? Bit of a plot-spoiler, if you ask me.

It’s a flip­pant but seri­ous analy­sis: the film ulti­mately posits the ques­tion, ‘if the end is ‘now’, is there any pur­pose to the journey?’

I would say yes. All things have to end at some time. There is mean­ing in what we do, even when those things fin­ish, close or die. Apoc­a­lypse Now presents a fairly exis­ten­tial­ist approach to life, but it’s not a con­struc­tive phi­los­o­phy. It is far more use­ful to be con­tent and appre­cia­tive, and carry good mem­o­ries onwards to the next stage.

I undoubt­edly will be doing that. This is my last Clock­ing Off; I pass my share of the reins to two very com­pe­tent new edi­tors, Seb and Rosa, who will make a fan­tas­tic team along with Jude, who will be hold­ing the fort for the rest of the year. I wish them the best of luck and hope they enjoy it as much as I have.

These sen­ti­ments would be in the last issue of term but for that lit­tle chal­lenge of run­ning 26.2 miles I will be attempt­ing in two months’ time. Train­ing for a marathon is prov­ing hard but reward­ing, if only for the amount of food I am cur­rently con­sum­ing to fuel the 6am starts. I can­not wait for race day; I am run­ning dressed as a nurse for children’s can­cer char­ity CLIC Sar­gent. My funds will go to Billy’s House, a Home from Home next to Queen’s Med­ical Cen­tre in Not­ting­ham, where fam­i­lies of chil­dren and teenagers with can­cer can stay dur­ing treat­ment. Come and buy dough­nuts from me around cam­pus in the next few weeks and help me raise money for a bril­liant cause.

It seems right and nat­ural that as the Red­brick door closes, another one opens. In real­ity, I don’t think the Red­brick door will ever totally close for me. The mem­o­ries I have of this year mean I won’t be stray­ing too far. This is not the end in an apoc­a­lyp­ti­cal sense; the expe­ri­ence has meant too much for such nihilism.

I read today that the Oscar accep­tance speeches have been cut to 45 sec­onds so I will fol­low suit and forgo indi­vid­ual thanks. But it’s been great, and I will miss the ‘beau­ti­ful friend’ that is Red­brick as much as the real-life ‘beau­ti­ful friends’ I have made here.

Seri­ously, it’s been such an incred­i­ble jour­ney, and you’re all so tal­ented and gen­er­ous and won­der­ful and you’ve taught me so much about life and how to be the per­son I am today and I just wanted to thank you all for being there –

Cut.

To spon­sor me, please go to:

www.justgiving.com/Laura-Hewitt