Deconstructing texts

For much of my life I have deconstructed texts: as an English student, then a History student, then a Law student, then an English teacher I have spent much of my adult life trying to glean the significance of texts or discussing the implicit meaning in a text. For many of those years texts were limited to novels and plays and poems and happy hours were spent deciding whether a post-feminist slant could be applied to the works of Emily Dickinson. Or not. On one drunken occasion in about 1990 we analysed the tundric nature of the metaphors in 'Ice Ice Baby' by Vanilla Ice (largely due to this line: 'Take heed, cause I'm a lyrical poet'). We were being consciously arch and clever. Course we were. But isn't that what the study of English literature is about?

However, little did I realise in the post-University world that the implicit meaning of texts would gain a whole new and totally absorbing significance. The texts which take me so much time to analyse are not canonical works of literature. No longer do I worry whether I am getting Shakespeare or Byron or Hardy. No, now the texts I worry about are the SMS version that I receive on my mobile phone. Or more to the point, the ones I don't receive on my mobile phone. Many of the single women I know live under the absolute tyranny of their mobile phone and conscious minute counting as to when the bloke that they fancy is going to return their message. I know I do. Your mobile is fished out of your bag every 20 minutes to check for a little yellow envelope on the screen. Your heart actually thuds at that beep-beep noise. If he doesn't text you back the same day you get all paranoid. You question how soon you should text him back and whether responding immediately makes you look too eager or desperate or slutty or needy. And then when it is sent you've set off that whole rota fortunae of waiting for him to respond again. It is wearisome. It is truly tyranny.

So when did he last text? 23:14 on 04/02/2009. It's not looking good is it?

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world/That has such people in't!