On Campus

A quiet Sunday after a busy week. L back from London on Friday, and the car in the garage having its MOT and service, needing two new tyres. No such thing as a cheap trip to the garage...
L returned with a cold she caught on the train going down, from a giant man with a tiny laptop, and is now feeling a little sorry for herself, coughing uncomfortably, and drinking hot blackcurrant. Still, she had a wonderful time in London, seeing different friends. Yesterday I was at the latest of my personality development seminars - on puberty! Only it wasn't really. Much more focused on adolescence generally, which seems a shame since that is actually the topic for the next seminar, and since puberty is such a specific, such a momentous event in our lives, in our development. This series has been patchy. The first two seminars fascinating, exciting, informative. The subsequent three disappointing in different ways, though always still managing to be thought-provoking one way or another.

The experience of being at Leeds University on Thursday was a strange one. It was extremely windy, and the afternoon sun was dazzling, as I made my way up from the station, leaning forward against the intense force of the wind, rubbish swirling in the gutters, people battling with their hair, ties, coats, bags. I held tight to my little street map, followed signposts, and found the building I was directed to without too much trouble, though the geography of the campus was a mysterious jumble to me, great herds of students moving this way and that. Big buildings, big groups, lots of activity. A group of young men in sports gear, with a football, making their way across a carpark.

Up I went in the lift to Floor 7, not entirely understanding how I seemed to have started out at Floor 4, when I thought I'd entered at ground level, feeling as if I were in a strange dream. Floor 7 - the doors open and I get out. Now what? A sort of lobby, some students eating snacks on seats near a pool table. No signs to indicate where specific rooms are, least of all room 7.09. The central space of Floor 7 is taken up by a coffee bar, where a scattering of students sit, eating or not, drinking coffee from cardboard cups, chatting, texting, looking at pieces of paper. I walk all the way to the other side of the coffee bar, find myself approaching the Health Sciences Library. To my left the East-West Campus route is sign-posted, from which direction emerge further herds of students, fresh from a lecture perhaps. I walk all the way back to the lobby area near the lift, ask a man with an ID tag round his neck (he obviously works here) if he knows where room 7.09 is. I tell him it's the Medical Education Reception. He looks rather blank, suggests it is most probably over the other side of the coffee bar. I head over that way again, once again find the Health Sciences Library. Begin to feel slightly hysterical, though luckily it is still more than half an hour until my interview time. I ask a librarian, who comes out of the library and points me back in the direction of the lifts and the lobby, suggests I turn right there and go through the double doors, and she thinks there's some sort of reception down there. Off I go again, pass the man with the tag, tell him I've now been told it's over this way! He is impassive. Along the corridor I go past noticeboards for Years 1,2,3,4 and 5. On Year 1's noticeboard, I see the timetable and list of groups for the course I am applying to teach. This is beginning to make more sense... Then, a huge glass-doored reception area. I stand looking at it, noticing there is nothing to suggest it is room 7.09. A woman says you're lost... I tell her I'm looking for room 7.09, the reception area, and she tells me this whole area is 7.09 - rather misleading to call it a room, I think to myself. I thank her, go through the doors, approach the desk, discover that yes, I am in the right place, though the person I've been told to report to is on her lunch break. I say that I'll go and get a cup of tea, and come back in half an hour.

In the coffee bar, I approach the counter, ask for a cup of tea, am told it's self-service, directed to a big machine offering various combinations of drinks, or hot water to add to a teabag, which I do, feeling exactly like a student on her first day, everything strange. I sit with my cardboard cup of tea, watching the students, looking at the coffee-stained and sugar-scattered round aluminium table top, with the little notice asking everyone please to clear their tables when they've finished. Two students do exactly this, a girl and a boy. She says ooh aren't you good? as he deposits his styrofoam food container into the bin beside where I am sitting. I was brought up well, says the boy, as they walk away towards the library. Eventually I go slowly back to the lobby near the lifts, down the corridor, through the double doors, past the noticeboards, and into the reception area. The administrator for the course in question has returned, and shortly comes to greet me, and takes me inside the area where a large number of people work in an open-plan office space, and puts me in a little side room to do the exercise... which is to say what factors I'd consider and what actions I'd take if I had a rude student who kept talking over people, changing the subject, and sending text messages. Not hard. And very similar to a scenario in a little tutors' e-learning section of the website I'd come across a few days before. Thanks very much, most helpful. The interview began with this and I could tell I was scoring well, nice smiles, good body language, encouraging nods... And so it went on really. I was able to answer all their questions with relative ease, and could tell my answers were at least adequate, sometimes better. I was asked to wait outside for maybe 5 minutes. While I was waiting, friend S, who works there, and had put me onto this work, appeared, asked what was happening - I told her the jury were deciding. We chatted a bit and in mid-chat, the door opened and I was asked back inside. The course manager told me that they had no hesitation in offering me the job. I made appropriately professional noises of pleasure, and we discussed logistics a little. The plan is I go in on Friday week, as long as references are through, and all well, and shadow the present tutor who I'll be taking over from next term. Then there'll only be one more week of term, then a training session, then the Easter hols, and then I'll start in May with my group. Gulp. By then I'll know what it is I'm going to teach. More of which anon.

Tired But Happy

I got the job!! So now I'm going to be teaching medical students too. What a strange adventure life is.

Driving With The Brakes On

A maddening wind huffing all night and all day, and this morning sleet pelting the car as I drove to school for week 2 of the trial 10. At some point I had a near miss turning into a side road where visibility is very awkward on a bend and a hill, and the cars come fast and (did I mention) it was sleeting and blowing a gale, and had to brake sharply, then apply the handbrake and attempt the manoeuvre again, this time successfully (just). Continuing on the last few minutes' drive to school, a large red exclamation mark had appeared on the dashboard, and a loud and insistent beeping just kept on and on, while I shouted what!? what for fuck's sake? and continued driving, knowing I was within spitting distance of my destination. Arriving, I had to turn around in a side street (there is never any space in the school carpark), and discovered to my utter chagrin that the handbrake was, and indeed had been for several minutes ON. How did I not know that? Have I done some irreparable damage to something? Weirdly, fortunately, embarrassingly, the car is going into the garage on Friday so I can fess up, and ask them to check. Later another little warning light came on - a weird one that has come on a couple of times before then disappeared, which according to the manual is something to do with CO2 emissions... This car is anxious for care and attention (or is that me?)

My friend K, astrologer turned psychotherapist, looking at my chart many years ago, described the effect of a central aspect of it - Mars-Saturn opposition - as being like driving with the brakes on. I've never forgotten that. I do it a lot, but usually only metaphorically...

At school, I made use of the mystery toilet adjacent to my room, having locked the door leading onto the corridor (of which I was blissfully ignorant last week), and when I flushed it, the plumbing began to make the most horrendous noise, not unlike a light aircraft coming in to land. Please, I thought, make it stop - do not let me have to have a plumbing discussion with anyone. After maybe three long minutes, when the cistern had finally finally filled up, it stopped, and fortunately this was before my young client arrived...

Devastating

Life is gathering momentum, and I have what feels to me like a very busy week! Census training on Monday (plenty of little role plays to keep the boredom at bay), supervision in a dazzlingly sunny Manchester today, where a woman with immensely long semi-dreadlocked hair accosted me in the street with the irresistable greeting hey there, devastatingly attractive woman, and proceeded to explain that she was sleeping rough and needed £6 for some journey, and I placed not £1 but £2 in her grimy hand, for which she thanked me profusely as she walked towards the door of the pub... Tomorrow it's back to the school, then Thursday I have an interview for the work at Leeds University (half a day a week) teaching medical students how to listen, be part of a team, manage change, negotiate and stuff! Friday the car goes to the garage for its MOT and service which doesn't involve me being exactly busy, just getting it down to town by about 8.30!! L is away in London til Friday, so I have some unaccustomed solitude, which so far feels ok.

Count Me In?

Off this afternoon for my Census classroom training. Not without a few doubts, on account of what I have discovered about the involvement of Lockheed Martin and the proposed boycott. I kind of wish someone had told me about this sooner.

Everything

The 593 bus rattles by, as the fog that never fully burned off all day begins to reassemble for another chilly night. A hard frost this morning. March coming in like neither lamb nor lion, more like a wolf. It is light now until between six o'clock and half past, light by seven in the morning and I feel the stealthy approach of the Spring Equinox. It feels not so long ago I was last writing here about days and nights of equal length, though clearly it was six months ago.

Today we went to Lidl's 'Gardening Event', and aquired a rake, a poly-tunnel and some plants including centaury and lily of the valley. We have spent a couple of afternoons already on the allotment, digging and preparing the soil, clearing and cutting back old growth, and just gazing into the valley. I am not able to feel depressed when I am there, digging big clods of earth with my fork, and pulling weeds and old roots out of the cool damp soil. The waiting plots begin to look ready for vegetables to grow in, and we have planted broad beans in pots at home.

I have been enjoying Human Planet on the i-Player, witnessing extraordinary scenes of life as it is lived in the deserts, mountains, jungle and Arctic, the skill and single-mindedness required for people to survive in challenging physical and climactic conditions. The Buddhist 'sky burial' was a chastening thing to see, or not quite see - discretion dictated the camera turned away from the actual hacking of human flesh, though we saw the undertaker approach with his little axe, the vultures circling, then pecking at unidentified morsels. I have to say though, that I watch all of these scenes with a mixture of awe, and some sort of shame (is it?) at the way in which nothing now remains hidden. We are able to see everything, to learn of mysteries and marvels, suffering and triumphs that we could only discover in books before, if that. Now production teams spend months, maybe years researching and fixing, television crews spend weeks immersing themselves in the worlds of these remote communities, and showing us everything, or so we feel. We feel we have seen everything, we can know about everything, and this is both wonderful, and somehow strangely wrong.

The Hard Way

I started at the school this morning, seeing my two brave boys for the first time in a very small room from which sometimes classroom noise can be heard, sometimes feet and voices passing in the corridor. The room also, disconcertingly, though also usefully, has a toilet off it, which can be entered either from my room, or from the corridor on the other side. At some point during the second session, someone entered and proceeded to make audible use of the facilities... Schools!

Having had very little sleep, I certainly felt I was doing things the hard way, but do them I did, and a start has been made, and I will definitely not be so anxious next week. I might write more at some point about this sleep issue (can't sleep if getting up in the morning to do anything I'm more than a little nervous about.)

Now my eyes are sore, the clouds are breaking up and the sun has started to come out, and I'm torn between a walk and falling into bed.