243. I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Here I am on registration day outside the S.U. and it is pandemonium. Pop music blares, salesmen lurk in and outside of their tents, the crowds are thick on the ground and I don't know anyone. I can't get through to the shop or to the bar. I give up and head for the peace of the Italian garden. But the contractors are cutting the grass with their motor-mowers. Outside the Eng Dept a stonecutter (not of the Pre-Raphaelite School) saws through stone with another noisy machine. Dust flies into the air. Help!
The automatic door of the Eng Dept opens for me with a degree of enthusiam I do not share. It is the fastest in the west. The annual Cr Wr beauty parade is about to start. Members of staff stand at the front waiting for the off. There are a lot of empty seats; the show is not going to be a sell-out. Like an overweight panther, the Emperor Tiberius, all in black, paces the floor. He is looking refreshed after the long break, almost handsome! The bags have gone. Perhaps he's been at the bottox.
Silence falls. You could, as they say, hear a pin drop. Softly at first, the Emperor begins his address. We strain to catch the words, but soon the voice rises to a thrilling pitch. He lifts a hand into the air and sees into the future. Our future. Young hearts tremble. Future Booker hopefuls gaze at his battered but magnificent profile. 'I am going to talk about The Exit Philosophy', he tells us. I lean back in my chair. What can he mean? Last year he spoke of saxophones and portals. This year it is some kind of final solution. His raised arm hovers. Are we about to get a Roman salute? Yes, he tells us, when he has finished with us, the world will be our oyster... thanks to his department we will have the opportunity to go to Chicago, to California, even to the Lone Star Lodge in Northern Wisconsin. It has all been arranged. Four out of the six Cr Wr staff who are here are from the good old U.S.of A, and if anyone can help us with our little old English language, they can. The Lone Star Lodge? Bognor Regis, here I come!
244. Now it's time for the literary lot. The Lady of Shalott is looking wistful and announces to her Plath worshippers that morning service will take place first thing on Monday morning, when relics of the saint will be displayed. The Farmer's Wife tells us of the Field trip to LONDON we literateurs will be going on. A field trip to London? Surely an oxymoron (unless you're Martin Amis). We will be following her, through the streets of the metropolis (which she thinks hasn't changed since 1666), like ducklings in the wake of Jemima Puddleduck. They all do a turn. At the back stands the Pale Young Man, thin and clerkly, with arms folded and owlish look. Next to him in this rugby line up is good old Uncle Joe in a fine new new tweed suit. Towering above Uncle Joe, like a heron over a trout pool, is the Irish girl, who I met last term and who will be supervising my dissertation... and as she passes me on her way to the door, she greets me and asks if I would like to see her about it in her room. I'm not used to getting invitations. I can hardly believe my ears.
Up I go. The Pale Young Man hovers in his doorway at the top of the stairs. I wonder if there is a chill in the air. 'Do you want to see me?' he asks. Does he think I will savage him because of the rotten marks he gave me in the assessment, even if I did make him the star of Death at The Groves. Doesn't he realise that I forgive him all roads ever he offended? (He'll have to look that up- not his period). 'Thank you, no...', I say rather grandly, (my attention is elsewhere you understand) and sweep by to the next room.
So far I haven't enjoyed the day. Mine is a lonely life. I feel like a leper who can only attend church from an anchorite's cell at the side. But the Irish girl is really nice. And not only that. She is clever and welcoming and warm-hearted, and witty and not at all defensive like some of them seem to be. And after half an hour of chatting about the indomitable Irishry, I go on my way rejoicing.
245. And the new term is well and truly upon us, as is the rain. I have to teeter along a six foot high wall outside the English Dept to avoid soaking my feet after this morning's deluge. Fortunately, the Gestapo, who are so anxious to leap upon innocent smokers, are keeping themselves dry, or I would surely have been dragged before the Harrassment Officer and charged with breaching health and safety regulations... Then, after some sort of registration for the dissertation module I sit with my head in my hands, in the S.U. and ponder my future. I hate bureaucracy and find it depressing. It is not easy to find out what happens when. The timetable is not exactly 'user-friendly'. I am down for Shakespeare with the Pale Young Man, which, we have been told will be assessed by some kind of computer exam and requires group attendance in special labs. This sort of thing is not for me, as you can guess. So I decide to swap the Bard for the 19th century European novel, and thank God I have read the books (albeit thirty years ago) because unlike the days of wine and roses they are long... On my way to the big house where they deal with this sort of thing I bump into Uncle Joe, who praises my battered tweed jacket (and not for the first time). Uncle Joe is a companionable sort and I only wish we had a Poets' Corner' at The Groves, where like minded spirits could discuss the world over a few pints... After queueing at the big house for half an hour the deed is done, and, with the help of the charming Miss Meredith, my timetable is changed, so that (usually) I will only have to attend on Mondays, rather than three days a week. For this relief, much thanks.
246. Monday morning, and after a trouble-free two hours on the road (a record), I arrive at The Groves an hour before my 11 o'clock session, which allows me to buy my 25p Times and have a coffee. The shelves of the S.U. shop, I notice, are piled with headache pills of all descriptions. Term has begun. As I reach for the loose change I need to pay for the coffee, I see that my hand is shaking. What a piece of work is a man, a bundle of nerves. All is quiet in the S.U. and it takes me a few minutes to realise why it seems so pleasant. They have forgotten to turn on the muzak.
I have a look at the copy of Scarlet and Black I read in the Lost Park, when I was a young man, twenty-eight years ago. The book and I are in a similar condition, frayed and worn, but in spite of the passage of time, we are still ourselves. We have been through a lot together, ignored each other, inhabited six or seven dwellings together, seen off, or been abandoned by, numerous women, witnessed births and deaths (at one remove perhaps). Yes, what a piece of work, indeed. Somehow we have survived borrowings, house moves, bonfires, damp, the daily grind. Each of us is a classic. We have endured.
Soon it is time to find the Blond Beast. He is striding from one side of the room to the other, hurling furniture about and rattling the blinds, like a true Romantic hero. Alas, the blinds prove too much for him and after a struggle, he is forced to give up, leaving them at a jaunty angle. From his oblique glance, I see that he appreciates the absurdity of his position; he too is a complex being. He sends round the register in the form of a blueprint of the room and asks us to write our names so that he can see who we are and where we are sitting. Unlike the Pale Young Man, he would be hopeless as a barman. Like me, he has no head for names. Who did you say I was?
Two hour later, we file into another room where a Beethoven symphony is playing. Hurrah! Hurrah! Kultur at last!
247. I hurry over to what is called 'The Castle', a medieval tower near the Italian Garden. And what a charming room we have. Once again I am to meet someone new, and in he comes, a wiry, diffident figure wearing specs, who I immediately warm to. 'Don't worry, Wilmott', I think, remembering my school days, 'you're with me!' Alas, I have one of my fits half way through the lesson. A student reads a story he has written, which concerns the lack of a role for men in the modern world. He comes home to find his wife is being unfaithful with not a man but a machine, and 'freaks out'. I sympathise. Who needs a has-been for a husband? What role can a washed-out and penniless failure like me have in the modern world? Suddenly I find myself reciting aloud that old Rugby Song The Engineer Told Me Before He Died. Perhaps I suffer from a deviant form of Tourette's Syndrome. My body's vest has been cast aside, I look down at this abysmal performance, and my head shakes with disbelief. Can I really be doing this?
248. Week two and the Blond Beast wanders into class wearing blazer and white flannels, as if he has come straight from a game of cricket or bowls... Academe frequently strikes me as being like Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps it is the unwritten sequel. But off comes the jacket and the BB swings into action, in a replay of last week, as he hurls the furniture from one side of the room to the other. This man is definitely a Superman. He has Nietzsche (surely the most difficult word in the world to spell) written all over him, and I've got the feeling that this 'module' is an attempt on his part to track down his own root, and I am again reminded of this in the lecture which follows: he stands before a white screen, waving his arms in some mad Poe-like dumb show*. The shadow on the screen is huge, but which is mimicking which? Is he the master or the servant of destiny? We shall see.
*NOTE: Edgar Alan. something about invisible wings flapping to and fro. Look it up yourselves.
249. Lunchtime: and I have a geeing up session with the Irish girl, which I enjoy as much as a day at the Galway races. Suddenly she gets up and leaves me and after a few moments devoted to her memory, I realise that it is time to stagger to the castle for shorts with Wilmott. The students stop talking as I enter the room and I am reminded of my own time as a lecturer thirty years ago. My blood would run cold as I pushed the door open to face my public. I sit down to wait for Wilmott, grateful that I am not in charge of today's performance and can doze off if I wish. I know the students are asking themselves what an old freak like me is doing amongst them. I sometimes ask myself the same question. After a few minutes a heavy tread is heard on the stairs, thud, thud, thud... Is this perhaps Dracula's Castle? Is Bela Lugosi about to appear? The door creaks open and after a few suspenseful seconds an exhausted-looking Wilmott, laden with books and stories, stands before us. There is something forlorn about this thin bespectacled figure who looks as if he could do with a few weeks holiday in the sun with regular meals and a couple of dancing girls. He deserves no less, I feel sure, and which of us knows how long he has left on this cruelly blasted planet?* Perhaps Wilmott lives in the cellar and is only allowed out to take classes, before returning to his quarters when the bell rings. I observe that he wears the highly polished brown brogues of the gent, and that his belt is far too long for his slender figure; it has been wound round his waist four or five times in a haphazard sort of way and trails half way down his leg as if he suddenly thought 'sod it', and gave up. There can be no doubt that at heart, Wilmott is a bohemian. I bet he was told off at school for putting his hands in his pockets. 'Please, please don't...' he begins. Yes, a public schoolboy through and through. Stand up the man who thinks he has shrugged off his origins.
*NOTE: I always slip this phrase into my 'submissions' but so far no-one has commented on it.
250. A blustery and chilly start to the day, and then a deluge. Kates's* 'Ode to Autumn' may be beauty, but today it seems a long way from the truth. Yes, as I am having a 'pass or fail week four assessment' with the Irish girl, the rain smashes down so hard on our plastic roof that I can hardly hear myself speak. Like Julien's ** emotions, mine are all over the place. When I ask her about a field trip to Dublin where we could map out a route taking in Leopold Bloom's favourite bars for the benefit of future students, she only shakes her head... and it seemed such a good idea to me.
And now it's time for The News, which today is read by the Irish girl.
First, the good news: 'You've passed the assessment'.
Now the bad: 'I won't need to see you for some time'.
Pathetic fallacies all round.
NOTES: * Last week she told me that a student pronounced Yeats 'Yeets'. With my help, the old Romantics are fighting back. **See Stendhal's Scarlet and Black.
251. Back in the castle, Wilmott tells us he has been embracing wolves, big ones with yellow eyes, and he says bats have had a bad press. Is he getting into character or are he and Uncle Joe (Gothic Studies) up to something? We read The Debutante by Leonora Carrington. It is a story about a wild beast who takes the place of a girl at a debutante's ball and disguises itself by neatly chewing off her maid's face and wearing it as a mask. If Wilmott had been a master at my school, he would've worn a black academic gown. And when we finish reading it he could've flapped straight out of the window, which I note is open to the elements. Branches of yew, heavy with rain sway in the dusk. Is that music I hear? Are those the children of the night? And is he the creature of some demonic tyrant? Questions, questions, questions... Come to think of it, what does the Emperor Tiberius do in the evenings, I wonder?
252. We have music by Satie as we enter the lecture theatre. It may be out of period but who am I to quarrel with that? I am after all, a living anachronism. Today we finish with Stendhal, and I get some good quotes: 'Words are there to domesticate the wildness in us' says the BB who claims it is an original line of his own devising. If that's so, it ain't half bad, and I will soon be claiming it as mine. And one of the students, a charming girl, says of Julien's progress to destruction: 'At the start, ambition was his main passion. At the finish, passion was his main ambition'. And off the cuff, too! And what do I contribute? NOTHING. As my step-father was in the habit of telling me when I was a small boy, I am 'a SPONGER, a PARASITE.' Yes, I have to tell you that in addition to my student loan and grant, because I have so many wives and children, this year I'm getting a £1200 bursary. I'm off to the pub to drown my sorrows.
253. My friend Hugo, a former Professor at the Egri Bikaver University in Budapest, has sent me a cutting from the Sunday Times. The Groves is to offer 'a foundation degree in contemporary circus skills' (I'm not making this up. I haven't even had a drink). Anyone who has been following my blog will know that I forecast this important development aeons ago! How I miss Monday mornings under the big top, with our team of intellectual acrobats spinning through the frosty air. I hesitate to brag but don't you think I showed a certain prescience? Where Archy leads, Academe will follow.
And, with my help, The Groves has gone up from 64th to 57th in the league tables. We'll soon be elbowing Cambridge out of first place. And then, no doubt, I shall be given an honorary fellowship. Come on everybody, let's hear it: UP SCHOOL!
254. I have a companion, today, my son Henry. It is half term and tomorrow will be his sixteenth birthday. He is not much of a conversationalist, and during the two and a half hour journey only manages to utter the words 'yes' and 'no' and to grunt a few times. The rest is silence.* He should fit in well at The Groves. We decide to play 'spot the character' and use the back door to get into the Eng Dept. We are in luck. Peering into the the photocopier in the 'vestibule' is the sorry figure of Mr Porridge. There is something timeless about the scene. Perhaps it is the complete blankness of his face. It is as if the photocopier is a well, and he has thrown a pebble down it and is waiting to hear it plop into the water...
Henry goes off to explore when the time comes for my class with the Blond Beast, where a fixed routine has been established. First he hurls tables about the room, then he wrestles unsuccesfully with the blinds, then he draws a plan of the room which he passes around for us to mark our positions on. And then we begin our dissection of the nineteenth century European novel. This is the operating theatre, or perhaps the mortuary, and today's victim is Madame Bovary, who I first got to know thirty years ago. She has changed remarkably little, something we have in common, I feel sure.
After the morning session, I meet Henry in the S.U. for a full English (still only £2) and take out some DVDs which he wants from the library. There is time to kill before the lecture, so we stroll around the lake to the Temple where I check the graffitti. Sure enough, some busybody, (probably the Harrassment Officer), has tried to obliterate the expressions of undying love students have left behind on the pillars. My favourites have all gone! Can it be that Lord Byron no longer loves Jade? But wait, I can trace the words with my finger. All is not lost. And there is a new one: Matt died of love here on the fourteenth of the month.
NOTE* No prizes for finding the source of this one.
255. As we enter the lecture theatre, music is playing. This week it is not Beethoven or Satie, or even the Ronettes. It is, I am reliably informed, Amy Winehouse. O tempora, O mores! And when she is turned off we get The Blond Beast starring in his own one man version of Trial by Jury. Is there nothing this Nietzschean Superman can't do apart from work the blinds? Surely the Chew Magna Thespians would welcome him as a member.
Soon it is time for short stories. Being adventurous by nature, I take the long way round and go through the Italian Garden. As I squeeze my youthful form through the small door in the big gate, I see the back of a wiry figure checking his watch as he scurries away from the castle. It must be Wilmott. I know that he enjoys travel. Has he decided to head east again? Maybe as he laboured over our efforts at story writing in his dark cellar, he was overcome by a yearning for nights heavy with the scent of musk... But, no, he has resisted the temptation to run for it, and after a few minutes he staggers into the room with a heap of printed paper in his arms. 'Your stories', he announces with a weary expression.
'Wisdom is a beautiful bird', wrote Auden, and I can't help thinking that Wilmott is a wise bird. He certainly looks like one as he cranes his long neck in the air while talking to the class, But what kind of bird is it that he resembles? Is it a lyre bird, or is it a bird of paradise? Or is it a peacock? Today he wears a long teddy-boy style jacket and after class I ask him about it. 'Most of my clothes are made in India,' he tells me. 'It's best to take the cloth with you when you go'.
NOTE * See his poem 'Oxford'.
256. If any of you Taxpayers are still following the story of my wanderings in The Groves, I will forgive you if you don’t take me at my word… but what follows is a true story. It is an autumn morning, golden and grey, mild and blustery, cloudy and blue, and I arrive in time to buy a 25p Times and have a coffee. I sit down in one of the DFS half-price leather sofas with my back to the wall (can vegans sit in a leather sofa I wonder?). Facing me a few tables away, is the Irish girl. Many nasty things happen in life, and sometimes we feel that it would be better if the black comedy which we find ourselves playing in, would pack itself up and get off the stage. But at certain moments, if we are lucky, some small realisation may suddenly come upon us so that we think it is after all, a fine thing to be alive upon the earth. It may be something recognisably ‘great’ like an aria from a Mozart opera, or a painting by a master, that strikes you, or it may be something ordinary such as the sight of blue smoke rising from a cottage chimney, or a young mother hanging out her washing on a March morning. Such moments are moments of affirmation. Well, this morning I experience such a moment. The muzak is playing. The detritus of the SU is all around. There are dust motes in the sunbeams filtering through the plastic roof. The Irish girl, wearing a plain black dress, sits alone. As she works at her papers, her elbows are on the table and one hand rests against her long black hair. Never was skin so white or hair so black. I sometimes wish that I could paint. As it is, I am stuck with words, all of which are clichés; human speech, as any student of Flaubert will tell you, is woefully inadequate.*
After a while, she stands up and gathers her things together as a goddess might gather to her breast the trappings of divinity, and comes over to talk to me. As our words disappear into the air I find myself thinking that perhaps, after all the failures, and the humiliations it is worth being here on this cruelly blasted planet as it hurtles through space.
Notes: * ‘…like a cracked tin kettle on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance, when we long to move the stars…’
An officious bystander writes: aren’t you overdoing it a bit, old chap? Perhaps you need a holiday…
257. If I remember correctly, at the end of Frankenstein, his creator tracks the monster by following the giant footprints he has left in the snow. If you want to know where the Blond Beast has been teaching you can check the windows of the Eng Dept. If the blinds are all over the place, you will know he has been there. So it is when I glance up on my way into the lecture theatre in the building on the opposite side of the courtyard. The blinds in the room upstairs are all at jaunty angles, higgledy-piggeldy, awry. This is his signature. It is not Kilroy but the Blond Beast who has left his mark. But to the lecture! Some people enjoy the pub quiz, Mrs Archy likes doing the crossword and the Su Doku, (what is the plural of this I wonder?), and I like to guess what music he will be playing when I enter the room. If it is 'classical' music I hope to re-assure myself that I am a clever, cultured sort of chap, and not just an old fool in an old jacket. And today it is........... WAGNER, The Twilight of the Gods, no less, and a quotation from NIETZSCHE is on the screen behind him. So I was right all along. At last the Blond Beast has come out of the closet. He is the Superman.
258. Wilmott is slaving over a hot photocopier, no doubt copying our stories before class begins. The routine is that one by a real writer is read first (aloud by us in turns), after which each of us reads his or her own story to the class who then say how much they like it. Responses are usually muted. Are you sitting comfortably? The chosen student begins to read... NEXT!
and so the lamp of truth is passed around. In one hand Wilmott holds a polystyrene cup aloft like an orb, while the other cradles the sceptre of his head. At that moment, two students come in. 'YOU ARE TWENTY MINUTES LATE... PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE TRY TO GET HERE ON TIME. WE ONLY HAVE TWO HOURS!' This man really does care about his students*. He cares more than they do! We continue. Wilmott looks aghast: his mouth gapes and his brow is furrowed. How is it that he finds himself here doing third year shorts, when he could be in Phuket or L.A. (only the Americans could reduce a beautiful name to something so commonplace) with lovely dancing girls for companions? My story is about a place in India. He has been to the very spot. He knows the Lall Bazar police station which I mention and, what's more, I've got the spelling wrong...
Now and then he bursts out with a reminiscence. 'You chuck girls for the oddest reasons,' he confesses. 'Once I had to chuck one because she couldn't spell Gandhi. Can you spell it?' And to show how high standards are at The Groves, a girl obliges. Yes, she's got it right. With luck, she could become the next Mrs Wilmott!
After class Wilmott and I stroll back to the Eng Dept together. It's strange how differently people can strike you on different days. I notice that he's taller than me by a couple of inches, and not as frail as I thought. He's wearing the smart teddy-boy coat, a Doctor Who scarf, immaculate jeans and brown polished shoes. His glistening executive car is in the number one staff spot. With careless deliberation he flips open the boot and tosses in his expensive shooting bag. He tells me that he has lived and worked all over the world. Today there is an air of the cosmopolitan grandee about Wilmott. I can hear the sound: 'koi hai!'** and see the waiters hurrying to his table. He is used to ordering expensive meals in foreign cities. I am in the presence of a success, a gorgeous peacock, compared to whom I am a moth-eaten old pheasant who has escaped the guns too long. Wilmott, who is ten years younger than me, is still very much in the swim and unlike me, definitely waving. As I make my way to the heap in my 50p jumble-sale jersey and shabby old jacket I can't help feeling thoroughly eclipsed.
NOTES: * I can't resist mentioning a 'travel story' of my own here. I once had a girlfriend from N.Z. called Margaret, who used to call me 'Uncle'. The News had revealed that an air hostess on an Air New Zealand flight had been caught misbehaving in the jakes with a customer. 'There you go, Uncle,' said Margaret, 'Fly Air New Zealand. We really do give a fuck'.
**I am indebted to Mr Wilmott for correcting my spelling of this phrase.
259. And it is All Souls' Day again. the third since I started at The Groves. I walk around the lake. No-one is about, only the ghosts of a few lovers who have departed. Yes, today is the Day of the Dead. Thoughts of my plans for Professor Plodder's memorial come upon me with a fine suddenness. I have neglected it lately, and really must try harder. Surely I could write a suitable epitaph at the very least, or perhaps I should steal one?
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
No, it wouldn't do at The Groves. They won't stand for capital letters at the beginning of the lines... And where is Professor Plodder at this moment, I wonder? John Donne spent his last few weeks of life posing for his monument. 'Does this look good on me?'* Perhaps that's what he's up to. Yes, man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.** But, soft! Who is this running around the lake? Is it the Professor training for our race to the crematorium? Er... no.
NOTE: *Susannah Yorke, actress. **One of my favourite lines of all time. By an old Norfolk man.
260. Hands up all those who've heard of Jekyll and Hyde? You have? Great! Well, Wilmott strikes me as having something of Jekyll and Hyde about him. The first time I saw him he reminded me of a bullied schoolboy, then a vampire; he was a bohemian, now he's a fashion icon; he was poor but now he's rich; he was confined to a damp cell at the bottom of the castle, but now he's a world-weary traveller; monkish and sophisticated; shy yet outspoken; tame and wild; a bird of paradise, a wolf... and so it goes on. This man will not be pigeon-holed. It is beyond the power of even the finest Cr Wr student to pin down Wilmott...
I'm going to tell you a true story. Once, when I still had hope, I was taken to Auberon Waugh's office in Soho where he was running the Literary Review. It was a casual sort of place and I was ushered into a little room where there were three people: an attractive young woman sat at one desk, Auberon Waugh sat at another, and standing in front of it, talking to him, was Julian Barnes. The girl and I discussed books I might review; the latest lot were on a shelf. I could choose one. After four or five minutes Julian Barnes left the room... Well, the point of the story is that I'd had good look at Julian Barnes. Some weeks later I suppose I was showing off about this experience and I was asked to describe Julian Barnes. 'There was something shiny about his head and face,' I said, 'as if he'd been oiled, polished and buffed. Of course, he's as bald as an egg'. This latter observation was refuted and photographs were later produced. I had to agree that I was completely wrong. Julian Barnes wasn't (and still isn't) bald.
Apparently Wilmott's 'glistening executive car' is an old heap. Think of that! No, as a chronicler, I cannot be trusted. But is Wilmott's old heap the Tardis, that's what I want to know? Is it the place where he effects his transformations?
261. Who is this, coming with pondering pace?* It has been suggested that it is unfair that I remain such a shadowy figure in this chronicle. To most people at The Groves I am just another anonymous sort of cove, not unlike the Old-Grey-Fellow**. I lack the sartorial elegance of Wilmott. I lack the air of authority of our noble Emperor. I don't have the charisma of Tolstoy the gardener or the moustache of Uncle Joe of Gothic Studies. And whilst I am happy to be a nobody, it is perhaps only right that I should try to depict myself as anyone else might be depicted. I am, after all, a member of the university, part of its warp and woof. And because my efforts at recording life here at The Groves will outlast all of us I think it's only right and proper that I too should be described, with the same skill and fairness that others have enjoyed. How then would a stranger looking for Archy be able to recognise him?
Here he comes now, wearing his old tweed jacket and battered cords and with a leather postman's bag over his shoulder. He's carrying a pack of postcards in one hand. It's my guess that they're the free ones from the SU. I bet he helps himself to them to save buying a notebook. Yes, he's scribbling something on the back of one! He's taking notes, because his memory's gone. Dorian Gray gone to seed? Look closely! You can't help but notice the ravaged features of what was once an astonishingly handsome man who women must've found irresistible over several decades. He's completely past it now, of course. Not even dangerous, and too decrepid to be the stalker he was thought to be when, as a young undergraduate, he would wander The Groves looking for copy. Now he sits slumped in a chair in the SU most of the time. And the hair! I suppose he thinks it looks bohemian. Pitiful! Thinning, grey and unkempt. Do you think he tries to look dozier than he is? Would it be possible? I don't like the furtive way he peers over those specs. I wouldn't trust him an inch. I can't think what he's doing here, wasting the taxpayer's money. It's an outrage!
NOTE: *See Thomas Hardy's poem about the cider man. Come on you experts, make an effort...
** See The Poor Mouth. I am beginning to see distinct similarities between its author and me. But 'every writer creates his own precursors'* (Borges.)
262. And now it's story time again: I once knew an elderly professor who had taught at University College Dublin, who was famous for absent-mindedness and for wearing football socks outside his trousers. He even wore them when he went to the House of Lords to give evidence in the Irish Peerage case. I should know, I was there! In his teaching days a crowd would usually attach itself to him as he walked along, and he was so absent minded that when someone fired a shot at him, he didn't even notice. Well, without the crowd, it could be me. There may be trouble ahead. I'm a sensitive sort of fellow and I have a nose for it. I must get out the Kevlar. One of Rider Haggard's characters wore a chain mail shirt as a vest and it saved his life on more than one occasion. I must look out for one in the charity shops. So much more me than kevlar, don't you think? You will note that I detect something hostile in the air. I begin to suspect the presence of assassins around every corner. Perhaps this explains my shaking hands and furtive manner. What will the chosen weapon be, and where will the deed be done? Will it be a case of a stiletto in the SU? But that's been done already proving that death is an illusion. Should I fear death by drowning in the lake, or the yellow silken noose of the thug in the castle precincts? Maybe it will be the Bulgarian umbrella trick in the vestibule, or the poisonous kiss of a veiled skull in the Italian garden? Infamy infamy, they've all got it in for me!* But be warned, whoever you are. I am used to dealing with the forces of darkness. Do your worst. I defy you all!
* Kenneth Williams in one of those films he did with the Emperor Tiberius.
263. It is early morning and I have hurried to the computer to record a dream that I've just had. It's important to record dreams straight away; there are no postcards to write on in the land of Morpheus! It was, if you understand, a dream within a dream. A young girl lies diagonally in her bed*, and never was white so white or black so black as her cheeks and hair.** She is dreaming. Suddenly a horrible shape appears, something amorphous and phantom-like. It is the Sea Slug.*** The girl turns in her sleep. Her expression changes as her dream is disturbed by the presence of this hideous monster. This thing, which resembles Mr Porridge, sweeps, phantom-like, around the room before taking up a position at the head of her bed (which must be in the middle of the 'foyer' in the Eng Dept) and leans over to whisper in her ear. 'Harassment... harassment... you are feeling very... harassed'. Then, with customary enthusiasm, the automatic door flies open and a deputation of hags (who bear no resemblance to persons living or dead) appears. Each one carries a placard with the word SEXIST on it and as they enter the vestibule they are chanting this very instructive word, which is aimed at me, even though I do not seem to be there. The Emperor Tiberius emerges from a dark corner to survey the scene with his usual quizzical air. The hags continue to chant as they make for the photocopier, which has changed into a bubbling cauldron into which their leader (who is wearing a veil), uttering some private curse of her own, drops something nasty (probably a bit of toad). The others follow suit, and throw in assorted entrails. I wake up, as they say, with a start. Mrs Archy is at my side in 'the shilling bed.'**** 'It's all right, it's all right...' she repeats. 'You had a bad dream, but it's over now. Let me get you a nice cup of tea.'
NOTES: *I read yesterday that Sterne said that when you married you would no longer be able to do this. It is true. **Edward Thomas. ***'The Sea Slug' is the name of Jobber Skald's boat in Weymouth Sands. I must've confused this with 'The Sea Cat' a nasty manifestation in The Poor Mouth, which I was reading before going to bed.****A trivial domestic detail: the matrimonial bed was purchased for a shilling at auction by my father-in-law just after the war.
264. The leaves are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are wet. Yes, very wet, but I have reason to be glad. Today I am due to see the Irish girl to discuss my dissertation. Suddenly I have to produce not only 8000 words of that, but 2000 words of this and 8000 of the other, and all by 10th December, only three weeks away! Ah, time! you don't know you're wasting it till it's gone. But where is she? I arrive at our usual secret spot, a little out of breath perhaps, having travelled across the wet mead, but at least I have made it. As there is no sign of her I have a panic attack. We agreed to meet, but there was no mention of where. Perhaps she is expecting me in her room back at the Eng dept. I retrace my steps through the wet mead, passing the Blond Beast on his way to buy a coffee, only to find that the door of her room is locked. Back I run again passing the Blond Beast, this time with coffee in hand. I call her name, but he has not seen her. He is laughing at me, but I let it pass, what does it matter in the scheme of things? And there she is, at last! I pant, I tremble, I expire... well, nearly.
Hot with exhaustion and struggling for breath, I take off my my tweed jacket and hang it on the back of a chair. 'It's new,' I manage to say, proudly. 'I bought it in the Steyning charity shop for £8.50.'
'Steyning?' she asks, 'Isn't that where W.B. Yeats was living in 1903? Perhaps it was his. Have you checked for a name tag?'
A tutor comments: Literary allusions are all very well, but there are five in your first paragraph. Can't you think of anything original to say for a change?
A doctor writes: Regular exercise is a good thing for the elderly. But I stress the word 'regular'.
Our fashion editor says: no comment.
265. On my way to the castle, where I am due to have shorts with Wilmott, I bump into a fellow student. 'I heard them talking about your blog', she says, but I am late, I have to rush off. Who are 'they', and what did 'they' say? I will have to wait to find out, and so will you O Taxpayer. Yes, I think as I splash through the puddles, my enemies are everywhere. But where is Wilmott and in what guise will Wilmott appear today, I wonder? Here we all are sitting around the table, waiting for his arrival. Will he be gentle or will he be cross? I soon find out. As usual, we start by reading a story by a real writer. When the baton is passed to me, I get along all right until I reach the end of the page, which is one of a number stapled together. Alas, bumbling old fool that I am, I turn it the wrong way and make a nonsense of the thing. Wilmott's eyes flash. I continue, but stumble over a bit of contorted syntax. This is too much for him. The lights in the castle flicker on and off. Is that steam coming out of his ears? Lightning. 'NEXT'.
266. And good morning to you Taxpayers wherever you may be! I want you to know that I have been putting in a bit of effort on your behalf over the last couple of weeks. It may be true for you that I am a sloth fattening myself at your expense and that that I haven't read any of the set books while I've been at The Groves, but it is true for me that I am now paying the price for fifty-nine years of idleness on this cruelly blasted planet. As Mrs Archy has pointed out, today is the day of the PRESENTATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN which reminds me that THE DAY OF PRESENTATIONS is rapidly approaching for students at The Groves and that for some it will be followed by THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. And with this in mind, I have been slaving at my dissertation which, you will be interested to know, is about Flann O'Brien, a writer few of you ignorant Taxpayers will have come across. Reading Flann takes you into a world inhabited by such characters as Martin O'Banassa, Ferdinand O'Roonassa, Sitric O'Sanassa, Maeldoon O'Poenassa, Maximilian O'Penisa, an anonymous O'Beenassa and sundry O'Coonassas, including Bonaparte, Leonardo and Michelangelo, all of whom are ignorant non-taxpayers like me, and I commend him to you. It is indeed a brave new world that has such people in it, and would you believe, O Taxpayers, that I have enjoyed rattling out my eight thousand word second draft at your expense. And while that may be true for me, it is also true that I now have to trot off a few stories for Cr Wr and some kind of accompanying JOURNAL (Wake up Mr Harassment man- this could be fun) and tackle a 2500 word essay on the European Novel into the bargain. I should be thinking hard about the latter at this stage, so, being conscientious and a born adventurer, I manage to find the questions buried deep in the forests of Minerva. I suppose after testing my sense of reality with Flann I should find a cold and rational essay title on which to reflect. Too much nonsense can only serve to damage my fledgeling mind. Here's one (I'm not making this up): 'LEVIN COULD EAT OYSTERS, THOUGH HE PREFERRED BREAD AND CHEESE' (Tolstoy) DISCUSS WITH REFERENCE TO ANY TWO COURSE TEXTS. Ah, yes, back to reality.
267. The land of Morpheus is disturbed by the sound of the alarm, which, fortunately is on Mrs Archy’s side of the bed*. Ten minutes later, clad in her alluring bombazine nightwear, she brings me a cup of tea. Like the winter sun I struggle to get up, grab my W.B.Yeats jacket from the peg and set off for the Groves. I arrive with just enough time to indulge myself with a coffee and croissant at the expense of you taxpayers, and I want you all to know how grateful I am to you all for your continued support**. Tossing back his coffee at the bar like an Italian, with his shooting bag slung rakishly over his shoulders is Wilmott, who has a new electric-shock style haircut, which makes him look even taller than usual. ‘Had a party over the weekend,' he says ‘It was good. I did some cooking…’
The literary life is full of coincidences. On my way to the BB’s seminar on Anna Karenina, I pass old Tolstoy, lost in thought, as he patrols the estate. I resist the urge to ask him whether he prefers oysters to bread and cheese, because I am a little in awe of him. Unlike our head of Lit, the motorcycling agriculturalist who once told me she was afraid of nothing, I am afraid of everything. I think this means that we would be incompatible. On the other hand, ours could be the ideal relationship. Perhaps Tolstoy would know?
Like Wilmott, the Blond Beast is sporting a new haircut. Being a trained observer, I have noticed that after his daily struggle with the blinds he likes to compose himself by reading from Pascal’s pensees. 'Right,' he begins, 'number forty-three: A trifle consoles us because a trifle unsettles us.' What can he mean? Another gustatory paradox; perhaps an essay question for next year’s class.
Half way through the two hour session we have a break. I wander outside to enjoy the sweet light of the sun for a few moments, being ever conscious that all too soon I shall be thrust into the ever-during night. Such thoughts fill a humble undergraduate’s mind as he struggles to come to terms with his chance existence on this cruelly-blasted planet. I gaze through the hideous nineteen sixties archway which frames a scene of rural tranquillity. The castle shines in the bright sun, like the tower at Coole Park. In the distance swans paddle in the cold companionable streams… I start from my reverie. A figure is approaching out of the sun. I struggle to make it out. Its feet are splayed and its arms do not move as it walks. Yes, it is Mr Porridge. In the bright sunlight I cannot see whether he wears holsters on his hips. If this is a film it is High Noon, and he is not Gary Cooper…
NOTES: * Domestic details such as this are incuded to add 'verisimilutude' in accordance with treasured diktats from Ms Gargery of Cr Wr.
** so badly needed!
268. GOOD NEWS: A miracle on a par with the tears of Saint Teresa and Saint Benignus,* and the stigmata of Saint Boniface has occurred! The veiled inscription on the pillar of the temple has been restored: the slogan LORD BYRON LOVES JADE has manifested itself once more! Yes, this fine example of amatory graffiti has resurfaced. The affirmation of Lord Byron's undying love has been re-touched; it is its own palimpsest. Perhaps English Heritage is responsible. They too have declared their presence on the pillars of the temple.
NOTE: *A spokesman at the Vatican comments: Saint Benignus was Saint Patrick's psalm-singer.
269. Instead of a lecture we have a chance for a one-to-one tutorial with the BB. All we have to do is sign our names on a list pinned to his door against a vacant time slot, so, as I’ve got three hours to kill, I take the last slot at 3.45. He lives right at the end of the assemblage of caravans, something I am sure the Groves’ landlord would think of as a carbuncle on the face (or possibly the backside) of the Eng dept. It's dark in here. No-one is about. The tents of the ungodly and of the godly alike are deserted. Outside, Tolstoy still paces the bounds, lost in thought. Back I go to the SU, where a platform, like a scaffold, has been erected. Sitting on this a lady with fair hair and noble mien* is folding laundry and I feel sure that I will never know why this should be. Such are the mysteries of Academe. On the two-seater sofa opposite are three students: Lex, whose feet (minus his shoes- such a well-brought up lad), dangle over one arm, Sal, a pretty girl who is hiding behind the screen of her lap-top, and Nina, who is perched like Puck on the other arm. And then there is me in my W.B.Yeats jacket. It is a perfect tableau of student life, and I am again made aware that all too soon I will be no more than a fond memory to all those who inhabit The Groves.
Shortly after half-past three I head back to the caravans for the tutorial. There goes Tolstoy, yet again! What can the venerable penseur be pondering? What great thoughts is he wrestling with? Oysters? Bread and cheese? Trifle? We will never know. But here in the prefabs of the wise hordes of students wait for enlightenment, and wait and wait... Like the Windmill Theatre, The Groves is never still. Night and day our dedicated team is struggling to impart knowledge to the ignorant sons and daughters of you taxpayers, and I know how much you appreciate it! I, of course, am a poor orphan and the authorities persist in their belief that Mrs Archy is my mother. Only the other day she opened a letter from the Student Loan Company about her son Archy! Yes my friends, about me.... But back to the caravan: Mrs Porridge hurries out of a room, the Poet, who I haven't seen for months, wanders in, introduces me to a fair-haired lady** and disappears with her into his cabin (sound of laughter offstage). I am left to swagger about a bit with three girl students who are loitering outside the BB’s room. He is running late and I too have to run for it without so much as a pensee.
NOTE:*our editor wants to know if this is a euphemism and if so what for.
** I hope this expression is not 'sexist'. I understand that 'blonde' is.
270. Wilmott's teddy-boy jacket blows in the wind as he hurries towards the castle with our pile of stories. I am aware that I am treading in the footsteps of history as I follow him up the hollow stairs. Today he treats us as gently as Lux soap flakes used to treat our favourite woollens. As our efforts revolve before him he smiles weakly as he points out for the twentieth time that we should write ‘she was sitting’ and not ‘she was sat’. How quietly he congratulates us on our burgeoning literary skills, and only bursts out with ‘NO! NO! NO!’ when a student inadvertently reads ‘singing’ for ‘signing’. Poor Wilmott, and he’s tried so hard! I can’t help but notice how very long his arms and legs are as he sits on his chair being nice. He is all elbows and knees. NEXT! And so the afternoon passes and all too soon it is time to leave... How dark the real world is.
271. Yes, how dark the real world is. Assassins are everywhere. During the course of the day I bumped into the student who told me last week that she had heard 'them' talking about my poor on-line journal, and do you know 'they' were and what was said? Shall I tell you who it was that betrayed me? No, like Brer Rabbit, I will lie low and say nuffin...
272. The Day of Boasting is upon us and, as you taxpayers will see, it is a sin from which I suffer. I was boasting only yesterday to Mrs Archy about my extraordinary longevity and do you know what she said? 'Yes, it is surprising when you consider how many people you've offended'. Naturally, I was wounded at these words, coming as they did from the person I have allowed to bring me my morning tea for so many years. Mine is a lonely life, and I have to keep my spirits up somehow if I am to produce the definitive guide to life at The Groves, something that will endure long after I have passed into the ever during night! But a few words of support have come through, to help me in my long struggle against the forces of darkness. As you taxpayers will know, I am an artist and not a technocrat, and I've never worked out how to set the blog to receive comments, but today one has arived by the e-mail! And here it is, for the world to see. On behalf of the persecuted, and of struggling artists everywhere, thank you, D, for your kind words*. And now for 'cut and paste'!
By far the best online blog around, bar none. Three
thumbs up! :D **
As you will know, O Taxpayers, mine is not a quarrelsome nature and I will not argue with the judgement of D, a person of rare discernment, who understands what it means to exist on this cruelly blasted planet. Yes the time as come for me to abandon years of self-imposed restraint! To the Harassment Officers of the world I say fie, pish and up yours! Like the Russian steamroller, bureaucracy moves slowly. Let its minions do their worst. Currite currite noctis equi! I shall be gone before you get me!***
NOTES: *Financial assistance would also be appreciated.
** A doctor writes: the number of people with three thumbs is limited, which should assist in identifying the sender.
*** Our literary critic comments: a fine example of the heroic couplet. Keep it up!
273. You will have noticed, O Taxpayer, that as far as my own approach to existence is concerned, a new militant mood is manifesting itself in my on-line journal. As a full-time student at The Groves I have certain rights and expectations. The first thing I want to draw to the attention of the authorities is that even though there are about five girls to every boy at The Groves not one of them has made an advance of a sexual nature to me. Here I am, witty, articulate and still (it must be admitted) rather good-looking, and an excellent lover into the bargain, as several ladies at the Avon Rest Home in Minehead will be pleased to attest, and yet, after more than two years at The Groves no one of either sex has made an advance of a sexual nature to me. How can this be? The answer is obvious: AGEISM, and I demand that the ombudsman looks into this complaint without further delay. (Financial compensation may be considered in lieu of satisfaction of any other kind.)
274. And where, pray, is the Emperor Tiberius? Stands he or sits he, or is he on his horse? As I only visit The Groves on Mondays, and never see him, I have to assume that Monday is his day off. What does he do in his spare time do you think? Where does he live? Who marries him?* But wherever he is early on this Sunday morning, whether it be in the posher end of a suburban housing estate somewhere off the Bridlington Road, or luxury hotel in far away Chicago, at the expense of you taxpayers, I want him to know that I am thinking of him, and that, thanks to me, he will never be forgotten. I am busy with my fund-raising plans and am determined that Professor Plodder will not be the only member of staff to have a fine memorial. The Head of Cr Wr too will have one. But these things cost money, and I want to ensure that our beloved emperor shall have the very best. Please send your donation to me now! Later, there will be an auction of celebrity items**. I may even agree to part with my W.B.Yeats jacket. Think of that!***
Yes, I have decided that an equestrian statue is what is required, something like the Verocchio Colleone that stands so proudly in the Campo San Zanipolo in Venice. And this term I'm offering a prize to anyone who can tell me what the alternative spelling 'cogliogni' means? Please submit your answers by e-mail on Friday. To boost funds and to discourage frivolous entries there will be an entry fee of £3.
NOTES: *Thomas Hardy once asked a similar question but about members of the opposite sex.
** receipt of anonymous donation of crystal ball and squeaky shopping trolley gratefully acknowledged.
***if uncle Joe wants to make a three figure offer in advance of the auction, it will be considered.
275. I have been carrying out further research for my great project, the equestrian statue of our noble emperor. Unfortunately, it seems that Verocchio has been dead for several centuries. What is more, he died before he had finished his Colleone, which had to be completed by Alessandro di Leopardi ('Mr Leopard' to you taxpayers). This is a timely reminder, as I am in the process of envisaging the form of the monument. Is it in the Titian painting of Bacchus that elegant leopards prowl about offstage? I'm thinking that in homage to our head of Cr Wr a bronze beast should be added to the plinth, not like the dull lions that lie at the foot of Nelson's column, you understand, but a solitary overweight panther*, the sight of which will remind all those who come after us of the happy days when the great Tiberius so memorably paced the corridors of The Groves. Come to think of it, I've never seen him down by the lake, in the woods, or in the Italian Garden, which must be because he is working, silently and laboriously, at his great task: to educate the sons and daughters of you taxpayers. I am determined that he will not be forgotten. Please give generously.
NOTE: *I am not suggesting for one moment that our noble emperor is overweight. Far from it! A more elegant figure would be hard to find. But if I was at least I know that the suggestion would not be 'sexist'. Such is the nature of 'equality' here in Academe.
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276. A NOTE TO MY ENEMIES
I shall be arriving early in the SU tomorrow morning if you want to assassinate me. The weather forecast is good- an early frost but milder later- See you outside at eight! Siena mi fe, disfecemi Maremma - Bridlington bores me, The Groves did for me!*
NOTE *a tutor writes: Tortuous but shows promise. Keep it up! Have you read Pushkin? Onegin contains some good tips on duelling. Good luck!
A spokesman from the music dept writes: Have you heard of Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer (earlier than the Beatles)?
277. A NOTE TO MY FRIENDS
As The Blond Beast's seminar is not taking place tomorrow, I shall be arriving later than usual! Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.
278. There is no seminar today, so I loll in bed a bit longer than usual and allow Mrs Archy to bring me a second cup of tea, clad as she is in her alluring bombazine nightwear. Today I am due to see the Irish girl to discuss my dissertation and I spend the two hour journey rehearsing clever ripostes to questions she may ask and devising pleasantries with which to charm her. And here she is looking demure and all wrapped up against the icy blast... I negligently toss aside my W.B.Yeats jacket and sit down opposite her ('what care I for wind and weather'?) And now to business! Is my dissertator* about to castigate me, or will she be merciful? There are persons who diminish a person's enjoyment of his existence on this cruelly blasted planet, and there are those who have the gift of leaving you with the sense that your being here is not a complete waste of time. The Irish girl belongs to the second category. Karen Blixen (a great writer) says somewhere that the essence of chivalry is respecting the life illusions of others and the Irish girl instinctively knows how to do this. Lucky the man who shares his hearth with such a prize!
As I wander into the lecture room for the Blond Beast's session on Anna K, I am awoken from my reverie by three hundred decibels of what turns out to be Bruce Springsteen telling us about the unfortunate passengers who shared a train journey with him. This is very instructive and I soon find out why we have this instead of the Kreuzer Sonata, which I can't help feeling Tolstoy would've preferred. He wants to woo us as it's time for us to fill in our double-sided MODULE EVALUATION FEEDBACK REPORTS. Having spent a lifetime filling in forms before I came to The Groves if I'm buggered if I'm going to dispel the delicious mood I find myself in by completing another one. So I tell you what, I'll give my report on-line for all the world to see, and I'll do it now, before he's given me a deservedly rotten mark for my essay**.
Do you like your lecturer? Yes.
Is he Really excellent, very excellent or extremely excellent? Yes.
Have you enjoyed the module? Yes
Would you want to be stuck in a lift with him? I can think of worse people to get stuck with.
NOTES: *Professor Plodder writes: this is surely the dative case. Dissertatee would be the appropriate conjunction. **'Stand up the man who is entirely objective'. (attr. Bonkhin)
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279. I have been pondering the question of raising funds for the Equestrian statue of our noble emperor and have come up with the brilliant idea of aranging an AUCTION OF PROMISES. I begin with the Blond Beast who kindly offers his dog-eared copy of Pascal's Pensees (on the understanding that I give him a new copy). The High Priestess generously agrees to be taken on a night's clubbing at the venue of her choice; and Mrs Porridge is going to donate a lock of her hair and a pebble from a field where Sylvia Plath is believed to have walked. But our hearts and minds must go out to Uncle Joe, who agrees to have his moustache shaved off (for an amount in excess of £1,000,000). The whiskers will be used to stuff new cushions for the staff common room. I am disappointed to find, when I tour the prefabs of the wise in search of support, that everyone seems to have bolted for it. The cell doors each have a voyeur's window like the ones at Pentonville. Only one figure can be seen ceaselessly labouring, while everyone else is out enjoying themselves. And who do you think it is? MR PORRIDGE! What a conscientious fellow he is. In the gloom I can't make out what he is working on. It looks like a Harassment Action Plan for the new semester. In the circumstances, I think it best not to disturb him, so I go on my way rejoicing.
As I'm old and grey and full of sleep and our imagined corner of this old muckball* is covered with ice, I decide to get back early to Mrs Archy who will be waiting anxiously for me, with a cup of tea, in her alluring bombazine nightwear. But before I leave, I want to return a book Wilmott kindly lent me. There he is in the castle, snowed under with stories and surrounded by eager students. Only his head is visible. 'Have a chocolate finger' he beams. That is the measure of the man. And now, after a day crammed with adventure, it is time for me to go into the ever during night.
*A tutor comments: three allusions in one phrase is too much even for the academic ear to stand. Do again...
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280. As my fund raising efforts have already proved so successful, I am thinking of devoting myself to worthy causes on a full-time basis. I am particularly interested in the idea of helping oppressed and underprivileged academics to go on expeditions. Statues and mausoleums can wait. It is living breathing people who matter, not the mortal remains or the memories of even the most illustrious of those who have shared our existence on this cruelly blasted planet. It may be true that Professor Plodder and our noble emperor have achieved more in worldly terms than Mr Porridge, but it is the living who must come first, be they ever so humble. When I saw our poor Harassment Officer hard at work yesterday in his dark cell, I had a damascene moment. Suddenly the thought struck me like a black horse galloping across the skyline at sunset that this man should be out climbing the Twelve Bens or exploring the wastes of Antarctica, not spending his strength for the benefit of others without respite. And if I can only raise enough he shall do it! A one-man expedition trekking from pole to pole taking in the Andes, the Congo Basin, and the deserts of Arabia as well as the Twelve Bens is what I have in mind. The man deserves no less. GIVE NOW.
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281. I've rarely felt more like swearing. The morning has been spent wrestling with the wretched computer. It won't follow instructions. I've been cobbling together the right number of words to send in for Cr Wr. Sometimes the computer tells me that the file I have before me on the screen is set for editing by me and it refuses to allow me to amend it. Then I copy it and put it in another file and then I forget which is which. And with five stories the permutations are endless. Then I join them all in one and try to send them to the wretched plagiarism thing at the other end of the computer and I can't find the setting for this. Is it there? Is anyone there? By tomorrow I will have forgotten where to find the stuff. It's hopeless. I've spent far more time dealing with the secretarial/bureaucratic side of things than I have in 'creating'. I hate them all. What would Coleridge have done, faced with this? He would've sought consolation, that's what he would've done. I'm off to the very pub he sat in, here at Porlock. Incidentally, Coleridge no longer exists in Academe. I don't think his name has been mentioned once while I've been here. Poetry, of course begins with Ted Hughes. He is ancient history. He put capital letters at the beginning of lines. Think of that!
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282. Proverbs of Archy and the new Beatitudes:
1. It is better to dwell in the tents of the ungodly than to attend lectures.
2. Blessed be the Plathites for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
3. Blessed be the young men at the Groves for to them shall be given a damsel or two
4. Commit not any harassment that thy days may be long in the land.
5. A knowledge of Ted Hughes is the beginning of wisdom
6. Mock not the raiment of women for they are an unforgiving breed.
7. Blessed be the name of the Emperor Tiberius for he shall rule over the land.
8. Trouble not thy head with any original thought; a footnote is more blessed.
9. It is better to bury thy talents than leave thy formatting undone.
10. Do not forget to submit, for the day of atonement is at hand.
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282. I've spent the morning writing 2000 words about nothing. The trouble is that the Cr Wr people (that is our beloved emperor and his minions) feel they have to pretend that Cr Wr is an academic subject and it isn't. Can you imagine Evelyn Waugh writing a critical account of his experiences of working with the short story form together with a diary of unspecified length relating his progress throughout the course? He would've had a fit. Poor old Wilmott is a nice fellow, and it isn't his fault. And he's got to mark it. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a fit either, but at least he's being paid for it. As far as the diary is concerned, I had thought of submitting extracts from my on-line journal... NEXT!
289.Frost lines the troughs in the stubble field as the heap takes me along the driveway that leads to the Groves; it reminds me of the vapour trails in a Paul Nash painting. The first familiar figure I see as I walk from the far end of the furthest car park is Tolstoy, wheeling what looks like a toy barrow. He sees me looking at him, and acknowledges my respectful greeting with a snarl. That man was born to rule in the east. On my way in to the SU I see a sign:NO ONE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL WILL BE PERMITTED TO USE THE ICE RINK, which in our case we have not got. Inside, a girl sits with a stethoscope in her ears, typing furiously on her laptop. Her concentration is absolute. I know that she wants to be a war correspondent, and working in the SU is the best possible training for such a career: the whistle of bullets and the crump of exploding shells will be nothing compared to this. Johnny Mathis, the favourite of the Bridlington Rotarians, croons from the loudspeakers. A thousand strips of tinsel droop from the ceiling. Students sit at tables frantically turning over sheets of A4. This is submissions week. It is Christmas.
The Blond Beast is discussing top hats with some admiring students as I enter his class. Beneath one hand is his dog-eared copy of Pascal. Numbers are down, but he doesn't mind. He's seen it all before. The holiday has begun. There are five thousand girls at The Groves, and the most beautiful of them has not yet left for home and chooses to sit down beside me. She is so lovely that I can't meet her gaze. All I can do is shtammer**
NOTES:*who is this? **See page 276 of Anna Karenina.
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290. THIS YEAR'S FINAL ENTRY AND CHRISTMAS QUIZ: After class, I hurry across the paths to the 'Quiet Room' above the SU where the Irish Girl's detachment of disertators is due to assemble for a final briefing. There they are, all sitting together like children waiting for a story. I have to strain my ears to hear her over the Johnny Mathis. And after only ten minutes she stands up and disappears, her obedient acolytes follow, and I am left darkling. In the empty room a chaos of vacancy shines. Gathering my senses, I see that the room is indeed empty, save for a strange eastern looking tent which has been erected in one corner. I try to guess what's going on: if Madame Sostoris, famous clairvoyant, is not inside, it will surely be our beloved High Priestess earning a few bob for my expedition/memorial fund, by gazing into her crystal ball... but no, as usual I am wrong. Perhaps it is Santa's Grotto... But, whatever it is, some students have now colonised it for work on their submissions.
And then it's time for a sandwich in the SU, where I perch on a high stool like Tennyson's eagle and survey the scene. Two lithe beauties lean over the pool table... click... click... Lex and Sal sit on their sofa as usual, looking happy. Sal is typing into her laptop...tippity tap, tippity tap... Lex, like me, is looking at the world and finding it quite funny. What a pretty girl Sal is (wasted on him, of course!). I can see from the Old Fakir's expression that he is enjoying the company of the woman he is with. So life goes on! And still the women come and go, talking of you know who. A mature student downs a pint of Guinness as she sorts through her papers, then makes her way with rather too much certainty towards the door. And I sit here on my borrowed stool, trying to cage the minute. This is my third Christmas at The Groves. All too soon I shall be passing through its portals for the last time. In accordance with the diktat of our noble emperor, I must work out my Exit Philosophy: what will I do next year, Cynara, when I have collected my bus pass? Before my fellow students are forty the Venerable Archy, immortal chronicler of life at The Groves, will be no more than a handful of grey ashes. Will I direct my executors to scatter them here? Enough! I pick up my leather postman's bag and put on my W.B.Yeats jacket... I want to get home before the frost bites.
CHRISTMAS QUIZ: allusions and quotations: Name the poets and poems from which the highlighted words come. Answers by e-mail please. A cup of herbal tea will be awarded to the first person who comes up with the right answers. Meanwhile your old friend/enemy Archy wishes all you taxpayers a very merry Christmas.
AND THE WINNER OF THIS YEAR'S QUIZ IS: The Revd. Christopher Richards of South Wales! herbal tea is on its way!
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SPRING TERM
291. JANUARY 2009: The first task of the year is to have my dissertation bound (in duplicate) in time for the deadline which is noon on Friday. The 'office' shop in my local big town of Minehead is closed for the holiday until Wednesday. I plan only to attend at The Groves on Monday. Help! But someone has told me there is suitable 'shop' hidden deep in the bowels of the old house, The Groves itself. Whether they will be able to do it for me by the end of the day, or whether I will be obliged to do a further 150 mile round trip to comply with the bureaucracy remains to be seen. Such are the trials of student life. The new automatic doors at the fine old house at The Groves are just the sort of thing I hate. They have a beastly button to press. The lady behind the desk loves them. 'So would you', she tells me, 'if you had that draught!' Not so, my dear. I like a good draught. I wander off like Theseus seeking the minotaur, and find myself descending a flight of stone steps. Down below, long before electric doors, maids did the laundry, and (I suppose) the kitchens were to be found. On the vaulted ceiling of the corridor runs a motorway of cables; the threads by which previous visitors found their way out, perhaps. I find a door leading to what might well be the engine room. It is locked, but after a few minutes a kindly old boy appears, unlocks the door and solves my problem in a couple of minutes. I deduce that the real students will all be queueing to have their binding done at eleven on Friday morning.
There are signs of snow beside the paths and on the furrows in the fields as I walk to the SU to meet Wilmott, and after a few minutes he hurries in. Wilmott is incapable of lethargy. He is one of the world's most active bipeds and constantly darts about all over the place. Here he comes, trying not to smile. He likes me! 'I've marked your paper', he tells me. I always say that I get a deservedly rotten mark, but this time I can't. Instead, he gave me an undeservedly good one. Can you say 'undeservedly', Wilmott? The man is well read, intelligent, and funny and we gossip for a good hour before he has to go and I have to see The Blond Beast to talk about my essay and a new 'module' for next half year. 'You were good on Madame Bovary', he says, 'but your close reading of Anna Karenina stopped at page 48. Why?' He knows the answer. We both do. And then we discuss the new Cr Wr module, which is an 8000 word project. I had suggested that extracts from this on-line journal might be cobbled together to give a sketch of university life from the point of view of England's oldest undergraduate, but alas, this is beyond the scope of my mentors. So we have agreed that I will start a novel. Over the last two weeks I have written 16000 words of this, twice the required amount. He mentions the possibility of an M.A. next year? You taxpayers don't cough up for these. How mean can you get? But the fees have to be paid by someone, and my wives and children have no money to spare for what they consider to be a mere indulgence. But the university has access to some funding. Could I be eligible? A novel by a brilliant sexagenarian student as part of his Cr Wr course would surely be an embellishment to the reputation of The Groves! This is where having friends counts. And enemies too! Meanwhile all cheques for the memorial funds should continue to be sent as usual. If you trust your bank, you can trust me.
292. I have an exam tomorrow at nine in the morning so I decide to stay overnight in the big city with my old friends Hazel and Mark. He and I go to the pub as usual, where he's due to give me a tutorial on the four fat books I should've read for the exam. 'What happens at the end of Anna Karenina?' I ask. 'Doesn't she fall under a train or something?' 'Oh, she just stubs her toe. It was nothing! And she goes off to Mexico to found a kindergarden with the Archduchess Tatyana. They set up a bohemian menage and hold literary soirees with Anna in the chaise longue.' Then we move on to Le Rouge et Le Noir. 'The important thing to remember about that and Madame Bovary is that they are operatic. Carl Rosa did them in Oxford in my dad's day.' 'And Crime and Punishment?' 'That's the one where the hero ends up as a driver on the Saint Petersburg Metro and gets the Order of Lenin (third class) .' With friends like Mark, how can I go wrong?
In the morning I set off in good time. The doors of the exam room are open. I am the last one in, but that's only because I don't like queueing and have been lurking around the corner. It is very quiet in here... The questions all seem to be about the same thing- failure and despair- an omen perhaps. I look around the room and after checking the official list find a seat with my number on it, which is right at the back, near the exit. Last time I had to 'be excused' at half time. Is that why they've put me here, I wonder? Poor old man...
Well, I've finished, and I look around the room at the backs of the other students as they tidy up their efforts. This is almost certainly the last exam I will ever sit, until the Day of Judgement that is. 'STOP WRITING' calls the Blond Beast, who has been sitting quietly on a raised dais at the front as befits his lofty status. It is over. I hand in my paper and wander outside feeling just a little sad. The next job for me to do is to sort out the modules for the new term. My time is nearly up. I have decided to wait until the timetables are ready before making my choice and hurry along to see the charming lady in the big house who deals with this sort of thing. Alas, all the modules I want to do are fully booked. There may be no room for me anywhere remotely congenial. I may have to come back next year... And a thought strikes me. If I don't graduate will I remain an undergraduate forever?
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293. Waiting, waiting, waiting... It's not so much the results of the exam (like Hippokleides, I don't care*), but of the dissertation. I've made an effort to write well and I have done my best to comply with the silly rules and tedious folderols of Academe . I like my tutor and I've tried to please her. I'm a superstitious sort of bloke and I'm pinning my entire future and perhaps my past on this one. If the mark is good then I can go on. If I fail then I fail in every way. This result will be the measure of my mediocrity. It's true that I've always played little games, ever since I was a small boy. But this one seems important... What's that line of Betjeman? 'Swing up and give me hope of life. Swing down and plunge the surgeon's knife'. Waiting, waiting, waiting...
NOTE: See 'Ou Phrontis' by Charles Causeley
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294. At last! Like an Arthurian knight I have waited long, looking deep into my heart, and now the result has come, floating through the air from Camelot. And do you know? I am not a genius. In my dissertation I have scraped a first by one mark. I am forever consigned to the dustbin of mediocrity.
And what do you think my old friend Professor Plodder (the second marker) had to say? ‘... its virtues are more belletristic than academic, and this reader felt that many of its substantive contextual points could have been made with much more economy, leaving room for a fuller engagement with, and exposition of..
Belletristic! Aux barricades! What was that line of Balzac? 'You tattered Pompadour, you Venus of the graveyard' …Well, Plodder old chap, the race to Pere Lachaise is on. Au cimetiere! And in case you get there first I've knocked up a litle epitaph to attract the eye of the close-reader, who, horsed or horseless passes by.
Beneath this marble lies Professor Plodder
..He who devoured thought is now thought fodder
..Who hastened slowly when he saw the light
..Runs slowly with the horses of the night
..He who moved slowly by the light of day
..Slowly revolves here in a bed of clay
..Make hay young lover pale beneath the moon
..Make haste close reader, death comes soon
……….......……………………A. Belletrist fecit
Is it not ironical that the student who was failed by the Dark Lady (now Dr Morgana!) in his first term of Cr Wr should now be condemned as belletristic? O tempora! O mores!
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295. This will be a journeyman's entry because I am so tired. Today, classes for the new 'semester' start in earnest. I set off into the ever-during night 6.30 for the 9 0'clock class. As I drive further east there is more snow lying on the fields and hills, and more pools of icy water on the roads and I ask myself if I really have to do this. When I am within ten miles of The Groves, I meet a traffic jam, but I sit it out and park the car (defying the no-entry signs at the forbidden end of the car park) just on nine (remembering how cross tutors who live up the road can be if you get there five minutes late). There is no time to get a hot drink from the beastly machine. The class is in old Wilmott's patch, the tower, and it is re-assuring to find that the clock still stands at ten to three. It is as constant as the one at Grantchester, though there is no evidence of either tea or honey The old boy taking the class is a decent sort, at least a hundred years old I would say, and resembles a grey version of Shrek (sorry to admit a knowledge of this sort of thing, but it's impossible to live in an ivory castle when you have three children). The object of today's class seems to be to organise us into little groups. It reminds me of my first day at Infants' School more than fifty years ago. When the two hour session comes to an end I head for the S.U. across the muddy yard and bump into Uncle Joe hurrying to class. We exchange greetings, like two old stagers, just as two Lamias appear, glittering dangerously in silver and black- the Dark Lady (now Dr Morgana!), and Ms Gargery. I feel fortunate to be so old that I escape their toils, but they make an impresssive pair.
The SU is filled with stalls where students are selling their society (or societies) and girls dressed like lap-dancers and bunny girls hand out leaflets (but not to me!). There is nowhere to sit down. After a quick and muddy walk around the lake, where I find that the graffiti has been obliterated again, it is time to head for home...
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296. A belletrist writes: If I had my time again and managed by cunning and deception to worm my way into Academe (with a fat salary and pension to look forward to, not to mention a year off to write a book every so often), I would lead a campaign to force grey out and force gold in, at least this was the gist of what I was trying to tell the Irish Girl who I met on the stairs today. She is a kind soul and humours me. I sometimes suspect that she believes that she is building up treasure in heaven by performing these little acts of kindness. All she has to do at the Pearly Gates is to mention my name: 'I am the friend of Archy Porlock'*, and they will be flung open; all Paradise will be at her feet.
I am a poor orator. As a rule, we belletrists feel safer wielding a pen or hiding behind a keyboard than we do when speaking. But here is the gist of my little rant. Is it not the case that the vast proportion of essays written in academic journals lack sparkle and are written in jargon? Are not most of them incredibly boring? And is it not the case that bores cultivate boredom while fearing Art's pale and trembling flame?** When I was a boy living in London, the dustcarts had these words written on them, near the driver's door: The soliciting of gratuities is strictly prohibited. No-one knew what was meant by these words, neither the dustmen nor the small boy who read them, but they must have satisfied some urge, on the part of the bureaucrat who had thought them up, to assert his status and learning. Many academics appear to share the approach of the bureaucrat; would they not be better employed working in town halls than in universities?
What is the purpose of literary criticism? Is it to inspire and shed light? Is it to point the way to the accumulated wisdom and beauty of the ages? Or is to to bolster the self-confidence of the twerp who writes it? There have been critics capable of inspiring students. George Steiner is one. But have we undergraduates been introduced to him? No. And why is this? Presumably because he is a man of genius who will make the jargon-ridden hordes feel thoroughly second rate. Be careful you academics! Tread lightly! The last thing you want to do is to inspire your students!
NOTE: *I am of course paraphrasing the incomparable Isak Dinesen here. ** Walter Pater writes: 'dear boy, the flame was hard and gem-like...'
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297. An admonishment has been received from my friend Mark, who lives in the big city, and acts as my mentor and conscience: Your curmudgeonly attitude to your first is a disgrace. Correct procedure is to ask the Irish Girl to a celebratory drink. She won't expect champagne, Guinness will do. And after Mark's help with my European novel, what can I do but take his advice?
I decide to check my university e-mails and find that I am invited to contribute to a survey if I am a gay person. The assumption seems to be that I am. Another one informs me that if I am from an ethnic minority I will be offered £10, regardless of age disability, gender, religion or sexual orientation if I am prepared to give my views on how I have been treated. £10! Pass the boot polish Geeves!
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298. And who is this in front of me at the SU ordering his organic hot drink and looking like a preppy American student* with a neat, new haircut? It's my old friend Mr Porridge. I resist the urge to tell him to cheer up and that funds are dribbling in towards the cost of his one-man expedition and that, if I have my way, he will soon be leaving behind the cares of office and all the unpleasantness involved in being a Harassment Officer. He will be wrestling with walrusses and polar bears instead. Off he goes, in pursuit of harassment or to class, I know not which, with his specatacles buffed and tilted towards the stars, a brave, true spirit! And then I notice a new sign above the bar: THE THREE BROOMSTICKS, it says, and three witches broomsticks and hats are drawn on it. It isn't halloween. Could it be that three lady members of staff have taken over the business? I can't think of any who could possibly be likened to witches, or even barmaids. Can you?
After a two day stint at The Groves I confess to feeling knackered. It's not the workload, which is minimal, but the driving. I am too old to be stuck on the road for five hours a day. I think I will advertise for a driver on the university website. Having been told you can get a 'scribe' if you have handwriting difficulties (if only I'd known!), I don't see why I shouldn't be driven around by a suitable young lady driver. Please enclose a photograph with your application.
And now a rant about the modern age. I have had some trouble sorting out my 'modules'. e -mails from The Groves indicated that I might not, after all, be registered for the new ones. Naturally, I responded immediately, knowing that time is of the essence where bureaucracy is concerned (on a one-way basis of course) and that I might find myself locked out... But my e mails don't get delivered. They are treated as spam. All I can do is copy them and deliver them by hand to the relevant pigeon hole when I next visit The Groves. Progress. Ah, yes...
Note.* Our fashion editor writes: The preppy look is basically a neat, well-balanced, put-together look that can be achieved by combining the right colors, patterns, and accessories. It is never trashy, mall trendy or overdone. Simple, classic and clean.
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299. And the results are out! I too was once a taxpayer* and used to feel resentful when my hard-earned money was wasted on layabout students like me. I understand the impatience you must feel as you wait for my results from last semester to be made public. And they would be, except for the fact that the so-called 'Student Portal' of The Groves' website (a wonder of the modern age) only appears in a miniature form on the screen of old Dell Boy, here at the end of the world in Porlock. Even my eleven year old IT expert, Tobias William, Q.C., reports that he cannot decipher the script due to its miniscule size. Neither it nor I have any right to call ourselves a Triumphal Arch. Yes, progress is a wonderful thing. But you will be pleased to know, O Taxpayer, that I have been wiling away the time by finishing Moby Dick which I left off half way a quarter of a century ago. I read the first half twice so much did I like it and then things like wives and children intervened. But now, at last, I have read it to the end. And do you know what I think? How can you unless I tell you, which I shall do in my own belltristic way? Melville's prose, O ignorant Taxpayer, is like the sea: wild, unreasonable, purple, wine-dark. The book far exceeds reality. I think it is wonderful beyond words, with shades of Francis Thompson, Hopkins the poet, Milton, Shakespeare and of course the King James Bible, which our learned tutor the Dark Lady (now Dr Morgana!) told us, in the first days of our innocence, had done such a disservice to the English language* *(yes, being legally trained I copied her words verbatim into my notebook which can be produced in evidence when I am called to the great gate to be admonished by the Harassment Officer). What erudition! What understanding! And her name has now surfaced like the body of Ishmael, on the last page of this masterpiece, in which Melville writes of 'the gaseous Fata Morgana'. Yes, Leviathan has risen from the depths and the sinner will be crushed in his mighty jaws!
And as Resident Belletrist at The Groves, I am now going to tell all you learned doctors and professors why Moby Dick is infinitely superior to Ulysses, which regarded as number one by all Eng Lit tutors at The Grove s except the stick-in-the-muds who prefer Middlemarch (which deserves no comment due to its terminal stodginess): Ulysses is about a man who has no interest in nature. Moby Dick is about man and nature. For 'nature' you can read 'God' or 'fate' or 'destiny' or even 'the ever-during night' if you wish...
NOTES:*or was it 'in Arcady'? ** see entry 24 in Book I of these, my memoirs.
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300. What a number! Three hundred. I am a classic. Against all the odds, Archy, the old grey fellow, the old doddipole, the person from Porlock, is still a student at The Groves and still continuing to post the odd entry to record his sojourn. Yes, O Taxpayer, and what is more I have some news for you. At last I have my results, and here they are:
SHORTS (Wilmott): 74%
19th CENTURY EUROPEAN NOVELS (Blond Beast): 70%
DISSERTATION (The Irish Girl):70%
So they aren't bad, and what they mean in particular is that my policy of writing illegibly like a spider with a rudimentary knowledge of cuneiform, has paid off! I must have done well in the Blond Beast's exam as the results for this were combined with that essay on the degustatory habits of the bourgeoisie for which I only scored 66%. So well done the Blond Beast. I have to say that my admiration and affection for tutors appears to reflect the marks they give me. But as Bonkhin said, ' Stand up the man who is truly objective!'* And my average mark over last year and this is such that it means that if I can get 73% in two out of the three heads I am now studying I should get a FIRST (subject to any secret veto by the hordes of Philistia). But, O Taxpayer, there is many a slip and I am old and grey and full of sleep and who can tell the number of his days?
But back to class. Today we have Old Shrek, who is a truly charming fellow, amiable, willing and, it seems, well read. Our class is the first of the day, the nine o'clock class for insomniacs and dedicated literateurs. We sit in groups and 'workshop'. As we do so, Old Shrek moves slowly from group to group and offers help, sympathy and advice. Not only this, but he returns some of our efforts which he has looked at. One of these is mine, and I am impressed and almost overcome with emotion when I see that he really has looked at what I submitted even though it is in the wrong format (not being double-spaced). But I am obliged to scratch my head in confusion. As you ignorant taxpayers will know, I admire and respect all my learned tutors and revere each word spoken ex cathedra by them. In the margin of page two Old Shrek has written (in pencil): 'echoes here of one of my favourite novels of all time, Tristram Shandy', which he advises me to read if I haven't already done so... This I find puzzling. How can Old Shrek be right? We are told that all our Cr Wr tutors are learned published authors... in the first term, not only did my learned published tutor, the Dark Lady (now Dr Morgana!) decline to look at my first effort on the grounds that it was in the wrong format, but she advised her class of innocents against reading Tristram Shandy (as documented in entry 18 of part one of these my memoirs)**. Is it not fortunate O long-suffering Taxpayer, that I had read the book before coming to The Groves? Otherwise I might have been torn apart by the conflicting words of my learned tutors. I would have been a veritable Magdeburg Sphere. Picture the scene, O Taxpayer. There I am, an empty globe held together by a vacuum. On one side the ample musculature of Old Shrek attempts to pull at me. On the other, the Lamia-like Dark Lady, tattooed like Queequeg and full of occult knowledge, pulls and prises. Which will be the victor? And with what will the vacuum be replaced?
NOTES: * Bonkhin: Night Thoughts, 1972 edition. ** N.B. The Dark Lady also failed me in Cr Wr (rightly, of course!)
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301. Mrs Archy's bombazine nightwear is so alluring that I decide to stay in bed instead of driving in for Old Shrek's crack-of-dawn workshop. Half of my group are in Chicago with our beloved Emperor anyway. For the Cr Wr dept, Chicago is the central city of the world*, which all goes to show why I have no future as a writer. Today I have an appointment at three with the Blond Beast and I am pleased to see that he has had his hair done specially for the ocassion. But the news of the year is not to do with his efforts at coiffure. Read on to find out more...
Laying out her tarot cards on the photocopier is the High Priestess, looking ten years younger than when I last saw her. I ask what she 's been doing. 'Nothing,' she says with a rapturous smile. Clearly those late nights out clubbing with the teenies didn't suit her. I say that I hope she has learnt her lesson. But she counters by telling me how young Uncle Joe looks. Have I seen him? I drop everything and run up the two flights of stairs to his room. Ignoring the queue of students sitting outside I burst in. If it hadn't been his room, his chair, I wouldn't have known who it was. Instead of Frederik Nietszche, we have Just William. Without the intolerable burden of the moustache Uncle Joe looks like a twelve year old. England's youngest professor! And of course this means a five-figure contribution to the 'Porridge Expedition Fund'. I think we can get the first leg under way now - By Pedallo to Peru.
THE CREATIVITY CLUSTER GROUP is meeting in the faceless bloc but I opt for a polystyrene cup of coffee instead. Today I am weary of ardent ways; the muzak gets on my nerves, the quiet area upstairs is being turned into a gym (huge boxes containing showers block the downstairs doorway), it is raining and gusting outside and I feel lonely and old. Time to drop off the perch. But I hang around for Wilmott's class. This term he's taking me for 'nature and travel'. It's a three hour class (a hell of along time) but somehow he keeps us all amused with his tales of the kasbah, and I leave feeling better than when I arrived (which rarely happens at The Groves). On the way to the car park I see Mrs Porridge (formerly the Lady of Shalott) coming towards me. She smiles enigmatically and looks demurely away. Perhaps she is looking forward to her husband's round-the -world trip as much as the rest of us!
NOTE: *Ruskin writes: My dear fellow, the Doge's Palace is the central building of the world. As for Chicago, it's only purpose is to provide illustrations for a revised Inferno. Effie sends love.
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302. Another crepuscular session with Old Shrek looms, and my joints ache as I get out of the heap with ten minutes to spare. I go in search of coffee. The S.U. bar is shut at this hour, of course, but there was a machine upstairs in 'the lounge', which I did manage to use a few times last year when in extremis. But the lounge (a place of sacred memories) is now being converted into... into... a gymnasium! I ask you. What do we want with a gymnasium, for heaven's sake? Why can't the young go for a walk or even a run if they need exercise? They are simply the victims of fashion (something which no-one could accuse me of). But more to the point, the coffee machine has been disconnected. I remember that there is another in the new building opposite the Eng Dept so I hurry over to find it, but, like the Tardis, it has disappeared. Ou sont les cafes d'antan? So it is a miserable and grumpy Archy who makes his way with a polystyrene cup of tepid water to the tower for a morning's 'workshopping'. And what a frightful verb that is. I don't enjoy any kind of shopping and 'workshopping' has proved to be no exception. I have no objection to having a sympathetic editor or two,*but it is hardly worth five hours of driving to be told that you have made a spelling mistake and left out a comma. But perhaps I was in a particularly grumpy mood... I have been asked a number of times why I am at The Groves. Why am I at The Groves? This is a question I was asking myself during the long car journey home, and the answer, I think is twofold (with endless subdivisions and a few half answers into the bargain). I can narrow it down to (1) a desire for entertainment and (2) a desire for praise. By confessing this, I am just trying to be honest, you understand. And how far have these aims been satisfied? Well, I have certainly found attending The Groves entertaining, (although there has been a lot of looking out of the window from time to time) and I give an unqualified 'yes' to (1), but if I was looking for praise I have received very little of it. In fact I usually feel rather dispirited when I set off for home. Still, I suppose it's good for us youngsters not to be made to feel complacent. 'It's good to have something to kick against' as a one-eyed master at my old school used to say.
NOTES: *I am now working on a new game called 'editing', in which various famous writers edit each others work. Today Jane Austen is editing Virginia Woolf. 'To the Lighthouse' is not a sentence, Mrs Woolf. Mrs Woolf?'
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303. Our Noble Emperor has, at last, returned from a spell in Chicago where he and a number of Cr Wr students have been learning how to do Cr Wr. I am reliably informed that in one class alone this week, he mentioned the place at least a dozen times! 'When we were in Chicago...' 'In Chicago they do it this way...' 'Back in Chicago...' Think of that! Ruskin and Walter Pater shake their heads in disbelief, 'and so do I'*
Note: * T. Hardy. The maids who came forth spring muslin dressed in today's bitter wind must have regretted it, I fear.
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304. The time has come for serious look at my marks. You Taxpayers will shortly be sending me the last tranche of non-repayable Student Loan and Grant and I want you to know that I am doing my best (belatedly, I know) to ensure that you get value for money. I have been trying for several weeks to work out what marks I need to get for the last three 'modules' I am working on, in order to get the First Class degree I deserve. The system is that you find the average mark of the five best modules from last year and weight this at forty per cent. Then you do the same for this year and weight it at sixty per cent. Taking into account the weighting you find an average mark for the ten modules and if it is 70 or over you get a First. Child's play! The trouble is that if you wait to get the marks for the last three modules it will all be over, and too late to remedy, so you have to substitute 'x' for the unknown marks. I have never been able to add up, O Taxpayer, which is one of the reasons I married Mrs Archy. In every household there must be someone capable of dealing with mundane things like earning the money, doing the family accounts, cooking, cleaning and carrying the dustbin through the house. In addition to her many domestic skills and legendary womanly charms, Mrs Archy, of course, has a degree in mathematics, which can be useful when working out how much a win on the four o'clock at Towcester might bring in. It can also provide a useful distraction if for instance she falls into one of those dangerous, sentimental moods; I set her a little task. She has been up all night in her alluring bombazine nightwear working out a simple way of finding the missing numbers which other students might like to follow so that they know what to aim for. In my case, the average for the best five modules from last year is 66 and the total for the three marked so far this year is 214. The formula for me (allowing for typographical problems ? is used instead of the more conventional x) is therefore:
(66 x 0.4) + (? x o.6) = 70
? = 43.06/o.6 = 72.6
5? - 214 = 149.3 recurring
NOTHING COULD BE SIMPLER. So in my case I have to get a total of 149.3 recurring in my two best outstanding modules. Er... I don't really think it's on, do you? Let's go clubbing while there's still time.
Mrs Archy comments: I hope the above formula will be of some use to you. Good luck!
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305. And I am just back from another visit to The Groves. And what is so special about that you might ask? Well, the answer is that the Easter Vac looms (do they still call it a 'vac'?) and then there are only a couple of weeks before the final submissions... and then it's all over. It doesn't really seem to have started for me, but I suppose that's my lookout. What else can I expect at my age? When I arrive this morning at eleven, allowing plenty of time for Wilmott's class, there he is at the bar ordering himself a Full English, which is something I used to do in the old days, when I had some spare cash, but, alas, we pensioners find it all a bit of a struggle. I had thought of skipping class to attend the G8 London Riots, which is what students everywhere should be doing, but I can't afford to get there... Passion alone is not enough; a man need cash. I hope my fellow students will take this bit of advice to heart. Alas, Mr Porridge's sorry figure appears in the S.U. and while Wilmott and I chat about Xan and Paddy, poor Porridge wanders around with his plate held out, looking like a man with early-onset Alzheimer's. If you see this man trying to cross the street, please help.
Wilmott is an engaging fellow, but soon he has to rush off to the photocopier to make twenty copies of each of our efforts so that we can read them out in front of the assembled class. When I follow him into the Eng dept, there he is, caught in the flashing lights as he frantically presses the control buttons. While people like Wilmott are around I feel there is hope for humanity...
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306. ............. AN APPEAL FOR INFORMATION
I haven't seen our aged, bearded, gardener, the old philospher who goes by the name of Tolstoy, since the end of last term. It has even been suggested (rather insensitively, I think), by a senior member of staff of the Eng Dept that he may have 'turned his toes up'. If so would his passing have gone unremarked? Is nothing at The Groves sacred (except, salaries, pensions, sabbaticals, forms and trips to Chicago)? This sort of thing brings you up short - 'When such a spacious mirror's set before us we needs must see ourselves'.* When I have turned my toes up will I too be forgotten, like poor Tolstoy? In the old days I used to go to the All Souls' Day service at Magdalen (where else) when the names of members of the College whose time on this cruelly blasted planet had ended during the year would be read out. I found it very moving, but then I'm a sentimental sort of chap. Do they have the equivalent here at The Groves I wonder? If they did, no-one would be there to witness it. They all have homes to go to. It is indeed a godless age.
I have seen a rather smug look on the faces of a number of members of staff lately, almost as if they were thinking 'only a few weeks now and we'll be shot of the bugger, thanks be to Dawkins'.
Note: * A&C. Did it for A level in three weeks. Never forgot it.
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SUMMER TERM
307. I have now had my last cheque from you taxpayers and I want to tell you how grateful I am. The fact that our MPs and their spouses are all cashing in makes it easier for me to accept your money, and I can at least say that none of it has been wasted. I may have had the odd beer but not a penny of your hard earned cash has been spent on drugs or porn. In fact, no-one has offered me either during my sojourn at The Groves (alas). I do however admit that I am fed up with the whole thing at the moment and am thinking that I shall now call it a day. I shall hand in my long-prepared submissions, take a last look, and away I shall go, into the ever-during night.... to report to Mr Dawkins and the celestial Harassment Officers (if they are available).
My current mood of inspissated gloom (or should it be caliginous gloom?*) has not been lightened by looking at my uni e-mails. One tells me (and members of staff) that before undertaking any outdoor activity an application should be made to the appropriate authority to check whether this suits the groundsmen and the Health and Safety bods. Old Tolstoy must indeed have gone before. A fat lot he cared, but then he knew his place. In the New Order the Bureaucrat is King. One of the nice things about The Groves in summer was that some of the more enlightened tutors would ocassionally conduct a class out of doors sitting on the grass... which must surely be done on the spur of the moment. I am reliably informed that before embarking on a love affair with a student (even a mature one) under the new regime, a form must be filled in (probably in triplicate). 'Hold on a moment ( insert student's name) before I kiss you...' What kind of world is this? Another e-mail invites me to attend a stress-busting workshop if I feel the workload is too much for me at this difficult time. As I finished my three submissions before Easter the only stress I feel relates to the vacuum I find myself in... And this is scarey, I can tell you. What next for Archy? Work Experience? A Boot Camp in America? At one time I used to turn to poetry, but now I know that it begins with Ted Hughes I'm not sure that I like it so much. I have learnt that I can't write it, and I'm no longer sure that I can write prose either. There is nothing left for me. The soldier's pole is fallen, the bloom is gone...
Tomorrow I will be more cheerful. 'Tomorrow is a lovely day...'
*Note: On returning to All Souls' from an outing, T.E.Lawrence was was asked 'Was it altogether inspissated in the Metropolis?' and replied 'Somewhat inspissated but not altogether caliginous'. I was hoping that badinage at The Groves would be at a similar level.. But alas the summer lightning has cast scant illumination so far, and time is running out... I confess that listening to Melvin once a week for forty-five minutes strikes me as the better option. And today his programme was about the Vacuum referred to in my last entry.
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308. At last my Graduation Pack has arrived! I can buy a Graduation T-shirt (£15 plus postage), a hoodie to impress them down at the Labour Exchange (only £25 plus postage), a Graduation Day DVD 'to treasure forever' (just £23.95 including p&p),a bottle of special reserve champagne with my name on the label (£24.99 plus £5 delivery) and a fully jointed university teddy Bear with a personalised badge (£13.50). A discount is also offered for the hire of the special clobber that will be required to add gravitas (compulsory-£5 discount available on line. Full cost not revealed). I can book up to two tickets for guests who might want to attend for only £15 each, and I can buy them a yearbook for a mere £25 each. In Auden's day, the darlings of Academe could expect the glittering prizes*. In 2009 we are offered 'kiss-me-quick hats' and candy floss.
I have a confession to make. If I attend the ceremony (which I should do for 'copy' purposes) I will be heavily disguised, probably in a burkha. Meanwhile, all contributions towards expenses will be gratefully received. I really ought to force myself to go, of course. The Head of Dept hands you your certificate, I think, or at least is obliged to shake hands with you. At last I would have an opportunity not only to shake hands with our noble emperor, but to gaze into the eyes of the Jolly Farmer's Wife, who I have rather neglected during my sojourn at The Groves. Today I glimped her through a window standing before her class. How young she looked- 'So young and so untender'! But what a subject for a Betjemanesque verse or two. If I returned to The Groves for an M.A. I could write Summoned by Belles in her honour. Or should it be Balls. I haven' t had my invitation to the May Ball yet. An oversight, no doubt. Somehow I sometimes think that I should like/To be the saddle on a motor-bike, doesn't sound quite right. Perhaps one of my poetry tutors could help? Could it be the capital letters, perhaps?
Note: * prizes included 'the cars, the hotels, the boisterous bed'. No fully jointed teddy bears for them!
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309. 'Christminster sprouts parsons like radishes in a bed' wrote old Hardy in Jude the Obscure. Well, The Groves is, I suppose, the modern equivalent of Christminster. I hear that the Poet and our Booker-shortlisted novelist (the one who looks like a nightclub bouncer) have both been made Professors. In my day, to be a Professor you had to have a ' chair'. Now they have 'work-stations' instead of chairs, so how do they do it? Do you just ask, or what? Can I have one? Anyway they both seem decent enough fellows, so good luck to them. For me there can only really be one true Professor. I have been faithful to thee, Professor Plodder, in my fashion.
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310. Today I drive to The Groves to hand in my final submissions (a bit early- I wonder if they take marks off for that). The sun is shining and The Groves looks at its best, so that I am half inclined to forgive it for its manifold sins. In the office of the Eng Dept my usual girl says she is under presssure, and my last efforts have to be handed to someone else, which is a shame as I am a man who likes the familiar. I am constantly inventing new traditions to justify my existence. People don't seem to realise that in a hundred years time these memoirs will be the only record of their time on this cruelly blasted planet. If they did, I feel sure they would drop everything. I am, after all, their chance of immortality. Their monuments shall be more enduring than brass! And then I purchase what may turn out to be my last 25p copy of The Times. Lately we have been forced to give it up for financial reasons* which makes Mrs Archy cross as she likes the su doku, poor woman. At a table outside the SU a podgy-looking version of Mr Porridge is paying attention to Mrs Porridge. A touching sight! Can it be them? I sit at a discreet distance and put on my glasses. Yes and no. Yes, it is Mr Porridge, but no, it isn't the lovely Mrs Porridge (nee Shalott), but a younger, blonder version of her. Truly, this man's heart is in his work!
As he would be the first to tell me, it is none of my business that Mr Porridge's uplifted hand is frozen in the declamatory position. I know that he is imparting knowledge. That is his vocation. So I take myself for a stroll. Perhaps I should say goodbye to a few favoured members of staff. Old Heathcliff comes the first to mind,** he was, after all, my first tutor, and is decent sort of chap... I don't want to sneak off like a thief in the night, you understand. But none of them are in their cells! The caravans of the wise are deserted. On Mr Porridge's door, for instance, a note is pinned BACK IN FIVE MINUTES. So I decide to walk around the lake on this fine May afternoon. No-one is about, not a soul. There are buttercups, lady's smock, dandelion clocks, herb robert and bluebells, but not a student is to be seen. I wonder if Health and Safety have done away with them. Enjoying nature can be dangerous. Slowly, I amble back towards the S.U. All sense of time is lost. Surely I have been wandering about for a good half hour. But time stands still at The Groves. At the table outside, Mr Porridge's hand is still locked in a kind of communion with something beyond my understanding, and the fine-boned student (who is of the wispy variety) still sits opposite him, learning, learning, learning...
Note: * Please keep the cheques coming. Any spare change will be appreciated. ** a spot of Yeets
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311. Tomorrow will definitely be my last day at The Groves. I am setting this in stone because no doubt the authorities will want to arrange for certain celebrations to take place. I am not keen on champagne- it's wasted on me. I think I would prefer that a few barrels of decent beer should be made available. Simple food. No muzak please. Perhaps a jazz band? And a driver to get me home.
On the other hand, I may stay on... I've just seen an advertisement on my uni e mail offering a post. The S.U. wants a women's representative for next year, who will 'work alongside other liberation reps'. It sounds just my sort of thing. They surely wont be able to turn me down on the grounds of age or gender. A Liberation Rep. It could be me!
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312. Thursday 28th May 2009
The sun is shining as I drive in through the portals of The Groves for the very last time. Fresians graze contentedly in the meadows and all looks lush and green. Shadows flicker on the golden walls of the old house. The car park is almost empty. The end is nigh.
I am meeting Wilmott for a late breakfast and sit outside the S.U. at a table to wait for him. Here he comes with his new leather bag, 'a birthday present' he tells me. He has finished marking, and my paper was the best of the bunch, he says, adding that one of my fellow-students thought that Evelyn Waugh was a woman. But I won't let this glimpse of 'truth' spoil my small moment of triumph. As we wait for our orders to be ready, Heathcliff passes by, lost in thought as usual, and probably murmuring 'eheu' to himself . He stops to chat, and when I tell him that I have a book for him he seems both surprised and pleased, which, in turn, pleases me. Perhaps old Wordsworth was right - unremembered acts of kindness and of love. Wordsworth? He hardly had a mention in three years - but at least Heathcliff will have heard of him, which is more than some of them have. if the Groves supplied all the lit I was to know, there would certainly be a number of startling gaps. The Romantics? Never heard of 'em. Coleridge and Byron didn't get a look in. It is as if they had never been.
Time for a final tour of the Eng Dept. It too is deserted. I leave some trifles in the pigeonholes of a couple of tutors. The photocopiers and the drink dispensers stand by, unused. Our noble Emperor's cage is empty. I expect he is furthering his studies in Chicago, his spiritual home. Upstairs, the cells are empty. The Irish Girl's door is locked. There is no sign of Professor Plodder, Uncle Joe or the Pale Young Gentleman who marked me so cruelly. All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. But who is this sitting very much at her ease with a spellbound student? It is none other than our new Doctor, the Dark Lady, who so rightly failed me in Cr Wr in Year One. She kindly allows me to take her photograph! This could be the big one. She is a natural model, the Henrietta Moraes of the Groves. When she is famous I may be able to sell my picture to a biographer. Yes, I would say, I knew the Dark Lady when she was in her prime.
As for my personal trainer, well, I would have left him a gift (James Lees-Milne was left half a mirror in Ivy Compton-Burnett's will), but he has wisely taken the year off. He was a nice fellow, really, and I worry about him. Of all of them, I suspect he was the most troubled. Perhaps he will leave his tattooed shoulders to the Rationalist Society, where they can be displayed in the hallway along with the stuffed Jeremy Bentham. No such thing as the soul indeed! (He decreed that such a concept was not even worthy of discussion!) Plato shakes his head in disbelief.
Down the stairs I go, passing the unread notices pinned to the boards telling me - too late - of this or that opportunity. When the automatic doors fly open to eject me for the last time, I make my way to the caravans of the wise. They too are empty, even Mr Porridge's. Only one member of staff remains to hold the fort. It is his wife, the lovely Mrs Porridge. Abandoned!* I rush in and fall at her feet. She is utterly charming. No more Mrs Porridge- the Lady of Shalott has come back! Alas, even with all the poetry-skills I have learnt in Cr Wr I cannot compose an off-the-cuff palinode. All I can do is blush and stammer as I say goodbye to her forever.
I take a final stroll down to the lake. There is no-one at the Temple. Every trace of graffiti has gone. The present has already become the past. Next year's students will have received their welcome packs of junk mail and will be looking forward to their lives as undergraduates. To them, Academe seems exciting, dangerous, full of promise. Soon they will be declaring their undying loves on the freshly painted walls before they too pass into the ever-during night...
NOTE: * In the sense of 'having been abandoned' of course. No improper behaviour is implied.
.... THE END
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