Students..poor little things. You see them everywhere at this time of year, moving into dank flats in Princes Park,looking dashed at bus stops as the 80 sails past, getting muddled about food in The Asda in Smithdown Road. It's a grave business now, getting an education. I taught at one of our glorious universities not so long ago. I was slightly surprised at the lack of dilettantism, and the business-like way in which they organised themselves. Many of them had several jobs, and a couple of them would regularly nod off in my Friday morning sessions. I did not take this personally, as no University in my student days would have seriously expected anyone to turn up at all. I went to Leeds in 1973,with my head full of Brideshead nonsense, expecting louche youths with floppy accents , and Charlestoning being done in the bar. I would soon, I felt, establish a salon, where the more decorative,witty and decadent jeunesse d'oree would gather for absinthe and loose talk. So I went into the bar on the first night to find the Engineering Soc. having a yard of ale drinking competition. The Fresher's Ball revealed acres of grubby hippies and boys in big jumpers who wanted to talk about their slide rules.This was not what I had meant, at all. I was doing an English degree,and had eagerly anticipated meeting people who had read more than I had, and would steer me towards exotic and marvellous repositories of literature.
So we learnt Anglo-Saxon. As a language.Which you had to speak,and read out poetry about battles in. Tutorials consisted of five beefy girls and a boy called Cuthbert who had pulled out all his eyebrows, being harangued by a woman who looked like a monk.
My personal tutor was a greatly respected poet. He specialised in Early English Verse, and wrote volumes of stuff about Mercia and barrow mounds and ravens.He was a very grumpy man indeed.He looked at me twice in three years, and in all instances as if I were a particularly unpleasing advertisement for something of which he profoundly disapproved.
My Phonetics lecturer was a genius. A lively chap called Stanley, he was the acknowledged forensic expect on accent,and was later brought in by the police investigating the Yorkshire Ripper bogus tapes.His party trick was to tell you precisely where you came from after you had uttered one sentence, in some cases down to the exact area of town or city.I revered him,found him massively entertaining, and happily drew pictures of the epiglottis in my notebooks. Another unmissable act was Sir Ernst Gombrich, who lectured in Art History. He arrived in a leather jacket, had an interesting Austrian accent,which combined with a florid stammer and highly animated delivery,kept us nailed upright to the back of our seats.He had been given a projectionist called Ronnie,whose job was to organise and project the slides of exquisite high renaissance paintings which illustrated Sir's lectures. Ronnie was summoned with increasing ire and vehemence, as slide after slide would pop into view the wrong way up,in the wrong order, or not at all.Despite,or possibly because of this sideshow, I can recall every single lecture he gave.
But you can see how dull the social life was, by the amount I can recall about the academics..I eventually palled up with a few like-minded characters who were struggling,like myself, to create an ambience suggested by the covers of early Roxy Music albums. Leeds didn't help out much, in this regard. A combination of permanent biting cold,and far too many brutes of both sexes dispelled the faint hope aroused in my girlish breast when I noticed that the bus drivers called everyone "luv" and "petal". There was a county-wide shortage of camp;a thing I didn't even know I needed. Yorkshire life was real and it was earnest, two qualities I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with.
By sheer good fortune, I got a bar job in the only gay club for miles.I think they thought I was a transvestite. I was certainly doing my best to give that impression;aiming for Amanda Lear but probably hitting Lily Savage.
I was sitting on the 80 the other evening,and it was full to the gills with new students. Despite two of them carrying on a conversation of unremitting tedium at a volume which would have shattered the windows had they not been reinforced with layers of filth, I felt benign and maternal towards them,remembering my student days.Right up to the moment when they started playing Maroon 5 on their phones...
So we learnt Anglo-Saxon. As a language.Which you had to speak,and read out poetry about battles in. Tutorials consisted of five beefy girls and a boy called Cuthbert who had pulled out all his eyebrows, being harangued by a woman who looked like a monk.
My personal tutor was a greatly respected poet. He specialised in Early English Verse, and wrote volumes of stuff about Mercia and barrow mounds and ravens.He was a very grumpy man indeed.He looked at me twice in three years, and in all instances as if I were a particularly unpleasing advertisement for something of which he profoundly disapproved.
My Phonetics lecturer was a genius. A lively chap called Stanley, he was the acknowledged forensic expect on accent,and was later brought in by the police investigating the Yorkshire Ripper bogus tapes.His party trick was to tell you precisely where you came from after you had uttered one sentence, in some cases down to the exact area of town or city.I revered him,found him massively entertaining, and happily drew pictures of the epiglottis in my notebooks. Another unmissable act was Sir Ernst Gombrich, who lectured in Art History. He arrived in a leather jacket, had an interesting Austrian accent,which combined with a florid stammer and highly animated delivery,kept us nailed upright to the back of our seats.He had been given a projectionist called Ronnie,whose job was to organise and project the slides of exquisite high renaissance paintings which illustrated Sir's lectures. Ronnie was summoned with increasing ire and vehemence, as slide after slide would pop into view the wrong way up,in the wrong order, or not at all.Despite,or possibly because of this sideshow, I can recall every single lecture he gave.
But you can see how dull the social life was, by the amount I can recall about the academics..I eventually palled up with a few like-minded characters who were struggling,like myself, to create an ambience suggested by the covers of early Roxy Music albums. Leeds didn't help out much, in this regard. A combination of permanent biting cold,and far too many brutes of both sexes dispelled the faint hope aroused in my girlish breast when I noticed that the bus drivers called everyone "luv" and "petal". There was a county-wide shortage of camp;a thing I didn't even know I needed. Yorkshire life was real and it was earnest, two qualities I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with.
By sheer good fortune, I got a bar job in the only gay club for miles.I think they thought I was a transvestite. I was certainly doing my best to give that impression;aiming for Amanda Lear but probably hitting Lily Savage.
I was sitting on the 80 the other evening,and it was full to the gills with new students. Despite two of them carrying on a conversation of unremitting tedium at a volume which would have shattered the windows had they not been reinforced with layers of filth, I felt benign and maternal towards them,remembering my student days.Right up to the moment when they started playing Maroon 5 on their phones...
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