of us. Love is often accused of revealing our irrational self. I’m sure all of you young men have found yourselves head-over-heels for a particular girl. I certainly had at your age. Our strength of feeling, our impetuosity, may pave the way to a relationship. Alternatively, our actions may not have the result we would have liked. Fiction, even tedious old romantic fiction, can shine a light on what this traumatic situation can lead us to do.” “I have here, on my slides, an ordinary love narrative. Sadly for our hero, things did not go as planned.Walters – projector, please. Thank you.” “So – the scene must be set. Tonight’s the night. All is going to plan. He loves it when things go to plan. Usually they go out for a meal, but she says she wants to stay in and have a quiet night; that is fine with him, because it was her night – things had gone to plan. So he prepares it all: good food, good wine, just her and him. What an evening it will be. As he arranges the table he smiles; he feels good, making everything perfect. Each little detail must be flawless, right down to her having smaller cutlery, to suit her little hands. She couldn’t possible say no. He has done everything right.” “Next slide, please.” “You see, his life is very ordinary.There isn’t much to distinguish him from anyone else – except her.He had her.Many great stories have as their theme a romance that defines lives, that consoles, that compensates. Note that down. But that makes a danger of cliché, of course. Everything has been said already. Can we get away with saying that seeing her made any day good? And why do clichés occur? Laziness? No. Because society dictates how we lead our lives, keeping us in line. No one must disrupt the norm. So we all think and speak and feel in clichés.” “Next, ‘click’, please - thank you.”
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