I met up with my old tutor today. It was weird, to be back in the warm English corridor, with the smells of slightly stale coffee and old books.
It was comforting, since I have joined the Army. Yes folks, illness is not an excuse for missing a law seminar, and if you do not turn up to your progress review tutorial, even if your tutor ignores your emails, you will be shot.
Today, the law department's new trick was to give us a seminar on how to do an essay 18 hours before the essay needed handing in.
So I was walking along in the strangely warm weather, musing on my crap essay and the potential all-nighter stretching in front of me. I was looking at the autumn leaves, and how some of the trees have still got all their green leaves, with only the tips turning orange and some have dropped almost all of theirs onto the pavement.
There are crunchy leaves in gutters, and big ones just landed onto the pavement, leaving handprints all over the ground.
I turned the corner to go into the law school.
And then a car parking barrier hit me on the head.
11pm
The phone rings.
Me: Hello. Essay in in 11 hours. Writing all night.
[pause]
My Dad: Ok then, bye!
Mike and I have a habit of watching University Challenge. We don't know why we do it. It's one of those unspoken rules. Sometimes I think we organise dinner around it.
For those of you who don't know what this is, it's where a bunch of toffs who think S Club 7 counts as modern music, attempt to answer non-sensical questions with about 80 clauses. It is supposedly aimed at university level. I wouldn't know, because I belong in pre-school.
"Mel Blanc was the voice of Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny, and who?"I clap my hands. "Ooh, Gibson, Gibson," I say at the television.
Mike stares at me. "What?"
"Mel Gibson."
The time is running out on the question. I squeal as the presenter opens his mouth. Mike, meanwhile puts his head into his hands. "They are looking for a CARTOON CHARACTER," he says.
The answer was Daffy Duck. Turns out Mel Blanc was not a request to fill in said blank.
What does one learn?
That having an English degree does not enable you to recite places where Jane Austen's more minor (read: boring) characters lived and name the kind of rosebush (or something) that grew near there.
That having a law degree does not enable you to identify Acts established in the 1600s.
That the only two answers I got right were "Portrait of a Lady" and "Girls Aloud."
That Mike, when asked by me what "cosh" was, replied, as if swatting a fly away, "a hyperbolic cosine darling."
I heard our front door knock. Not our doorbell, but our front door. I padded downstairs but to no avail, nobody there.
Made coffee anyway.
Twenty minutes later this happened again.
"Lucy," I said to housemate. "I have been downstairs twice now because of imaginary door knockings."
She sighed. "Law's sending you mad. Mind you I had a dream about aestheticism." She paused. "Did you go and answer the door twice?"
"Yes. Both times."
She laughed. "You are not allowed to answer the door anymore, you weirdo."
I went back to constitutional law. It happened again.
"Hellooo," I heard coming from the hallway. My ears pricked up. Was I going insane?
I ventured out of my room and was confronted by
Distant Aggravation who had come to stay with other housemate.
"Oh, hello," I said, remembering I was supposed to be letting her in.
"Hello," she said, frowning.
"Oh, I'm er - I'm not allowed to answer the door."
You know how I complained a lot last year about the library? You know, the one that hid the books, fined me and sent me a letter warning me I "wasn't going to graduate" with my fines. Yes right.
Well, the law library is even stupider. There is a short loan system, of course, but, unlike the normal library where you're allowed the book FOR A WHOLE 24 HOURS BEFORE THEY START FINING YOU, the law library only gives you 6, or 18. As such, if you're in the library before three and you get the book, you must take it back at three. If you're there after three, you get to keep it unil half nine.
WOW, REALLY? I GET TO KEEP IT UNTIL HALF PAST NINE? I COULD READ FOUR BOOKS IN THAT TIME!
So, if you wanted to, you could hoard the book from 1pm until 3pm, under a desk, up your jumper, wherever you like. But you cannot take it home until one minute past three.
And that is only when "the computer has realised it's three". Yes, that's how much they understand computers.
I am in the library.
"Excuse me," I say, armed with my letter. My letter has holes down the margins indicating it was printed on a printer dating back into the eighteenth century.
"I received this today," I said. "And the letter is dated yesterday."
"Right," the librarian says, scowling. I can't help but notice (and inform the internet) that she has a scar from ear to ear.
"Right. So the letter is saying a book was recalled three days ago and I've been billed. But I didn't know."
"Why didn't you know?" she says, placing her hands on the counter and, well, basically squaring up to me.
"Because the letter didn't arrive until today," UNLIKE EMAIL.
"Well, you should keep a track of your accounts," she huffs, turning her back on me.
"So I have to pay the fine?"
"Ye-es, that's how the library
works." She pauses. "You really need to organise yourself young lady."
What a bitch!
Unfortunately she was there today when I sprinted in late with my books. You should have seen her smug smile.
Oh, how I hate them.
And then final year came.
For our two year anniversary I begged and begged to go to Preston and be mothered and go to the famous Caulderbank Restaurant. We did, and I didn't even take any work. That weekend sticks in my mind. it was a tranquil moment right before my foot surgery, and the hardest-working year of my life. I remember the countryside, the bitter air against my face.
We went to Bowland Wild Boar park. We held chicks, and bottle-fed lambs. Mike let the lambs suck on his fingers and I had good-dad fantasies once more. Admittedly, once I made the connection between Wild Boar Park and the wild boar meat for sale in the shop I did start crying, but what's new?
We went to Brighton in January to buy a bike. We knew I would end up going shopping, but this was okay. This bike has resulted in one year's delay, liquidation of two companies and Mike being £1,500 out of pocket. That makes me want to be a lawyer more so I can get it back for him. Nevertheless, it was beautiful, seeing the sea with him for the first time; the simplicities of couples. I remember it was enchanting seeing every season with Mike for the first time, just to see what he wore, whether he got hay fever, whether his hair changed colour.
Mike went on Brainteaser. I skipped lectures and went with him. A rarity; all I did that year was work. I think Mike felt hard done by because I never saw him, and he spent a lot of time alone. I felt hard done by because I never saw him
and I had to deal with Victorian idiots.
We both looked at Buddhism. He was better at it than I am, which sort of demonstrates my point (you're not supposed to be competitive). He threw me a 21st party. My sister got married. He raced professionally in Belgium. I got a job. He proved he could cube root 4,569 in his head.
That brings us to now, and Red Peppers last Friday.
What is now? Well, in accordance with Mike's more anal side, we planned our meals in advance of one week so we don't discuss it incessantly. On the other hand, I have not been keeping the room we sleep in tidy evidenced by Mike finding my glasses on the floor next to my bin this morning.
What does this mean? It means this isn't mere
writing; brovado to get the readers in. It means everyday, when I walk home from lectures, I want to know how he is. Every night spent working in my room is made difficult because he is downstairs. It means I hope, even when I'm no longer blogging, I have to write many, many more of these things.
It means maybe sometimes I imagine me in white in this photo.
About two years ago I sat on my hair straighteners. I heard the sizzle and smelt the smell of burning flesh before I realised it was my own ass. I sat on a bag of frozen peas in my knickers whilst Mike shook his head at me. Since by this stage of our relationship I had actually let him see my ass, he could change my dressings and monitor my scars.
A couple of weeks later I got a cold, as per October. I decided to steam my face and dipped chin in the bowl. Ended up going for first year anniversary with a red polka-dot burn on my chin, two parallel scabs on my bum, a cold, and an eye infection, just for good measure.
But damn, the pill had done my boobs good.
(foundation did cover spot, just about)
That year I kind of worked hard. It didn't stop me watching the Hollyoaks omnibus or sleeping until noon, but it was more normal. I remember proclaiming to Mike that we were a "normal couple" one afternoon. "Really," he said, raising his eyebrows. But I meant it; I worked on my bed in the attic room, the sunlight on my back from the skylight. Mike cycled more, now we were able to leave each other alone. He would come upstairs with tea still in his cycling gear, his nose pink and cold from the autumn air.
And with a real relationship came problems. That winter was long. We couldn't find a house. Mike's dog died, and I was utterly, utterly selfish until one night we had an argument so serious that the dark night and the concrete wall and the streetlights faded from my view as I felt just how much breaking up would hurt.
I incessantly questioned our relationship. I told Mike exactly who I fancied. Meanwhile he doted on me, nursed my problems with my course, my mother, my feet.
I took the professional ballet exam, and every Saturday morning I took the train to Lichfield; the sunlight low across the tracks. I spent countless late nights at the ballet studio, sweating and bleeding and crying. Mike got so worried he started coming with me. Dancing in front of the one person who knows my body better than anyone was so hard. He thought it was barbaric, the sit ups, the surgical spirit, the jet glueing pointe shoes. He was there after the exam, with my hair gelled to my head, a pink ribbon under the bun, and we went to the Trafford Centre and ate hot muffins in Starbucks.
Eventually Spring came, and normality resumed. I stopped picking fights. I decided to do law. He decided to cut his losses with maths, and move back to engineering. I attended every single bike race of his, that summer. In the earlier months I wore hats and scarves, and cheered even though I was so cold.
In the summer I would leave my new flash office job on a Friday, my heart pounding, and go to Preston just to let him know that the tables had turned; I was utterly committed now; we were utterly committed.
Three years ago I turned up outside Mike's flat in my pyjamas. Despite having stalked him via MSN messenger and name-dropped his favourite songs for two weeks, and even walked back from a pub talking about
capacitor equations, I turned up having not done my hair, my make up, and in my sheep slippers that baa-ed when you pressed them.
I told him my parents were separating. He made me milky, sugary tea and even though I was supposedly upset I was still imagining what our babies would look like. As he spoke softly, shyly to me I pulled the fluff of the chairs and left a thin coating on the floor in my wake when I left at 7am for my nine o'clock lecture.
And so the process of 'will they/won't they' began. We canoodled in Walkabout, and snuck off and exchanged secrets, he broke his toe and sctratched his arms and I lovingly bathed them with tears in my eyes whilst he was absolutely wasted. We watched movies on my bed and cemented a week-long anniversary for the years to come.
The following year was hedonistic. Full of long afternoons in our flat drinking tea and telling jokes, and walks to the supermarket in the rain, and nights out where sometimes I would stumble outside and breathe in the night air trying to get rid of the sheer weight of it all. There were entire nights spent spooning on my bed, drinking starbucks, kicking up leaves. One morning I woke up and found 'I love you' written outside my window in the snow. We stole spoons from restaurants and kept them in a box. I keep them there with all the notes he's sent me, his Christmas card he sprayed with his aftershave because we were so far apart.
Three months into our relationship we signed a housing contract together. Nine months after that we officially lived together. But still to come was the long summer filled with factories, and trips to Lancashire and long phone calls, me crying and Mike despairing. He bet me I would have switched degrees by the end of the year. I didn't. We didn't. We both passed, made it to second year.
I remember I would never commit to anything. Not even buying ball tickets until the next day. I was so fucking scared of everything that I would never let on, never let him know I was falling for him. I wish now I could go back and tell that Mike, that worried, gentle Mike, that we would still be here three years later. I think he'd be quite pleased.
I just wrote a whole rant about an ex-tutor of mine. It was going to run seamlessly into a comparison with new Smouldering Tutor who makes equity and trusts rather interesting.
Alas, you may note that since I am now
a set text on my old English degree it might not make much sense to bitch about my old tutors lest they find it, sue my ass off before I even learnt about defamation and retract my 2:1 BECAUSE YOU JUST KNOW THEY'RE DYING TO.
Anyway, suffice to say, I was told once to do 14 hours' work per module per week. I cried in the English corridor.
Today Smouldering Tutor made my day.
"A quick word about the reading lists," he said, running a hand through his curls. Okay, maybe he didn't do that. Not that I would like to. (Hi, Mike!)
"Please don't go and read everything on there," he said. "If you don't understand these lectures or the textbooks, then read around. If you do, then don't waste your time."
I swear, Angels were singing. All the former English, History, Politics students exchanged glances of somewhat wild abandon.
We don't have a reading list looming over our heads!
All we have to do is
understand.
I squeezed my pen in delight and ink went everywhere.
"You totally love him, don't you?"
"Smitten," I said.
In my circle of friends, I am famous for (amongst other things) having hiccoughs. I really would prefer to write this as hiccups but the pedant inside me won't let me. The hiccoughs are loud, and usually twice a week. At weddings? Yes, interviews? Yes, Dramatic pauses? Check check check!
Today I was walking along after rather worrying 4 hour library stint hiccoughing, iPoding (Oh, did I tell you I bought an iPod? No? Perhaps I thought you would judge me for so blatantly spending the last £136 of my overdraft) and generally trying not to let the constant drizzel of Birmingham anger my hair.
I rounded the corner and an old, red man stumbled out of the pub. "Ew," one of the legwarmers-and-tights-coupled-with-mini-skirt girls said. Can I just say that the former two items ARE FOR BALLET CLASS ONLY and the latter IS FOR WHEN IT IS NOT TEN DEGREES AND RAINING.
The two girls looked in disgust at the blatantly drunk man. "What is Birmingham like," one of them said.
I decided to speed up and walked past them. I hiccoughed.
"God this place is full of freaks," the other said, giggling.
Thanks.
"Ooh," Mike cooed as we walked into University. "That's a nice Mini," he said, indicating a black and white Mini Cooper.
I peeked out through my hood and looked at the car. "You couldn't fit in a mini," I said, partly because it was about 8 am and mostly because, well, he
couldn't. "I'm surprised you like them anyway," I said. "I would have thought you'd want a Subaru or something scary."
"No, Minis are good you know, the Cooper has a great engine."
Okay, so he might not have said
engine in that vague way that only women do when they are trying to reconstruct a conversion they didn't listen to.
"What car would you have?" he said.
"Ooh ooh I know this," I said. "A
Hydra."
Mike frowns for a moment, and then smiles at me. "And would you drive to work in your hydra Gilly?"
"Yes, it would be beautiful and kind to the environment."
"You do know that you mean a hybrid, and you're actually talking about driving to work in a three-headed sea monster, right?"
"Pleased to meet you," I say to the man in the suit.
"Likewise. And congratulations on the training contract," he says, sipping his beer.
"Thanks," I say.
"Are you looking forward to it?"
"I'm slightly scared," I say.
"Ah, whatever you do don't go into corporate law. My friend did that in Birmingham and she worked 18 hour days for two years. Then she got divorced because of it."
"Ah," I say staring out of the window.
"So what area of law is your training contract in?"
"Corporate."
"Oh." He pauses. "You'll love it!"
