A Bomb Scare, An Engagement and a Mature’s Outlook on University

Look at that date!  I can’t believe I’ve been at university for almost a month now. Somebody tell me where time has gone these past few weeks (I’d love to ask the guy who looked like David Tennant’s Dr Who but after seeing him every day for the first week, I haven’t seen him at all since… I’m now beginning to wonder)?

Freshers gathering for free welcome braai

 So what, you might ask, is it like being a first year undergraduate student when you’re thirty?  It’s ageing, to put it simply.  My combined degree of Writing and Film Studies I think is considered pretty cool and an ‘easy’ way to get a degree (that’s not why I’m doing it by the way), so I think there is this expectation that you just lounge around watching the latest Hollywood blockbusters and writing a couple of stories.  Nuh-uh.  Yes, we watch films – but quite often you wouldn’t touch them if they were the last in the rental store.  Happily, I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed them so far – Buster Keaton’s silent movies from the 20s and a rather chilling black and white movie called The Night of the Hunter come to mind.  To give myself a treat while at the same time calling it ‘homework’ I went to the cinema to watch Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  Considering I spent the first hour marvelling at how much one of the actors looked like Ian Hislop (I always thought he was a one-off) and it took me three-quarters of the film to work out everyone’s names and that Control was actually a person and not a department, I could easily have scratched a bald spot into my head if it went on for much longer.

My question to ‘What if I miss my disitation deadline?’ was answered at the beginning of my second week.  Phone the uni and tell them there’s a bomb in a microwave at the front of the building.  That generally distracts people away from their work and makes everyone within a mile radius evacuate the area.  I was in the middle of a Visualisation, Research and Storyboarding seminar when the friendly warden stuck his head round the door and said ‘Out!  There’s a bomb!’  Our lecturer was much calmer although I think I preferred the warden’s attitude to preserving life as we were then instructed to pack up, save our work and switch off our computers.  Sorry, bomb scare or no bomb scare, I was not going to endanger my life a moment longer for the sake of a Photoshop collage.  I was out the door in pretty snappy time and down in the courtyard with the rest of the building’s congregation for a couple of fags and a gossip about what was going on.

Because of the scare, our class overran and because I’ve just discovered the miracles of Photoshop, I stayed on to work on a book cover for At Long Odds (see below for my handiwork).  And while I love living in Norwich, when you drag your feet across Cambridge’s platform 5 at 7 o’clock in the evening, knowing that you’re not going to get any dinner or even a coffee until 9, it becomes a bit of a turn off.  On that particular evening the train carriage was fairly empty and I spread myself out at one of the tables.  A couple sitting opposite me caught my eye.  They were sitting close together, cooing and crowing over the empty bottle of vintage 1983 champers.  My first thought was ‘Oh God, I don’t want to be sat with a couple of drunk people when I want to read my book’.

But there was something different about these two.  They were dressed very smartly.  His tie was loosened.  He was in a state of half-consciousness and was falling asleep on his partner’s shoulder.  She, on the other hand, was glowing – not literally like in a Stephanie Meyer book – but there was some radiance of happiness humming about her like a force field.  I looked closer.  She was twisting a diamond ring on her wedding finger and gazing at it.  It was too small and her finger was red and creased where she was trying to make it fit.  Every now and then she would give a big heartfelt sigh and look tenderly at the gently-snoring man slumped on her shoulder.  She caught me peeping over my book at her and beamed at me.  I felt genuine happiness for her – I wanted to congratulate her, give her some wise words of wisdom that she would remember for the rest of her life and recount them to friends in years to come as being uttered by the stranger on the train.  Unfortunately, Britishness for respecting one another’s privacy has really rubbed off on me and I settled for giving her a pleasant smile (plus I couldn’t think of anything particularly wise and memorable to say).  Her phone conveniently rang – family congratulating her and her fiancé on their engagement – and I got to hear the whole story without having to ask.  It brightened my evening and made the hour and a quarter trip back to Norwich less gloomy.

When people politely ask how uni is going I’m a bit stumped for an answer and I’ve miraculously remastered the teenage shrug.  It’s different, some of it is interesting, and it’s time consuming (university that is, not the teenage shrug).  Although I am genuinely enjoying it, it’s brought my own writing to a grinding halt.  The writing muscle is still being flexed with plenty of short stories and scripts for homework exercises but the stand-alone sequel to Keeping The Peace has not been touched in nearly three weeks – hmmm, so much for that 1,000 words a day target.  On the bright side, I’ve come up with an idea for the next book so I have something to work towards when the cogs get turning again.  In the meantime this is what I made in our Photoshop class: At Long Odds – to be e-published next month.