The Christmas Balls Up

As each year passes everything is of less incident and as it’s of less incident it seem shorter and more pointless. For that reason if I find time I’m going to write a satirical, dead-pan song called Have an extremely merry Christmas. I’ll send you a link as and when. 

On Monday last my timetable was not reflecting where I was meant to be and that was the first balls up. I missed Diane’s class on the ‘critical commentary’, which is a 500 word piece we have to submit with our 1500 word story. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve enjoyed Diane’s classes because I like being shut in a small room with a nice person for 50 minutes but in terms of actual academic take-out I’ve taken relatively little.

The problem is, in my critical commentary I’ve got to demonstrate how the story I’ve written reflects what I’ve learnt on the course. That will be a ‘story’ in itself, as it was written in 2016. Also, I went to Diane’s office later and we had a cosy chat about how I simply must be able to think of what story influenced me.

“You can bullshit but it had better be good,” Diane said.

Well it will be. Though I certainly have my influences they very seldom come from other fiction.

University is about jumping through hoops. The best I can say is that I think my story is a parable and I probably got the parable bug from the New Testament. Also, it is kind of similar to 1408 in a ‘man is enticed into a supernatural mystery’ kind of way and though 1408 is a film it’s also a short story. Bingo. Do I think the idea came from 1408? No, but it’ll do.

On Tuesday James Oxford (friend in China) persuaded me to drag myself to the 9.00 am lecture. It was worth it just to remind myself why I am increasingly skipping them. If there is any useful content in them it seems like it’s strung out to fill 50 minutes with what could be communicated in five or ten or maybe just written on the back of a till receipt. Or mimed. Or communicated in a failed telepathic experiment.

In the afternoon we presented our 10 minute pieces about Girl Gangs and Tampons. I thought the first group did a good job, the others left me in daydream territory. Ours was well received. We were in a room with a large projection screen and simply loaded YouTube and hit the lights. Laura laughed so much at my bit that she missed half the lines.

Here it is, if you’re curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPk45ieWhDs&feature=youtu.be 

It’s no masterpiece but not bad for less than three hours work. Laura again impressed me by how attentively she listened to the pieces. It's her job, I guess, but she really has something to say afterwards. I would be a bit tougher but then I think she has a gift for seeing the potential in something and that is a valid approach.

I spoke to her briefly about two children's stories I gave to her to read. She liked my story The Magic Trolley, and was clearly unimpressed with my Sleeping Beauty re-telling. Unfortunately I can't submit it because it's 1500 words and I now know the submission should be 1000.

I clean forgot about the Bangor writers meeting and in my absence they tinkered with the plot a bit. Possibly not for the better, but we’ll see. Fortunately, I am writing scene 1 where all the characters meet for a drink in the bar. I’ll give them all clever things to say and then the audience can scratch their heads for the rest of their play wondering where all the good times went.

At 8.00 I went to the Christmas Ball. After Lisa's class one of the students, Caitlin, had shown me where it was going to be held. She said, "James, I loved your performance in that video but I so wanted to punch you." 

So it turns out that a ball is just a buffet, a quiz, a boogie and an open mic. I’m afraid that I missed half of it. After the quiz the DJ turned on the music so loud- I’m talking almost Chinese nightclub deafeningly loud- that I had to run out immediately and that was the end of my evening. I even left my scarf and rain mac behind.

A few professors had turned up but they didn’t like they were enjoying themselves. Maybe it was their turn this year to show their face, or maybe some live too far away. Laura lives in Shrewsbury and said she was snowed in at the weekend and had two and a half feet of snow. No such luck here. Bone dry in the town, even if it settled on the mountains. So anyway, Catherine (poetry proffessor Catherine) had actually come dressed as some obscure female writer who wrote a novel called ‘The Fop’. As she was stood alone by the radiator I got up and chatted to her for a while. Then she asked me where I was sitting. I pointed to the full table I was sat at wondering if I should invite her but it was already crowded so I said nothing and wandered off.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a table myself by Alice, a mature student who I guess is in her late 50s. She was really impressed by my turn in the student video and kept saying I should be in the new Yes Prime Minister. And while I’m chronicling compliments, one of the other students said she’d never met anyone who had such a broad range of general knowledge, which was nice and true, I think. But my knowledge is not really deep enough to have a go at something like University Challenge. I think with a bit of study I might actually consider it.

On Wednesday only about five of us showed up to Matthew’s seminar, so we sat much closer round one table. We were talking about racism in Heart of Darkness, which I’ve not yet read. I made a suggestion that racism isn’t necessarily black and white but on a spectrum and one person can experience racist and anti-racist sentiments at the same time but nobody agreed. I even suggested that to some extent racism is natural. This raised hackles, nobody agreed. Matthew said it was all a social construct but where do social constructs come from? Don’t they come from people? I mean, isn’t everything in society natural? Anyway, I don’t mind being wrong, not at all, but what I do take exception to is the manner in which I was shouted down. Why can’t people discuss things in a calm and reasonable manner?

On Thursday there was a balls up with Alex’s lecture. We all turned up to find that the room that his lecture had been changed to had been stolen by some psychology lecturer and that Alex was nowhere to be seen. The trouble is, people had come in especially. It was re-scheduled to Friday, a lecture to which a considerably reduced number turned up, maybe to avoid the Friday train strike and get away early. One thing I did learn is my essays both equated to a 2:1, which isn't bad for a first effort. It essentially means I was a de facto 2:1 on entry into university (almost all the essential how-to of essay writing was taught to us after this essay- before it was mainly about close reading, which is a given). 

And that is all I have to say. I'll see you in January and may I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new 2018, however unconvincingly?

Fun fact: I’ve been playing Entroducing on my car stereo since I got here, I’m going to swap it for Depeche Mode’s Some Great Reward.