Here’s two photographs. One is of a part of Cambridge University (Cambridge is where I live) and the other is of one of the (many) Middlesex University Campuses in North London (I work for Middlesex Uni but not at this campus).
You Have to try to guess which one is which.
The sky is dark now at 9 o’clock and summer, that time that we all yearn for and want to cling on to, is edging into autumn, the time that school years begin but the time that blows the leaves off the trees and that reminds us of our own ageing and death. The earth’s season’s go round and round but we, obviously, have only one life, and once we are in its autumn, there is no waiting for the spring, just a savoring of where we are, finding new things in it, a way to inhabit it (or maybe we dye our hair).
A holiday without a holiday. Four weeks off work but without an expedition. Holiday’s aren’t always what they are talked up to be. The Proms end in the first week of September, then the summer is over. Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle is playing now on the radio. I know the story but don’t have a clue which door we are about to open, they are clearly doors into the unconscious. There is some passion and terror happening at this moment! O no, do not insist on opening that last door!
Yikes! Riding a bike is so difficult! Its so scary for a start. Today we Camriders were on 500cc machines for the first time. And we drove down onto the A14 going north out of Cambridge, jostling with the articulated lorries that look just big from a car but look enormous from a bike. As our instructor urged us to wind it up to 70mph, the signs flashed by detailing how many deaths that stretch of road had claimed last year. We survived, me and a female school teacher who looks around my age or a bit younger, but with so many faults pointed out by our increasingly grumpy instructor (who has a bad knee injury that we could see was getting more and more uncomfortable) that by the end of the day I am feeling despondent about it.
I have one more four hour session then on Thursday morning I take the test. I will have to really focus and sort out my faults in that four hours or there is no chance at all to pass. Hmmm. Interesting. Learning new skills later in life is interesting and certainly an opportunity for reflection: how do I deal with criticism and lack of confidence? Do I deal with it better now than I did 30 years ago? Is it harder to learn? Do I understand physical learning? I’m also keen to know what brought the instructors into the job. Maybe I will ask. I notice some similarities in how I respond to a tough day on the bike to my experience as a student nurse when I was in my early thirties coping with very high stress situations (e.g. first ward of training on a head injury unit). There’s something similar about the vulnerability of being in these situations with little confidence. However now, its not so ghastly….
Watch this space (if anyone ever does) to see how I got on with the test on Thursday.
Getting a full bike license in the UK involves various stages now. I remember when, if you had a car license, you could ride a 250cc machine as long as you had L plates. Not any more. Last Sunday I did a day long CBT (compulsory basic training) on a 125 bike at Cambridge’s CAMRider. It involves some classroom teaching followed by trying out the bike on their site, starting up, going around cones, practising slow speed manoevering etc. A morning is exhausting enough, then after lunch they lead you out onto the road. Its nerve-wracking! We drove, not just around the lanes of the quiet village where CAMrider is sited, but straight into the middle of Cambridge. Yikes! All with the teacher giving instructions into a earpiece. At the end I got the CBT certificate and an aching body and ringing ears for days after. Next week I do another 1/2 day which includes an introduction to riding a 500cc machine. Its a heady mixture of excitement and fear – mostly fear. Now I have some more padded trousers – I fell off on sunday onto a grass verge luckily.
I just like the sound of it. (Listening to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Democracy’ brought the idea to mind.)
I hate the news. I think I always have. For the most part it turns things into shit, into little snippets of entertainment.