Special offer

We are just about to head into reading week, which is a fancy name for half-term. When I look back over the week three events stand out. One was when I bumped into one of the lecturers- Irish, about 30- who was dressed in a red woollen coat and red woolly hat in a picket line two or three people strong outside the entrance to Main Arts. She stopped me and asked me if I knew what she was doing outside and I asked was it because it was a nice day (it was one of the loveliest mornings I’ve seen in a long time, the air was so fresh and clean and the sun so bright, see pic above) and she said no the wicked Vice Chancellor had tied her pension to the stock market, which means she might be 10K worse off (or 10K richer?) one day. I said well that’s fine but none of my professors are striking. And she said blah blah blah and I said blah blah blah? What does that mean? No I didn’t because she didn’t actually say blah blah blah, I said what do you want me to do about it? Just read this leaflet and familiarize yourself with it and be aware, she said, as if there was a pension purloiner on the loose. Later in my poetry class Catherine Rullins said she was sure we supported the professors although she wasn’t personally striking because she belonged to a different union. Why is she so sure? Maybe I support the nasty vice chancellor, eh? I’m sure he has his reasons. Maybe I, a 42 year old with no pension and no money and nothing but a large collection of toilet rolls to my name and 3 laptops that all have something wrong with them don’t care to be stopped by young wealthy professors whining about their ickle pensions. Okay, I’ll shut up. I mean what is it with politicos? Why do they always assume you’re on their side? Okay, I could have been more sympathetic. I will practice sympathetic nods.

As for the guy in the wheelchair outside Morrisons with his dog. Guilt trips me every time. Spare any change? He says. I avoid eye contact. Thank you sir, he says. Every time. One of these days I will pluck up the courage to say, whatever happened to disability benefit? Or can you walk?

Event 2. Bumping into Kerrie in Morrisons on Thursday. James, she says. Kerrie, I says. They’ve run out Cox apples, I think I’ll get a bunch of bananas. Are you going home for reading week? She says her mum is coming down for 2 days. Do I want to go out for dinner with them? So that might be happening. I then gave her a run down of everything in my basket and then left her. I put my shopping in the back of my car and unlocked (and so on)…

Event 3. So I was talking to Kerrie on Facebook messenger a day or two later who said that she is into COS play and BDSM. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what COS play is but she explained it to me.

cosplay is where people dress up as their favourite characters etc for comic con or other geek conventions like that, and petplay is a little bit more on the 18+ side of dress up, its a type of BDSM

The latter is leather and whips, master and servant and so on. Apparently she has tried ‘Vanilla relationships’ but has been doing BDSM for 5 years because of the layers of trust and understanding you can build up through it. This girl is only 20 and she already way ahead of me. I feel that sometimes with the students. I may have some advantages over them, but they are part of a new generation with 21^st century compliant teeth savvy in all sorts of cultural and technological embellishments that our generation was not and I just feel so old. She thinks I’m cool because I’m published, but does she know I have sold one copy of my ‘published’ book? I don’t think so…

You know what’s funny? Well I think it is. So Kerrie gave me an excellent little pep talk about how I should be pleased with myself because I’m at university, whereas she knows someone who is 48 and spends his days ‘literally shitting himself’ and waiting for his son to clean it up, eating pizzas, snorting cocaine, chain smoking and complaining about life’ and that’s not me. (I expect mirth at this point). I’m at uni and I’ve got plans and I’m published and I just find it funny because I need to be compared to somebody in that situation to look relatively good. But it was a lovely pep talk, which I would have just copied and pasted but I fear that would be breaching privacy laws.

There is a 4^th event, come to think of it. My discus thrower has been in sporadic touch with me for the last three months attempting to engage me in conversation (which she is not very good at, I think she has learning difficulties) and today she said she’s up for a no strings attached relationship (in so many words). Now don’t get excited. I’m not that attracted to her and I told her that she would only get hurt, it’s not fair etc and she said ‘nah’, let’s just meet and so we might in a couple of weeks in Llandudno and we might not, I don’t know. I’ve looked at all her Facebook pics and it’s really just her breasts that are keeping this finely poised. So I said maybe there might be some intimacy, maybe not, but whatever happens it wouldn’t be long term and she said fine. But I didn’t come out with the you deserve one who will love and cherish you and want to keep you forever because I know she is struggling as badly as I am and neither of us really have that option.

She told me that since we’ve been in touch she had one date with a guy with no front teeth who never put his hand in his pocket. I felt for her, I really did. I gave her a pep talk. Shortly after that she made her offer.