Moving on

Like Emily Paul’s blog? (obviously you do, unless you were in fact searching for ‘Emily and Paul’s nude Florida condo’) (don’t worry, you are not alone in that) but if so, you’ll love the hobby bloggy. Trust me. Have a look at hobbybloggy.wordpress.com. And enjoy.

Nictophobia: n. fear of the dark

“Fear of the dark is not fear of the absence of light, but fear of possible or imagined dangers concealed by the darkness”

-William Lyons

I’m a little bit afraid of the dark.  I tell you this in confidence because I’m slightly ashamed to admit it. As an adult, you see, you’re generally expected to be alright with it.  As a child, yes, people indulge you; they check under your bed for monsters, let you sleep with the light on and they definitely don’t make you walk home from the pub by yourself at closing time.  But as you grow up, people tend to lose sympathy.  They tend to expect you to, well, grow up.

And to an extent you do.  Even I’ve come to accept that there really is probably nothing lurking in my wardrobe, that the strange thudding noise only comes when someone turns on the hot water and that these days the likelihood of that woman from the Witches with no hair popping out at me from behind the kitchen counter is, happily, rated at slim to none.  But somehow the world still doesn’t seem that much of a safer place.

As you outgrow imagining all the terrible things that probably aren’t out there lurking in the dark, waiting to catch you, you begin to learn about all the terrible things that possibly are.  You may have swapped your Draculas for drug dealers and your monsters for murderers, but the notion’s still the same; if you go into the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise.

Reading the headlines these days, you could be forgiven for coming away with the belief that around every corner lurks a shifty looking student tucking TNT into his y-fronts or a sharp-suited conman waiting to rob your granny.  We’re encouraged to report anything suspicious; anything that makes us nervous, but as a result we are constantly nervous, constantly worried that in this case what we can’t see might, actually, hurt us.  We’re not so much afraid of the event, more that we might not see it coming.

The implementation of ‘Sarah’s Law’ could mean that soon parents will be able to check if anyone coming into contact with their children could be a registered sex offender, or if they have been previously suspected of abuse.  Alan Johnson has called the scheme a ‘major step forward in our ability to protect children from sex offenders’ and hopes that it might bring peace of mind to those worried about their children’s safety.  And in its test stages it’s proven to be very successful.

It is a natural impulse for a parent to wish to protect their child and to want to do everything in their power to try to protect them.  What is dangerous, however, is starting off with the assumption that everyone you meet, everyone that comes in any kind of contact with your child could possibly be a predatory paedophile.  Of course you must be careful, and the safety of a child should never be neglected, but a line must be drawn somewhere.

There will always be things we cannot predict, and we will always be afraid of them.  But we can’t let them scare us into submission and constant suspicion.  However vigilant we remain, we can’t always sleep with the light on and there won’t always be someone there to check under the bed for monsters.  Sometimes we have to trust that most people around us are just as scared as we are.

A slight lapse

According to my calculations (I looked at the date of my last post and then counted on my fingers, advanced mathematics at their best) it’s been nearly three months since my last post.

I’ll try and work on it.

A little learning is an expensive thing

Q: Why don’t English students stare out of the window in the morning?

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A: Because they’d have nothing to do in the afternoon.

What would I say I gained from my three years at Durham University? Well, I made lots of friends, lots of good friends. I went to lots of good parties. I learnt lots of drinking games, drank a lot of coffee in lots of coffee shops, ate a lot of stir fry. Along the way I acquired a lot of bizarre fancy dress outfits, all to be consigned to the bottom of my wardrobe, never to see daylight again. All in all I had a pretty good time.

Oh no, wait, I’m forgetting something. The books. I read a lot of books too. Or at least I started a lot of books. Ok, I bought a lot of books. I spent a lot of time on Amazon. I now have a very impressive bookshelf ranging from giant tomes of Middle English Romances to Modern Irish Poetry, all in varying states of disrepair (surprisingly the Romances remain relatively unharmed).

I also got a degree. I’ve got a BA. A BA Hons Dunelm no less. And it’s proved quite useful so far – it’s got me a bit of work and into my current MA course when I realised it still couldn’t get me much work at the moment. It also just looks quite nice after my name.

But, as you may have gathered (no, the Romances were not bed-time reading), I did an English degree. A degree that, at Durham at least, is not seen to require much actual teaching. Approximately six non- compulsory contact hours of teaching a week, in fact.

And this was great. Please don’t imagine for a second I’m complaining. While my friends beetled away in lecture halls and labs I could get up at a leisurely time, have my lunch whenever I felt like it and perfect my now considerable Tetris ability. Oh, and maybe whip out one of those books once in a while.

I had a great time. And what’s more, having started in 2005, I got in before top-up fees. Ideal because, as any student knows, guilt at bunking off lectures increases exponentially with the amount you’re actually paying per lecture. And when you’ve only got four a week, well, that’s already a considerable amount of guilt.

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And it’s because of this that I’m fairly glad I’m not planning on going back to being an undergrad any time soon. With BBC News online reporting that vice-chancellors from top universities are reported to want to raise tuition fees to as much as £7,000 a year, it’s hardly surprising that some prospective students might start to panic. That’s a lot of money per hung-over, missed lecture.

In fact, that’s a lot of money per lecture, even assuming you actually make it in. It’s a lot to pay for a small bearded chap to draw you an amusing illustration of Shakespeare’s sonnets in crumbling chalk on a blackboard at the front of a crumbling lecture theatre. When after all, Sparknotes are free.

Yes, I learnt a lot at University, I made a lot of friends, and read a lot of books. But £21,000 worth of books? £21,000 worth of friends? I’ll get back to you on that. When, and if, it all finally gets me a job.

‘An Education’ at Richmond Filmhouse

It’s not uncommon for the newcomer to the Richmond Filmhouse to be a little taken aback. You could even be forgiven for heading back outside to check the sign.  But please compose yourself, yes, it is a cinema.  It’s just not like any other cinema you’ve ever been to.

Rather than buy your popcorn and bucket of coke at the kiosk, you’re instead encouraged to pick up a cheeky G&T and a bar of “house white” chocolate, before heading through the grand doors and settling down in the armchair assigned to you by the genial barman.  You’ve got a real glass and what’s more, there are no cup holders.  Now that’s a real dilemma. And hang on; all the trailers appear to be in German.

Not only this, but you’re suddenly very aware or your fellow cinema-goers. Because they talk to you.  And throughout the film don’t be surprised if they laugh, clap and pursue various expressions of their emotions.  Out loud.  I told you it was odd.

But I digress.

The film

Based on the autobiography of Lynn Barber, “An Education” tells the coming-of-age story of Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a young girl on the cusp of her 17^th birthday, and her gradual seduction by much older David (Peter Sarsgaard).  Before she meets David, Jenny is a star pupil, but feels trapped by her middle class, protected upbringing.  Introduced by David and his glamorous friends to a glittering world of parties, gambling, galleries and nightclubs, Jenny gradually abandons her ambitions to Oxford and individuality.

Disarmingly witty and honest, “An Education” successfully evokes the stagnant social middle class sensibilities of early 60s suburbia.  The viewer is left in no doubt as to why Jenny might want to escape this world and so when a mature and handsome stranger comes into her life it comes as no surprise that she is led somewhat astray.  She clings to her belief in her lover’s glamorous fantasy as escape from the life that has been created for her by her parent’s ambition and expectations, however  is made heart-breaklingly clear that there is no one in Jenny’s life really qualified to help her find her way.

Her parents are loving and have her best interests at heart, but are also child-like themselves, falling easily for David’s promises and illusions.  Even her headmistress and teacher, who see themselves as figures of maturity and female independence are shown to be blinkered to the real possibilities of modern life by own their limiting education.

And here lies the rub of the film.  What use is education if you have no life experience to back it up?  But what can you really gain from life with no education?  Stuck between the two extremes, represented wonderfully by Emma Thompson as her stern and bigoted headmistress, and the beautiful but vacant Helen (Rosumund Pike), Jenny must choose her own path.

Fry’s Upset

Weeks after joining, I still haven’t worked out what to do with my Twitter account.  I’ve chosen a couple of people to follow, and once in a while I’ll open my homepage and see what they’ve been twittering about recently.  This has kept me reasonably satisfied; moderately entertained. But apparently I’ve been missing the boat.  It turns out that there’s an implicit rule to Twitter: if in doubt, just slag people off.

Last week, people’s favourite Stephen Fry sparked a flutter of Twittering activity after a fellow tweeter called his posts ‘boring’.  The much loved actor and presenter, who has more than 900,000 followers, threatened to leave the social networking site, huffing in a message back to the user: ‘You’ve convinced me.  I’m obviously not good enough.  I retire from Twitter henceforward.  Bye everyone’.

However, reflecting on the incident, Fry, who suffers from bipolar disorder, has since claimed his reaction was ‘a mood thing’ and he now felt ‘more sheepish than a sheep’.  He insisted: “Feeling terrible for that poor guy. He had every right to call me boring. Not his fault it caught me at a vulnerable time. Pls be nice to him.” Needless to say, he has not left Twitter.

So no harm done then. You could call it something of a storm in a teacup.  Or a twitc… no, a teacup.  Except that he did, rather expertly, prove his own point.  Immediately as his farewell was posted, the shamed user began receiving a host of angry and sometimes vicious messages from what he has termed ‘a baying mob’ of Tweeters.  Even Alan Davies, fellow QI star, waded into the fray, calling the user ‘moronic’.

Ironic, then, to consider the reason Fry cited for his proposed retirement from the site.  Wounded by the insult to his tweeting abilities, he claimed the site provoked ‘too much aggression and unkindness.’

And it seems he was right.

Naturist Bed and Breakfast in hot water with neighbours

The very real dangers of drinking hot beverages in the nude have today been exposed by a helpful article on BBC News online.  As it turns out, not only could you suffer terrible injuries, but it could also land you in a spot of bother with your neighbours.

The worrying news comes as Mike and Margaret Howard, owners of Domain Farm, a naturist bed and breakfast in Staffordshire have been urged to put up screening to protect the delicate sensibilities of their neighbours. Local residents are up in arms (no doubt sensibly clad) over the hostelry, protesting that “if they want to do that, they should screen themselves in”.

But it’s not just the shameless naked revelry that’s been drawing complaints. One neighbour drew attention to a much more worrying activity that’s been taking place, and not behind closed doors.

“We went to move some cattle. That was the first time we saw a man walking around with no clothes on and a cup of tea in his hand, or coffee, whatever it was.

My husband says ‘whatever’s going on here?’

“I said ‘I don’t know, but I don’t want to see it on a regular basis’.”

A vital lesson for us all:  next time you fancy a tea, or coffee, or whatever, remember to get dressed first.

Sadly if the photos in this piece by Staffordshire based This is Business are anything to go by, Mike and Margaret are far from learning their lesson.

For the full BBC article, see here