The outsider, or 9 weeks

Hurray, the clocks are turning back. I’ve decided to write this in an hour, then it’s like I didn’t have to write a blog this weekend.

On Monday I drove to Menai bridge, Anglesey (my nearest NHS dentist) at lunch time to go for my first dental appointment. I don’t recollect ever having met a dentist who asked me so many questions. In my relatively short appointment he asked me what I thought of North Wales, what I was studying, what I wanted to be, whether I would settle in Wales once my studies were over. He was not Welsh himself. He’s Indian and says he used to work in London. He had a limp handshake. Just as I was leaving he asked if I’d climbed Snowdonia yet. And as I drove out the car park he shouted through the window, asking whether I’d considered taking Welsh lessons. Okay, I made the last bit up. But only the last.

He also put my mind at ease over my teeth. I was convinced I had bad gum recession on the top layer, he says no, I just have big teeth. Actually, I’ve looked at a photograph of myself at 32 and there has definitely been some recession. Maybe because the surgery doesn’t offer gum grafts and I'm on an HC2 he didn’t see the point in flogging that horse.

Mundane fact, the car park ticket was a pound. That's the first time I've paid anything to park anywhere but I do have a £40 parking permit I need to buy for the uni.

We had a visit from a guest speaker at 1.00 - Kevin Crossley-Holland- so instead of driving back to my campus I drove directly to Alun and took the risk. I would guess students are not supposed to nab parking spaces reserved for professors and admin staff but I was able to park opposite the class room.

The gentleman giving the talk was born in 1941 and name-dropped a great many writers he’s had dealings with, including Auden and Seamus Heaney. He had a tennis ball sized area of sweat under his arm that expanded to the size of a dinner plate as the talk progressed. In the Q & A somebody (FYI the girl who said ‘I don’t even know what metaphysics is, mate’) asked him why she should continue to write when the room was full of writers. He was unable to answer because he’s partially deaf and didn’t hear her and then she rephrased the question slightly. But essentially she wanted advice about writing. He rambled on for a while when he probably should have kept it simple, finally losing his way and saying she should ask somebody else.

My advice? Write something good and suck up to the right people. And if you can only do one of those make sure it’s the latter. Of course, what he didn’t mention was that being in Oxford he would have avenues open to him that are not open to students in Bangor. But when it comes down to it he was there to flog his book on Norse Myths. I enjoyed him reciting things in Anglo Saxon.

Tuesday

Tuesday was horrible. Probably the nicest thing about it was the first lecture given by a lovely lady in leather boots and retro floral dress on Ozymandias. She did invite participation from us and to be honest I don't think I was at my best. For once, or maybe twice, the insights from other students were better than mine. After the lecture I heard two girls talking about Kevin Crossley-Holland's talk the day before.

Girl 1: "I switched off."

Girl 2: "He was very intelligent but not very coherent."

After Raisa's child lit lecture I went up to and asked her about something she'd been saying in that lecture and ones previous. She often makes the point that children's stories have some very grizzly things in them that you'd think were not suitable for children. For instance, Foxe's Book of Martyrs was apparently read to children. I haven't read it but suffice to say you wouldn't want to be a matryr in the 1500s and presumably Foxe went into all the unpleasant details of the executions.

But the thing is, life was different in the past and you can hardly compare our literature with theirs without looking at the conditions they were living in.I said to her that in the past the grim reality of life was much more in children's faces so it's hardly surprising they have harsh things in them. Whereas today in the UK, many children tend to be sheltered from many of the harsher aspects of reality. She said something like, "Well actually you are wrong because my daughter is worried about the people in Syria." Now, her child may well have drawn a little drawing of the poor children in Syria at primary school but that is quite superficial. She is hardly going to be traumatised or exposed in the same way as a child living in a war zone or a developing country. But there was no time to discuss this, only time to be told I was wrong, and blind me with some academic terminology which I confess went over my head.

But that was really nothing compared to Laura's seminar later. I just wanted to crawl into my flat and stab myself. Rather than the usual one period semina Laura conflated her two classes today, so that we had to all do a 2 period seminar. It was moved to the J P Theatre and on the stage there were things like balls of string, pine cones, chairs and sheets and throws in different colours. Her brainwave was that we were all going to split into groups and make a den. Then we were going to sit in our den and write a poem or story- either individually or together- about a den.

Only, she didn’t put us in groups. Now, I always find it painfully embarrassing when we’re asked to form groups because I’m an outsider. Or clinically depressed. Or a coward. Take your pick. All the students know each other and have formed their cliques. And as soon as she said okay, off you go, they immediately went off into their groups with nary a second glance. So I went for a long piss and came back. Laura said, “Do you not have a group?”

I said, "No."

She said well why don’t you be the “Invader?” So I ran with that idea and spent my time writing my piece from the POV of an outsider. Then Laura asked all the students to read their pieces. Every student, except me.

As for the other pieces, the best one conceptually was a poem/rap made up from den passwords. That as spoken by the only other mature student, a woman. She is probably a mother and finds it easier to work with the children but is probably also normal, which I patently am not.

When I got back home I was so tired and depressed I didn't bother with salsa. I don't know if I will again.

Wednesday was a little better. Nobody had done Matthew Durham's homework and he didn't seem to mind. I had a nice chat with Dianne in the corridor after our seminar.

By Thursday the week is almost over. Poetry with Carol in the morning was as relaxed as ever. It's so relaxed that there is no seminar next week. She's having a cataract operation and needs to recover. The afternoon lecture with Alex was about how to research an essay question.

Now,I’m not going to lie to you. Every time the weekend comes round I become rather despondent. It always takes a big chunk out of it. Then I climb back in the saddle and get on with my existence. There are two schools of thought about this situation. One is that at my age it's highly unlikely that I'll be able to turn things around. That's my school, in case you haven't heard of it. And I might write a book that expands on this theory, called You are miserable and always will be. The other theory is the 'elephant tied to a twig' theory. It posits that if an elephant is always chained to a log it will become accustomed to being restrained and will not realise it is not restrained if you tie it to a twig. In other words, my mind is conditioned by assumptions but I can re-program my mind. I can think more positively, behave more positively, and develop new habits.

I have drawn up a ten point plan- and this feels like it will be about the millionth that I have in my life- to improve. Not to make a massive difference but to make an appreciable and valuable one. I don't have time to type it out because the clock says I have 3 minutes. But suffice to say, I'm going to give myself 2 months to do things I have never done before. Because simply by repeating the past formula nothing can be improved. After 2 months, regardless of how good a stab I've made at it I am going to resort to plan B if I don't see a change. And plan B involves a visit to the doctor.