I hadn’t realised how religious St Martha’s was, until today, the first day of the course. In recognition of this, I’ve decided to get in as many Biblical references as I can. Unfortunately, I only know the very beginning bit, and something about swarms of locusts. Not sure how I’m going to work that in.
For those men out there, who, like me, have spent many an hour in a pub with a bunch of similarly sad other guys wondering where all the women hang out (‘cos it sure aint anywhere near where you are), then I have found one of these places, St Marthas. On the course, the men are outnumbered by women by more than 10 to one. I hate people who make assumptions about other peoples sexuality, but of the men that are there, some of them are clearly testament to the colleges policy of non-discrimination.
I had expected there to be a reasonable number of mature students, I was wrong. Not that I mind too much, if someone had said I need to spend a year surrounded by 21 year old women, I don’t think I’d have baulked. Also, I hadn’t realised just how Irish the college is. Not only are there an unfeasible proportion of the students Irish, but so are a considerable number of staff. Tomorrow, we are to be divided into groups of 12, apparently this is to be done to provide balanced groups. Given that I’m half Indian, older than Methuselah (I had to look that one up), and without a drop of Irish blood in me, I reckon I will be a one-man counter-weight, and will be put in a group with 11 other 21 year old Irish women. Again, I’ll try and put up with it.
One curious element of today’s induction was the emphasis put on timeliness for the duration of the course. There is the equivalent of a register, which is closed when the lectures start – most of them are 9am. If you’re not there, and you haven’t advised the college before hand, or don’t have a really, really good excuse, it is noted and will affect your final result. I presume this is meant to be an incentive to get to the lectures on time, but if anyone had thought about it for 5 minutes they would have realised that it would just divert everyone’s energies into thinking up top quality excuses. So far all I’ve come up with is the usual
- There was a terrible flood
- *My car/bus/donkey broke down
- There was a swarm of locusts
* delete as appropriate
But I’m not sure these will cut it in South West London.
