Don’t put your daughter on the course Mrs Worthington.

Apparently student complaints about their university education has increased 10-30% and a solicitor specialising in legal cases has seen his enquires rise from two a week to ten a day according to a BBC program last night. And these aren’t middleclass teenage gripes about poor coffee in the refectory. One chap was faced with an unannounced 100% rise in his tuition fee for year two, 23 out of a class of 27 complained of ridiculously poor content and paying £250 for ‘special materials’ they never got. Another signed up to a local uni for easy travel and was informed the course had been moved to another college forty miles away. The list went on. Every student lucky enough to get some redress had to sign a gagging order as part of the settlement. Official reports of bad practice excluded the names of the universities concerned. The picture is of middleclass establishments forced into the cut and thrust of commerce unable to reconcile the ethos of education with the necessity to cover costs by bums on seats. Their rhetoric is of providing an ‘exceptional educational experience’ whilst their actions are to do whatever’s necessary to satisfy their huge overheads. Twenty years ago I suggested Ford should go into FE. Their capacity to design and manage a quality, functional mass-market product seemed much needed, but perhaps I was wrong. University education is about letting your mind wonder and also wonder, being curious, contemplative and argumentative, even objectionable. Though underpinned by acquiring necessary knowledge it’s about what you will do once you’re standing on the shoulders of giants. All this requires a gentle reflective atmosphere to produce fruit and only suited to the most fertile minds. But where many polytechnics have become universities by renaming in essence universities have become polytechnics focused on the mass-market teaching of trades. And at £27,000 a pop plus expenses. Anyone with a university education will consider this utterly stupid, not because we got ours for free but because mass training needn’t cost anywhere near that much when it’s the student doing most of the work, and the resulting product, a degree, doesn’t have anywhere near that market value. It’s a £1,000 coffee percolator. So don’t put your daughter on the course Mrs Worthington. 

Worms Postponed.

I’ve just awoke from a sad depressing dream. I was being cruelly spurned by my nearest and dearest. Even Graham Portermouse, my best friend at school, made a surprise appearance after a gap of some fifty odd years. I was about to go down the garden, and probably far further, to eat worms. It rather made nonsense of the current glib advice to, “just be yourself, act naturally.” It’s rather lovely but anthropologically, which as it happens sounds worryingly like the psychological study of my ex wife, we wouldn’t have spent eons evolving a brain the size of a planet if it was that easy. We would be limited to socialising in small hierarchical family groups governed by the dictates of gene proliferation. Even a dog wouldn’t come near unless we discarded a morsel-clad bone. No our large brain is testament to the complexity of being ‘in relationship.’ And I guess there are times, like last night, when it cries enough, the war is lost, it’s worms for tea. Well breakfast chronologically. Far from ‘being myself’ I am in a whirl of considerations, lost in a melee of conflicted reasoning for what’s best to do. I’ve been at it for seventy years and thus acquired far too many misconceptions to mention. I’m jammed in the cleft of a viciously clefted stick. Unlike an alligator who acts naturally and lives in a swamp the best I can hope for is to unravel enough misconceptions to be happily acceptable jointly to myself and others, and that’s no mean feat. At this point, namely 7.30am, I make a coffee and return to the attic to a fluttering of wings, a thump on the window and Britney magically appearing from under the bed beadily looking for her escapee. I’ve only been gone five minutes and nature ‘acting naturally’ has taken over. But anyhow I’ve done enough art, music and theatre to know something magical occurs when all this conjecture is put aside. Something true is recognised across these isolating boundaries of considered reasoning. We needn’t be as facile as a sportsman’s interview after the match. Anyway the coffee’s drunk, the bird is in here somewhere keeping quiet, Britney’s locked out and scratching at the door, the sky is blue and all’s well with the world, though it’s getting a tad cold with the windows wide open (for the escapee). So it’s toast for breakfast, worms postponed. 

UKIP And Cats.

My views on immigration are reasonably middle of the road; liberal tinged with self-preservation. But sometimes a line must be drawn. We have four cats, Dave, Domino, Betty and Britney, which considering this is a mouse household shows an admirable appreciation for diversity, but it seems four happy, well-fed cats tend to attract others. There’s Cocky Black Cat, a stray who despite biting lumps out of Dave and costing us £70 at the vets on antibiotics and pain killers, is slowly playing on our sympathy, and Pretty Cat who’s obviously owned but lonely and just comes round for the crack. And then there’s Pip an asylum seeker from Royston who wants to come on compassionate grounds seeing as Martynmouse doesn’t let him in the house since ??? moved out to live with the lovely Asian couple across the road because he pees everywhere. That would be seven and definite grounds for me voting for Nigel Farage in the upcoming MEP elections. I mean they’re all unemployed, our NHS budget wouldn’t stretch to the vet bills, none of them speak English and we already buy cat food by the hundredweight. Fright quankly Mothermouse already complains when Domino chooses to bless our favourite possessions with the mark of his own territory. Nope I’m applying zero tolerance to our immigration policy; from now on it’s one out, one in. 

Lansarote 2014.

Doncaster is undoubtedly the best airport in the world. I flashed my Thompson flight tickets and we were off. Granted I had to assume a sort of dismembered arms lotus position for four hours but even that added to the play value of consuming the in-flight meal. We landed at Alicanti and all was going swimmingly. As it wasn’t a Thompson holiday the rep didn’t want to know, and as I hadn’t printed out our holiday details I only had my fast fading memories of booking it to go by. It was a Late ‘something’ holiday in, I seem to remember, Costa Tegese and location ‘something with a Sol in it.’ No one including Mothermouse was impressed with this information. She being a lovely person suppressed thoughts of mutilation and opted for making me fully aware that going on holiday with just a boarding pass was the action of a really stupid person, and when that really stupid person is your own husband it could, if one wasn’t supremely kind and understanding, drive one to being very angry indeed. I asked various rushing-about-people to no avail. I went back to the Thompson rep who remained detached. Luckily a young chubby chap next to her, who I’d previously dismissed as just there for a convenient oxygen supply, offered me the magic key, “that desk over there does that sort of thing.”  The woman Spanish, tanned but somehow ugly was terse. “Low what?” “Lowcost (or was it Last Minute?) holidays.com.” She looked at me tersely questioning the one fragment of information I was pinning my hopes on. “Name?” With the euphoria to match the recent birth of my first grandchild she found me on her list. “Outside and wait on the left.” Though this was excellent news ‘waiting’ still seemed fraught with the possibility of dying lost and alone. Did her list truly have the power to save us from package holiday extinction? It did. “Bay 6.” I glimpsed ‘Sol Apartments’ on her flailing document as she pointed to somewhere over there. Another travel save! If Mothermouse knew my travel history she wouldn’t have left me to book it; it doesn’t read well. She later pointed out it was Ariccefe not Alicanti, “Alicanti’s in Portugal.” 

I owe my mental health to Barry Bucknell.

I owe my mental health to Barry Bucknell. He was the guy who did DIY programs on TV in the fifties. If you ever had a real wood door covered in sheets of hardboard that’s down to him. He would explain each project and have all the bits cut to size, shaped and pre-drilled so he could build a wardrobe in seconds. I was too young to do them back then but it’s how I’ve approach life to this day. Think, plan, draw, measure and bingo a futon base. I wonder where that went? But it’s not just projects. There’s something about his approach that seems to weld the ‘now’ firmly between the past and the future. The past is the one I made earlier, the future is the one I’m going to make, and the now is where I put it together. It pre dates Eckhart Tolle’s ‘Power of Now’ but is a practical example of it. It does two things to elevate one from the ravages of destructive emotions. One, it occupies the brain with practicalities and two it avoids mewling over one’s history or the imponderable anxieties of the future. The past wardrobe is evidence of my capacity to be successful and the future wardrobe is solely dependant on putting it together in the now. All that remains is to get on with it. If it goes to plan I can enjoy my positive emotions and if it doesn’t I’m not a failure it’s just something I overlooked in the planning stage. If after several attempts I prove it was just the wrong thing in the first place and I feel sad there’s always a set of Ikea Snorku shelving units to get me going again. I don’t get depressed because there’s always something to achieve and always the now to achieve it in. And if all that fails I can get pissed. What could be simpler? OK so I might have mild asperger’s but hell nobody’s perfect.

Crimea River.

The Crimea to Ukraine is not unlike the Isle of White to the UK, almost an island off its southern coast. Its land connection with Ukraine is less than five miles wide and its eastern tip is the same distance from Russia by sea. Khrushchev gave it as a present to Ukraine from Russia when the USSR was a happy family. Ukraine itself is larger than Germany, Switzerland and Belgium put together and on the west borders six Eurovision contestants. Whilst currently its history is changing daily the run of it is classic. There seems an inevitability to the escalating conflict. At one level presidential rhetoric lays claim to their country’s interests in the guise of what’s best for Ukraine. At another their paid unnamed forces flex their muscles. At yet another powerful Ukrainian individuals thrust forward to represent partisan factions. And at the lowest level voiceless citizens wait to endure their fate. Polarisation occurs and some form of attrition begins, be it counted in lives, limbs, cost or social welfare. After sufficient loss it will end. Such is the lesson of history, yet the game is played again. In this primeval primate dance the stressed zeitgeist factionalises into multiple animosities. The alpha male’s whoops direct their secondaries into mindless action as the females and their young cower in a dance of genes, the alphas to proliferate, the secondaries to emulate and the females to protect. It’s as if genes power a persona that is at odds with personhood in a role-play as much aggrandisement as it is fictional. There currently seems to be three world epidemics, poverty, poor mental health and countries in conflict. It’s easy to see the link between poverty and mental health in the poor but not so easy when it comes to the rich and powerful. Is there a corollary between being frightened by too little and empowered by too much? How might we evaluate and identify the mental health issues of this elite? It’s for sure not on anyone’s clinical agenda. And imagine how difficult it would be to implement its findings in the face of the alpha genes. No it’s probably best we stay as primates and have a war. It’ll settle things like it always has. 

Monsignor Willy.

Rome may try to lay claim to Catholicism but for me it’s Ireland. There’s a certain surrealism about the Irish and Catholics that transcends any construct I might fondly apply to the human race. Like the meanderings of dotage or the news from an altered universe I have no idea what they’re going to do next, or for that matter why they’ve just done it. Last evenings dinner was no exception. As a hundred and fifty of us sat down to our meal Kevin introduced our honoured guests, Tony Curry and Monsignor Willy. Unfortunately anything vaguely smutty sets Mothermouse off so the image of a stiff-backed reverential purple robed French penis was too much to bear. Under the table she texts her daughter, “At St Wilfreds do…. The bishop is called Monsignor Willy. I need help” and receives a reply, “There is no way out of it mum you’re trapped in a sitcom episode. Innuendos will only get worse from here. Good luck!” After the meal and Mothermouse shamelessly lusting after our handsome young waiter, who in return gave her an extra helping of bread and butter pudding, we are treated to Tony Curry’s life as a footballer. Tony, as with anyone who’s led an interesting life, was not that interested in talking about it so Kevin, assuming the role of a News of the World reporter, prompted him through the highs and lows of it, extracting anecdotes like teeth. After thirty minutes Mothermouse was playing with her phone, by an hour she was eating it, and when Kevin asked for questions we were both silently shouting, “No, please no questions!!” In response to the third Tony had to explain that after doing a synchronised roly-poly with a teammate they, in post roly-poly exuberance, kissed and that that was how he became a gay icon in Sweden. You can’t write this stuff. We donned our cloaks of invisibility and weedled our way out through the tables. From the foyer we heard Kevin ask if anyone wanted to sing. Pardon? Really? But sure enough two ladies were happy to do their operatic party pieces unaccompanied into the mike. The Catholic mind is a marvel to behold, to be sure.