Personal Blogs

Every couple of months all the smaller tutorial groups in each region are gathered together for what's known as a 'Day School'. Big kid that I am, I'm excited at the prospect of a new thing with more people and bigger classes. There is a choice of lectures, six in total, of which we may choose four. Subject titles which would make most people's bones freeze in an instant have me gnashing my teeth that I can only choose four when I want to do them all. Eventually, I decide against 'How to Write a Great Essay' and 'Music for the Terrified' in favour of poetry analysis, Plato, the use of historical data and 'Tradition and Dissent'.

My insanely tolerant partner, on realising the location of my planned day out, rallies up some friends we happen to have in that locality. He then offers to drive me there and book an hotel so that we can have a night out with the friends once I'm done with school. Brilliant plan! As it turns out, this plan probably saved my life as I face the two hour journey there in no fit state to drive and doubt I'd have made in one piece. Not only is it a reasonably early hour but also comes on the back of my daughter's 18th birthday party two nights previously (which had ended at 2am with the calling of paramedics) and 'Friday Cocktails' with girlfriends the night before, leaving me with a total of about seven hours sleep in forty eight hours, a scenario I decide I am far too old to cope with these days. Waking that morning, I can barely see and my mind is slipping about like a box of sedated eels. I am very grateful not to have to drive and not at all sure how well I'll be absorbing new information in this condition, although I've composed myself to a degree by the time I arrive, fortified with coffee and chocolate brownies.

I am dropped off by 'daddy' in the school driveway and stand there for a moment, wondering which way to go, before spotting people sitting next to a window away down the left side of the building. It looks promisingly like an entrance so I trot hopefully down the path, clutching my Costa cup and trying not to trip over my own feet. At the entrance, I tug at the door. Nothing. It doesn't move. Is it me being dim, or pathetically weak? I tug again. People notice.. I grimace pitifully through the glass and am met with a lot of grinning, pointing and gesticulating. Apparently it's the door on the other side of the building I need. Great. Off I trot again hoping this isn't a premonition of how the day will play out.

I'm aware that there are a few people here I've interacted with on the module page and so, having memory issues with names and faces, I've tried to make a mental note of those I might expect to meet. I recognise a grand total of two, not too bad for me really. One of those is on my degree pathway so I'm very glad to connect with her as nearly everyone else seems to be on literature or history degrees and our paths will diverge at the end of this module. There are a few from my tutor group there so I do have some friends to play with at break time, although everyone is very friendly and chatty. 

Four different lectures and four VERY different lecturers, but all of them excellent in my book. The first is sound and pragmatic in her approach, interesting and engaging, definitely there to impart fact and knowledge but in a warm and genuine way. The second is tiny and airy, light of voice but amusing and happy to go with the flow, taking up people's suggestions and, by the magic of the internet, bringing those ideas straight to the board as resources. She's fun and she knows her stuff. After lunch (café is not open.. I'm glad I stocked up en-route) the first session starts with a non-working projector and a seemingly rambling monologue, but I am not fooled. This guy knows a lot of stuff. I later understand that his style put a couple of people off but I engage with it immediately, not being a fan of structure in any case. I loved it, felt like we were on a random journey with some mad professor who has so many ideas flying round his head you have to just hang on and hope to catch a few as they fall out along the way. Personally, I took in some big concepts but a few left the classroom with bewildered looks on disbelieving faces. Lastly, brain already saturated, is a philosophy session which revolves around an analogy to do with bees. I have a sensation of a swarm buzzing around in my head, that's for sure, but I liked it in a comforting, nothing left to lose kind of way. She was great but my addled, sleep deprived mind was all but out for the count by this point. Despite this, I feel the day has ended too quickly. I've enjoyed every minute.

I'm picked up by 'daddy' and am swept off out to dinner (and very welcome drinks) with a lovely group of friends who plainly think I'm mad and don't envy my idea of fun one bit.

They don't know what they're missing!

Written assignments are not set for every area we study on this module. Perhaps it's just as well since we appear to be touring all corners of the globe in the guise of observational time-travellers. Cleopatra to Madonna, Plato to Stalin, Marlowe to the Dalai Lama and everything, everywho, everywhen in between. 

A smorgasbord of educational delights. 

My reactions to each part differ hugely and these responses serve to convince me that my choice of degree (philosophy and psychology) is right for me. Cleopatra represents an era I have a fascination with but I am more interested in the 'how's and 'why's than the 'what's and 'when's. This, along with my only moderate interest in Stalin's career but overwhelming desire to dissect his psyche, assures me (if assurance were needed) that history is definitely NOT for me and that psychology definitely IS.

Good timing as we are now able to sign up for our next module and I can confidently confirm the psychology option I already suspected I would choose

Paul Cézanne, artist of the Impressionist era, receives the benefit of our attention, though there is no associated assignment. I reach this point a little behind on coursework, having taken a break to finish book editing, and am tempted to skim the chapter or even come back to it later, but I like art and I have heard of Cézanne (though wouldn't have recognised his work) so I stick with the schedule. The chapter was written by art historian Charles Harrison. I have taken to 'googling' the writer of each chapter as they often have very interesting backgrounds and I find this engages me more immediately with what they've written. Mr Harrison, I discover, is sadly no longer with us but I am grateful to him for leaving us with the brilliantly guided work of this chapter in our humble textbook.

Assisted by OU mini tutorials and my own choice of online documentaries, layer by layer he almost imperceptibly peels away the flaky skins of my ignorance until like a steam train hitting me full in the chest, a lightning bolt of understanding strikes me and leaves me physically reeling. It is such a powerful reaction, it frightens my dog!

Suddenly, the unsentimental but powerfully attentive detail, the energy, the almost puritanical honesty, his absolute unyielding to expectation, the rejection of black and white tones in favour of colour - all from this strange, difficult, single-minded non-conformist who cannot help but to call a spade a spade in his own language. There and then, I got it..in spades of his own making. Instantly I looked with 'the right kind of eyes' and I saw. And it jolted every fibre of my being. 

I look back at the prints of his work to find my 'new eyes' are a permanent fixture. The translucent perfection of work by the Italian artist I'd previously preferred suddenly seems hollow and contrived while Cézanne's 'Bathers' leap from the page suffused with a meaning and energy I was blind to before. I'm feeling a bit dazed and so is the dog. I suggest to him we go to the café for lunch. He agrees that this is a good plan, largely on account of the fact that he will get biscuits.

Ensconced, with some relief, in said café, a consoling Bonio issued to my long-suffering hound, I momentarily relax only to be hit with a second wave of related realisation. It seems to me that we are all currently stuck in the same place as the council that judged Cézanne's work back in the day. Drawn to the blandly obvious, stylised things around us whilst blindly dismissing the less aesthetically-pleasing realities. All this obsession with living contrived, socially acceptable lives, suffocating in meaningless, interior designed houses, hiding our souls from the sun when in fact the base reality and beauty of being truly human is this amorphous, unconsciously interactive relationship that we have with the world and people around us.

I am exhausted but exhilarated. And also sad because I have no-one but the dog to share this revelation with and he makes it clear he really can't take any more. Inevitably, my poor, beleaguered tutor gets the dubious honour of an apologetic e.mail which he takes sensitively and responds to in good part, 

I suspect he was simply relieved not to get another blasted sonnet...

Pencils sharpened, polished apple for the teacher in my satchel, I brace myself for my first day at new school with a mix of excitement and trepidation.

Hope the bigger kids won't bully me too much.

Hope the teacher isn't a meaner...

Happy day. The other kids are dead cool and the teacher is awesome. I tumble out of class exploding with new ideas and head home with the audio version of Dr Faustus playing at full volume in the car, reciting the definition of iambic pentameter in my head.

Next day I spend watching Macbeth, electrified, simultaneously reading poetry compilations by Roger McGough. I decide I am in love with Shakespeare and the art of the humble sonnet.

Set about writing a topical reworking of Sonnet 29 which I email to my tutor:

He likely reads this with a quizzically raised eyebrow and bewildered expression.

I follow this by submitting my 'dummy assignment'. Tutor has informed us that a simple "This is my dummy assignment" will suffice, its purpose being purely to test the system and our ability to use it.

Naturally, I submit a rhetorical monologue followed by a full and unrelated rendition of 'The boy stood on the burning deck'.

Tutor will by now have a fair idea of what he is up against... doubtless rocking back and forth in a darkened room, head in hands, cursing quietly...