One line

The strike continued another week, I saw a rat in Tesco Extra car park, I drove my car up a snowy hill at 4.00 AM and was lucky to reach the top.

Strikes and stripes

The strike is still on and though my professors didn’t seem to be caught up in it- it seems a couple of them are- and I didn’t have medieval English last week. I can’t say that bothers me. The slides for the lectures and seminar are online and it gave me a bit of extra time on my essay on The Battle of Maldon, which I was moderately pleased with.

That said, I used a freebie word-processor called LibreOffice and when I saved the document the layout of the essay got screwed up slightly when it was saved in Microsoft Word (which it usually doesn’t do) and I didn’t realise this until it was too late. When you submit your essay to TurnitIn it lets you preview it, but guess what, the preview is the size of a matchbox, so all you can really see is that it’s the right or wrong document. Then when it’s submitted you can see it full size. So that means I will needlessly lose marks.

If that seems like the most boring thing you’ve read all week, how about this? Prague has just re-elected Miloš Zeman for another presidential term.

No, you’re right, that is mildly more interesting than my news. I guess something did happen on Tuesday in the writing group, but I'm still trying to digest it. We had a new member who explicitly said a number of times is not a fan of gossip, so I am happy to respect that and not say anything about them, besides a couple of general things. One is, I turned up to the meeting suffering the strangely delayed ill effects of two sleeping pills I'd taken the day before and found it hard to maintain my usual level of alertness. Our new member wanted to talk about a play they've written- something to do with a transsexual, a hot topic amongst young progressives in the UK- and did so for a full hour before I left- the business of writing our group play apparently adjourned. So I sat with chin on hand trying to focus and admittedly analysing our intriguing new playwright more than I was their play. At one point this person turned to me and said, "Are you all right?" but it seemed more out of vexation than concern, judging by the non-response to my sleeping pill explanation. I left shortly after the hour mark and went to get some sleep.

Kerry didn’t show up at Diane’s class on Thursday, so I have no more news about her. The dinner never happened, I don’t know why, but the thought was really nice. Diane gives us a topic we have to write about each week and post on an internal blog. Guess what the buzzword was this (last) week? Strike.

I had a really crappy weekend- it feels like my life is all but on strike- and I finally got out of the funk I was in by going for a late night drive on Sunday. Drove across Menai bridge which is all lit up with red lights at night and was empty and into Anglesey. I drove through Beaumaris (for the first time) where my parents lived 45 years ago, a rather grand little town and completely empty at a little after midnight. Then I drove a bit further on and turned round. I stopped at Shell and put fifteen pounds in the tank. Four pints of milk was £2, so I didn’t bother. I was going to pull into the college road on the way back and give you a tour of the library but there was a Ford Transit blocking the entrance (trying to reverse) so I continued on. When I walked back to my accommodation block some young men were outside doing something to a car. Either they were trying to steal it or they were putting go faster stripes on it. I need some put on me.

Winter doesn't know it's beaten. We had an unexpected fall early Thursday morning.

It's reading week (again)

And because it's reading week this post will be a short one. To compensate, I made some rather uneventful videos on the arctic blast, which I have been sharing with some of you on a one to one basis. In lieu of a literary disclosure of normal proportions I will also post some random photos I've taken in the last few weeks. 

Otherwise, all I have to relate is a rather odd little tale about the Asian woman I've seen around on campus, who turned out to be Japanese. I got talking to her on Thursday and discovered she is a master's student studying psychology who also lives in my block. After chatting for a couple of minutes she asked if I would come to her poetry recital at The Harp Inn. To be honest, I didn't much want to hear a new acquaintance recite Japanese poetry but I agreed anyway and asked when her spot was and she said 9.00 PM. I duly arrived at 9.00. She was outside having a cigarette and confirmed she was just about to read her piece, so I went in, purchased a pint of cider (£2.50) and sat down at a table. 

In the far corner there was a large table a DJ had all his equipment laid out on, a turntable and large digital contraption. She went and sat beside him and for the next 37 minutes saying nothing and avoiding eye contact with me. A couple of times she got up to talk to other people, though. There was a silent European film about witches and monks in sepia on a screen behind them and that and the hypnotic music was the only thing I had to engage with. Nobody else was reading poetry and there was no microphone visible, or captive audience who looked like they were waiting for a performance. My fellow mature student resident of St Mary's never approached me to talk, either, and finally she got up to go out for another cigarette. As she walked right past me she gave me a strange look, as if I was some unwanted dog hanging round for scraps. Having finished my drink, I went to the loo and left, mystified.

I've turned in my film essay. According to the essay guidelines we have to quote from AT LEAST 9 recommended books on screenplay theory which we are somehow supposed to acquire and read in the month we were given to write the essay. (I couldn't read 9 books in a month if I did nothing else). As it turns out, I'm not sure I read one full page of a book, the first three weeks were just spent thinking about doing the essay and when I found myself with much work to do on the day it was due I just did my normal trick of opening a book at random and looking for a sentence or two to reference. I don't think the trick will work this time, so I'm going to predict a mark of 60. 

There is also an essay about The Battle of Maldon, an Old English poem about...The Battle of Maldon, which took place in 991 to do by March 9th. The poem's log line: We are so kicking ourselves because we had a tactical advantage that we threw away. Happens every week on the football field, but in the old days it involved being sliced to pieces.

The Fiat Punto survives the arctic blast

Japanese poetry, or not (It was darker than this, camera has over compensated)

Temperatures were just below zero during the day, but there was very little snow in Bangor

My workspace

Found in Catherine Rullens's poetry seminar

Night shopping with Emma (my car, not my ex)

Snow on mountains in background

Bangor town from university

On a Snowy mountain road in January

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.

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

Pumped up

It hasn’t been too shabby a week. I’ve acquired a Facebook friend and maybe even a Facebook friend I will see in person from time to time, I got some decent grades on my end of term assignments and received a bit of typing work to throw into the money pot. Hell, I even put some air in my tyres. (It’s 30 PSI front, 28 back). Unfortunately I’ve been so busy with the typing that the blog is going to get less love this week just when I do have something to write about. Here it goes, anyway...

Monday and Tuesday were pleasant enough, if somewhat dull. I think I’m attending the lectures and seminars mainly to give my life routine. The half-empty: they are super simple, repetitive, GCSE level, (if that) and there is a lack of insight that is frustrating. The half-full: they are friendly, accessible, with some helpful overlap and there’s going to be plenty of scope to shine in one’s essay. This week I skipped the writer’s group meeting (a new project, we’ve finished the Cruise Murder Mystery) because I felt I was having too much creative input last semester. In my absence group members who attended came up with an idea for a play about penguins. (Shakes head). 

Then on Wednesday I had a nice moment in Diane’s non-fiction class. First she asked us to spend five minutes writing a rant down, then to pair up to ask each other a list of questions about our week 4 essays (which I was supposed to have at least drafted). I usually find this awkward but not today because Kerry, a girl sitting on the other side of the room (the desks are arranged in a horse shoe shape) pointed at me and motioned to suggest we work together. This in itself was heart warming but I was especially pleased about this because she showed me a kindness on my first day that endeared her to me, which I will explain further on. 

So first Kerry came over and sat next to me and I asked her about her essay. Like me, she hadn’t started it but she said she wanted to write warning about the dangers of drugs, which she had got into when she was around fifteen. She started telling me about herself at that age and mentioned being on the beach at Broadstairs with a guitar during her hippie phase, to which I replied I lived in Margate. Then it turned out that she does and we started nattering about it, naturally with the heightened interest of two travellers who discover they’re from the same locale but didn’t have much time to talk about it before Diane interrupted and asked us all to read out our answers, so I made some up for Kerry.

Then we continued with another exercise. Kerry showed me her rant. I had just about enough time to read this engrossing revelation about her personal life before Diane interrupted us again- blah blah blah- some stuff about the difference between a memoir and essay and so and so forth. Finally Diane buttoned it and I told Kerry that I didn’t see a rant in her rant, but her love for her mother, who she seemed unusually close to.

“That’s true, we’re best friends and we send each other presents,” she said. 

I said not only was her kindness evident in her writing but in the way she had once treated me. 

“I remember you talking to me in the corridor in the English school on the first or second day of last semester and you spoke to me like a human being, not as an older person.” 

It’s true. All she’d done was ask me if I was waiting for Michelle Harrison or doing this or doing that, I don’t recall, but it was very odd because despite the ostensibly mundane exchange of words I had an acute sense that she was talking to me- not to the outward appearance or me as a stranger.

“Had we not had this chance conversation you wouldn’t have known how that brightened up my day,” I said.

Kerry asked to read what I wrote, which was a rant about Brian Cox saying there is no other intelligent life in the galaxy (it was either going to be that or a rant about Harold Bloom worship in the light of his 'Shakespeare wrote the whole of Henry VIII' schtick).

“Can you read my writing?” I said doubtfully, my having scrawled my thoughts only for personal consumption (as Diane had said it would be). “Yeah, it’s messy but it’s like mine,” Kerry said.

Then she asked what I want to write an essay about. I said it would be me giving myself fatherly advice and guidance as a younger person, which would also include a talk about drugs. Then as the lesson drew to a close Kerry said, “Can I sit here with you next time? I like talking to you and I can’t talk to them.”

“Of course, but I don’t want to be selfish, I think you should spread yourself around and share your gift.”

Then Kerry told me that she is autistic like her brother (to me this is not obvious from her behaviour) but it manifests in different ways. For instance, she has a Peter Pan obsession and wrote 8000 words about Peter Pan the night before, just for the hell of it. We went out into the corridor and Kerry asked what my passion is. I said I had a few but I suppose ghosts was one and we talked about that and the possibility that she knew J.M. Barry in a former life. She's been obsessed with Peter Pan since she was two and is twenty now. I told her she could become a world authority and that would be her meal ticket. 

After that, I went back home and stalked her on Facebook. She has been in what looks to be a happy relationship for three years and there were lots of unicorns on her page. She misses her mum so much and so much wants to help her look after her brother that she is going to change university after this semester. Nonetheless, on Sunday evening she requested to be my friend (on FB).

I think it was also around Thursday that I came out of Smiths and ran into a student who is doing my medieval English module. He'd just bought a computer game in the shop opposite. It was nice of him to shake my hand and say hello, although I felt a bit like a school teacher thinking of things to keep the brief tete a tete going. Where was he from? Kuwait, he said. His English is excellent, considering.

For the second week running Catherine was ill (sore throat) and there was no poetry, but she had emailed us to say she would make up the classes. Then on Friday evening I got my results.

For those of you who don’t know, I had 4 assignments to do by January 12 and I gave myself 3 days for each one, which turned out to be not enough. I was handing stuff in that was rushed and not checked properly with silly typos. So that being said, my result of 80/100 on the English Lit essay is pretty good. If I understood Alex correctly that sort of mark would be up in the all time highs for a 1^st year student and somewhere in the 50s is average. That’s not bad, considering I skipped The Magic Toyshop lectures and did next to no supplementary reading.

To be honest, I think the mark is a little high and the essay probably went over the head of whoever marked it because there is a mistake in there that wasn’t picked up. I said patriarchy was an orchestrated performance, when I meant to say orchestrating. Anybody who truly understood what they were reading would have queried it.

I got 74 for the poetry, which is also way too high for the junk I turned in, 68 for the children’s story is more like it, and again there was nothing in the child lit lectures, not one syllable, that came in handy. Diane marked me down to 58 as punishment for plagiarising one of my old stories. The computer system TurnitIn found a 17% match with the Secret Party, which I won a small competition with back in 2016. In my defence, Diane didn’t tell us until week 11 that we couldn’t use an old story, which was weeks after the assignment had gone online, and by then I’d done most of the work. But okay, lesson learnt.

In terms of feedback, Catherine wrote no inline comments at all and a tiny paragraph of praise with no criticism so though it’s nice she gave me a 1^st and said my poetry is ‘self-aware without being self-obsessed’ (funny, I think it’s the other way around) I’m none the wiser about how to up my game. The Toyshop marker was mildly helpful but I think a little out of his or her depth. Laura Dryer wrote really enthusiastic feedback about my story and I was so touched I almost wrote her an email to thank her, then remembered the last time I wrote to her she ignored my email. (To praise her Charlie and the Choc Factory lecture). I find Diane’s feedback to be dumb, stubborn, annoying and helpful- possibly one of the most helpful critters of my work ever.

A brief history of the past week

It’s been an exciting week. I ate an entire litre of Gelatelli Premium chocolate ice-cream (£2 from Lidl) in around 24 hours, I declined an £85 offer for a Bosch drill twinset and I ignored a call from a private number on my mobile. University life wise things are much the same. Raisa did the lectures this week and I was pretty bored, as usual. I’ve barely said a word to anyone but sometime during the week I gave a student a lift up the hill to St. Mary’s (she was in my poetry class last semester). The highlight of the week was discovering that whoever it was that bought my book last year had left a 5 star review on Amazon. I would be willing to bet money that they wrote the review before the finished the book (it gets worse as it goes on) but still, it was a nice thought. Onwards and upwards.