Always look at the shoes

I really don’t feel like writing this week. My minds feel sluggish and soggy, but here it goes. 1500 words of filler coming right up.

Monday was okay. I don’t remember it being a bad day. Quite liked Raisa’s lecture on medieval lit, which she alternates with Sarah.

On Tuesday I slept through the morning lecture (in my bed)- still medieval lit- and discovered in the afternoon seminar that I didn’t miss anything important. It was about how to translate Middle English and the seminar I attended later covered the same topic. There’s really not much to it. Read it aloud, modernize the spelling, beware of false friends, look up words you don’t know. I found our friendly professor’s effusive praise at how we took a middle age recipe in our stride a little over the top but better that, I suppose, than attacking us with a cricket bat.

In the writer’s meeting it was just me, Bethany, Nicholas and a girl friend(?) he’d brought along (who was mostly a spectator). Reminder. Bethany is a slim, graceful brunette who I think wrote quite a smart scene for the last play- a contretemps between Jack and Rose of Titanic fame. Nicholas, who I sometimes mistakenly call Nick (there’s another Nicholas in our group, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned him), means ‘follower of Jesus’ and he does have the long hair to match- though has no Christian impulses I’m aware of.

We usually have our meetings in the big lecture theatre in the English college but today we were in one of the old classrooms in what used to be called Top College but is now called Main Arts. We sat three abreast with Nicholas sat opposite like a producer, taking notes and overseeing the proceedings. My cunning plan to dodge the onus of coming up with more or less the entire scheme for the next play was thwarted. The penguin idea seemed to have done a runner, but they had another one about a factory that was making steel but decides to make soap. Bethany liked that idea and I would at least be content to write my bits for anything so I kept quiet but there were only two of us and Nicholas kept asking me what I thought. “And?” I asked. “It’s a steel factory that decides to make soap, but what else?” That is as far as they had got. I said I wasn’t feeling it, Nicholas said we could drum up some others. So I said how about we do something called ‘six degrees of separation’ about six likeable people in a university who all have dark secrets based on societal taboos? And I gave various examples of what I meant with characters and scenarios. We’re now running with that idea.

I don’t have anything on a Wednesday but Laura Dryer and Catherine Rullens were each doing a reading of their new works at 6.30 in the evening so I decided to pop along to Pontio to (sort of) support that. A quick reminder. Pontio is a modern building on the side of the hill the main university is built on opened by an MP a few years ago. It’s a kind of arts centre the public have access to but you don’t really see them in much with a cinema, restaurant, bar, cafe, lecture halls, student union and various spaces students can hang out and study in. I pass through it practically every morning to get to my lectures and seminars on the hill and almost always take its many flights of stairs up to level 5, where I hope for an unimpeded exit out into the fresh air to get my breath back.

The readings were held in PL2. Catherine was launching a spineless volume of poetry in honour of her departed Russian husband, Laura’s had a story long listed on a short long list for a prestigious £30,000 prize and read it for us. It was a somewhat surreal experience, because if I had to guess what Laura might write a short story about it would very likely be one about a refugee called Abdul. And in fairness it’s the sort of thing certain prize panels on certain types of left leaning awards are looking for. She said after the reading that it gives her refugee a voice, although IF I heard right – a hypothetical person- she has no personal experience or even secondary experience of refugees from Afghanistan. Generally I’m wary of the muddying of reality with inevitably flawed speculation and personal agenda in fiction, especially if the whole point of the story is it’s giving someone a voice. However, I think you have to go with the flow as well so watch this space, because my story about my struggle for acceptance in war torn Zambia- called I’m sorry for all the things that are true will wipe the floor next year. 

Catherine’s poems were sad utterances, like a distraught bag lady trying to find some buttons she’d dropped. The joyous empathy on Diane’s face was the most priceless thing in the room.

Fun fact: Laura and Catherine were both wearing black and white sneakers. Catherine’s were Nike with white swoosh and whit base. Laura’s were more plimsoll with white toecap and bits of gold glitter.

I bought a copy of Catherine’s book for a fiver and whilst I was talking to her Alex Weaver came up to me and warmly congratulated me on my score of 80 on my English assignment. Apparently it was the highest, not ever, a third year student has managed an 87. I had to go and spoil it by pointing out I’d made a mistake which wasn’t spotted. He said oh come on the marker had a 100 essays to mark but he’d also said he’d double checked the essay so...I don’t know. I don’t think it was anything to do with that.

I asked Alex who I could see about the bibliography issues that kept the mark down. He said the first thing to do was book a meeting with so and so and I was really hoping he wouldn’t say that because I had a brief chat with so and so about my Keats essay and so and so wasn’t really able to say anything about it.

Somebody asked Catherine if she would sign their copy of her poems. Then I thought I’d ask her to sign my copy of her novel, which I felt kind of awkward about because she’d picked up some things to leave. Then someone else- the American guy who said he liked my poem- asked her to sign his book and by this time she had already lots of bags in her hands which she didn’t want help with. Laura said she should have brought some stuff to sell.

Thursday is another tough one. A 9.00 AM start with the film studies module and a double period but on the other hand an easy peasy course and a nice guy running it. In the afternoon prose class Diane gave us a couple of great pointers about places we can submit story ideas to. I’ll let you know if anything comes of that.

On Friday I noticed this in the poetry seminar. There was one female professor, eight female students and three male students including me. Six of the women were wearing black and white trainers, two were wearing Doc Martin boots, one had a pair of plimsoll shoes which were sort of grey with black flecks, if I recollect. The men were all different. Blue trainers, black plimsolls with brown toecap, my brown M&S shoes.

And that just leaves Saturday and Sunday, a lot of which were spent feeling sorry for myself. On Saturday night I drove to Tesco, passing students in fancy dress costume again and generally looking like they were having a good time, a reminder that I have turned up for university twenty years late. When I got to Tesco it was closed. I drove back again.

I’m now playing a Bohren & Der Club of Gore CD in the car, Black Earth, which is really desolate bleak music for losers to lose themselves in out night. It makes the speakers vibrate no matter how low I turn it down and no other CD has done this. It must have some incredibly low bass notes...

I’ll leave you with a conversation I had on POF.

Date: 14.2.18, 1.40AM

Username: curiousgirl76, age 41

Profile Pic(s): Professional black and white model shot of a very young woman, cut off at head, probably not a 41 year old

Her/him: I’m looking (This is a response to my tag, which says ‘Not looking, not not looking’)

Me: So I see

Her/him: Shame Your Not

Me: I am

I’m just not hitting on people

Her/him: Ok

Me: Don’t take this the wrong way but I think you’re a man

Impersonating a woman

Her/him: (Pastes same photo) All Real Very real and very filth

Me: And why only one picture?

Her/him: My choice who I show

(Repeats) My choice who I show

Me: Well your profile screams FAKE. My guess is you are a man trying to cheat other men out of money.

Her/him: Get lost I’m not your loss

Me: I’m already lost thank you