remote control...

Not surprisingly, I've been thinking over the last few days about my own exam results. Of course, unlike this year's pupils, I was lucky enough to sit my exams in the usual way and to then receive my results at some point later in the summer. I got the grades I needed, so I went to my first choice University. It was pretty simple.

Then I thought about my experience a bit harder.

I expected to go to University. I was good at exams and therefore had a pretty crucial advantage that this was the preferred way of assessing someone's academic merit and deciding their future, both in the immediate term and almost certainly in the longer term too. But I expected to go.

My expectation went much deeper than simply expecting to get the results that would enable me to study the course I wanted at the institution I wanted: I just assumed that the way my life was mapped out, I would drift from school to University to job. Oh, sure, there were all sorts of uncertainties for me along the way and my exact future was clouded... but never for one second did I consider that my path lay away from further education. 

Of course, I didn't stop to think about this for a moment. I just went with the flow.

This privilege and expectation was a new in my family. My father was the son of a publican who ran a pub in the Plymouth naval docks. Dad didn't get especially good grades in his exams, but he was determined to be a doctor, and St. Bartholemew's hospital in London took a chance on him. By his own admission, he'd be nowhere near getting the grades he would need now, so the medical profession would have been deprived of 50 years of selfless service, with thousands of hours given not just to the NHS but volunteering for St John's Ambulance (apparently he used to do their pandemic response planning!). Even now he's retired and in his 70s, of course my dad put his name forward to volunteer as we went into lockdown. For my dad, this education was a gift and he's cherished it for his whole life (he's got a stack of letters after his name that often requires a second line on his latest certificates).

He wanted this gift for his children, of course he did. We didn't grow up wealthy, so my parents saved every penny they had to put their children through a private education. I was on a scholarship, but even so, for three kids, this was an absolutely collosal investment. The staycation is not a new concept for my family, that's for sure.

So, barely 25 years after my father became the first in his family to grasp at a further education, I was already drifting into it. He read Medicine and became a doctor, I read for a BA in Modern European and Renaissance History and then drifted into an MA in Medieval Studies and only didn't drift into a DPhil because I had the realisation that wanting to be called "Doctor" wasn't anywhere near a good enough reason to do four years of research into something that ultimately no one would care about, never mind to fund.

So I drifted through University. After 11 years at boarding school, being away from home wasn't a new or revelatory experience for me, and I actually found it a bit boring that so many people thought that it was. It was mainly an examined degree, so being good at exams was still an advantage for me, and I got a decent result without ever really throwing my heart and soul into it, whilst probably not being as good as I could or should have achieved (I ended up right on the cusp of a First Class degree). I can actually remember a conversation I had with the tutor who supervised my Masters dissertation ("Historical Precedent and the Deposition of Henry VI in 1471" - a page turner that showed the rise of parliamentary power in the sucessive removal of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI). I can write and I was interested in my subject, but this tutor could see that I was only really interested in doing a good job, not an exceptional one and he helped me to achieve that. Looking back, I can not only see his mild disappointment at this wasted opportunity, but I share it. If I was to go to University again, this time around I would approach it very differently... as more than just another box to be ticked as I drifted through life.

This privileged drifting seems all the more infuriating as I'd already rejected a lot of the behaviour of many of the people that I'd been to school with. I had a massive, visceral reaction against the kind of arsehole that we now see running the country, swanning around as if they owned the place and everybody else in it. I also hated the idea of going to Oxbridge. My intellectual vanity did mean that I ended up applying to Oxford, but I received zero guidance from my very expensive school, refused to sit the fourth term entry exam (remember, I was good at exams) because I didn't see why they thought they were so special.... and then ended up applying to a college where I was pretty much the only person who hadn't done the exam. Nice job, everyone. My dad actually had a close friend who was the admissions tutor of a Cambridge College, and he arranged a meeting. Rather than see this as a priceless opportunity, my takeaway was that this guy had spent the whole time trying to boast about how every undergraduate was a published author. In my teenaged stupidity and arrogance, I rejected this (perceived) bullshit by applying blind to Oxford.  What a prat.

I do think that not going to Oxbridge after 11 years in private education was very good for me. Warwick and York are both excellent universities in their own right, their history courses arguably better than their Oxbridge equivalents, but they are also much more socially mixed, and I'm sure it was good for me to breath some different air. I had a girlfriend from Stockport, for goodness sake. Imagine that! (she's now a lecuturer at King's College, London, I'm told. Another person who took their education more seriously than me).

So yes, I look at the scandal of this algorithim that advantages pupils from private schools and I think fuck them and fuck the system that perpetuates their preeminence. They --- I --- have had every possible advantage in their lives to date and they don't need a leg up when there are plenty of other people who just want an even crack of the whip. Of course this government didn't see anything wrong with this approach: they've benefitted from this system every single day of their lives for generations. 

If privilege can be that corrosive in the course of 25 years and one generation, imagine how destructive it must be over 250 years and 10 generations; over 500 years; over a millennia. This country is dying under the weight of all this privilege and has been for centuries. The very idea of British exceptionalism is ridiculous and an insult to all the people and countries and cultures we've pillaged as we tried to claw ourselves out of the mire by standing on everyone else. If we now want to jump back in, it's probably best to just let us go.

Just let us go.

(mr lonely)

I’m a fairly resilient individual, I think.

When I was first sent away to boarding school, I was seven years old. That’s pretty young to be sent away from your parents, but I can never remember being homesick.  Plenty of other people were, and I often thought that I should, but I never did. Maybe I was too young to really know what has happening. Maybe I was emotionally crippled *before* the English Public School system got to me. Who knows? What I do know is that I largely took this rather dramatic change in my circumstances in my stride.

It’s been much the same ever since.  Not only am I not terribly emotionally demonstrative, but I also generally seem to have a fairly even temperament. I’m stoical; phlegmatic; self-possessed. Stiff-upper lip? Naturally, old boy. I am the master of my fate; the captain of my soul; I can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run. I am a man, my son!

Overstating my case? Well, perhaps a little…. But the point is that I’m not one of life’s screamers and shouters and I generally keep an even emotional keel. My wife is away quite a lot during the week, and although I’d obviously prefer to spend more time with her, the truth is that I’m quite good at filling that time with other things, even if those things are nothing more than finding a good, comfortable chair by a radiator and reading until I go to bed. Actually, it’s often harder to do those sorts of things when someone else is around…I like being around other people, but they tend to make demands of your time, and as an introvert, I certainly don’t mind spending time on my own . I do talk to my cat a lot, but, to be fair, I do that when other people are around too. Besides, she talks back.

Just occasionally though, an actual emotion will work its way through my defences and refuses to be rationalised away. This happened to me yesterday. I’ve spent most of the week in glorious isolation: it’s half-term, and lots of people are on holiday including both the guys in my immediate team as well as my boss. I’ve had a few meetings, but largely I’ve been able to put my headphones on and just get on with things. It was Shrove Tuesday, and I decided I would get myself a pancake from the canteen once I’d finished my sandwich. I don’t usually make a point of having a pancake on Pancake Day, but yesterday I decided that I would. I took it back to my desk to eat and was suddenly hit by a distinct sensation of loneliness. It didn’t last for long, and I don’t know whether it was caused by a flashback to childhood, my wife being away or what… but there it was. An actual emotion.

I do experience them after all.  Why is this water leaking from my eyes? Why?

words like silent raindrops fell....

About fifteen years ago, right at the start of my brilliant career, I arrived in the office to find one of my colleagues in tears.  I've always been a relatively early starter, so it was probably around 8am and John and I were the only two people in our team in the office.  Everything seemed normal to begin with, but then John, a contractor who was probably in his forties, suddenly started to sob at his desk.

I had absolutely no idea how to react.  As a human being, and the only other human being there, it was obviously my duty to go over to his desk and ask if he was okay, but I can distinctly remember that this was all I had.  Once I'd played that card to a grown man sobbing at his desk, all I had left was to offer to get him a cup of coffee.  It was pathetic, but I simply did not have the emotional toolkit to respond to the situation.

Whether or not I can blame this reaction upon my schooling or whether or not it's an intrinsic part of my emotional makeup and personality type, I suppose we'll never know.  It doesn't really matter.  I was sent to a boarding school when I was seven years old and spent the next eleven years concealing my emotions because an open display of emotion makes you a target in that sort of environment.  Hugging and learning was definitely not encouraged and only served to open you up to ridicule.  I may well have been an introvert already - I was a bookish child - but I'm pretty sure that the environment I was in sealed the deal on my (lack of) emotional development.  It's nobody's fault, it's just the way things were.

I'm older and wiser now, of course.  Have I changed?

Well, I popped round to see a friend at work this evening.  I'd been meaning to pop round earlier, and I only had a couple of minutes before I needed to shoot off if I was going to make it to running club, but I wanted to make the effort to at least say hello.  When I got to her desk, everyone around her had gone home and she was alone.  She was a little quiet, so I helped myself to a chocolate from the team tin and then realised that she was quietly sobbing.

Again - still - I had absolutely no idea to react.  Just like fifteen years ago, as a human being, and the only other human being there, it was obviously my duty to go over and make sure that my friend was okay, but again, this was basically all I had.  I ascertained that it was work problems rather than personal problems, which I guess is the lesser of two evils, but other than vaguely commiserate and offer a bit of half-arsed sympathy, I honestly didn't know what I should be doing.  The time pressure didn't help, and I left my friend feeling like I must be one of the crappest, most emotionally stunted people ever to live.

Apparently, the Star Wars character that best represents my Myers-Briggs personality type is the Emperor.  Well, sometimes I just feel like C3PO.  Bright but of no practical use what-so-ever and with absolutely no understanding of people at all.

Curse my metal body! I wasn't fast enough!

Nearly forty and apparently no more emotionally developed than I was at seven.  I can only apologise to anyone and everyone who probably has a right to reasonably expect more than this from me.... especially to my friend from this evening.  If you're reading this, then I honestly wanted to do more but didn't know how. I hope you're doing okay.