Thursday, May 25, 2006

Sex, foul language and living with consequences...

Heh! That got your attention!

I've spent a week doing some teaching at another college to help out an old friend. So far - and it's only Thursday yet - I've had to explain to them that if you don't do the work, you don't get marks (living with the consequences), been aggressively reprimanded by a student for using "foul, and offensive language, too disgusting to repeat" (what I actually said was "bugger that for a lark!"), and been harangued by an arrogant young man who tried to hijack today's session to expound in detail his view that "the Word of God" says that "man is the head of woman" and that women should therefore submi
t to men (I invited him to leave the room, since women are not to teach men, apparently, but he didn't take the bait).

I feel so very sorry for some of them. The need to lay hold of an immutable Truth and take refuge in pious certainties overlies a terrible fear of contingency, human messiness and failure. I can't seem to penetrate the shell of anger and defensivness. But there's no light in there. I saw a poster a few days ago which seems apt: Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light.


So where does sex come in? Ah, yes. I showed excerpts from three films, two of which are rated 15, and only one of which is rated 18, of men in gay relationships. I bet you can guess how that went down?


After a full day's teaching there each day, I'm belting back across the city to do another couple of hours in my own college because my boss is signed off sick for 9 weeks. And then each evening, I'm coming home to do
some work on a module revision for yet a third college. Will somebody please remind me why I wanted to be an academic?

Ah, I remember. Monday evening! Back in my own institution for a few hours teaching some urban contextual theology, I was able to deliver a seminar session on the CULF report, released from embargo only 6 hours earlier. A colleague had been one of the select few to have a pre-embargo copy, and she handed it to me just as 12 noon struck, giving me time enough to read it and prepare some teaching notes before my students arrived at 6. We like to be up to the minute.


On the plus side, my remortgage is nearly completed. This means I will own the house myself (with a little help from the building society) and can get on with some home improvements. I'm getting quite lightheaded (unless it's the tiredness, of course) over whether to have beech or maple cupboard doors, and the black sink I've chosen is to die for, dah-lings.

A few more relics left the house yesterday evening, though I have yet to evict the various derelict computers and several years' worth of old magazines from the loft. They will, I am assured, be going shortly. If n
ot, I can assure anyone who is interested, they will be broken up for parts where useful, and taken to the tip if not. I am open to offers for parts of PCs of various eras of contemporary antiquity.

Come to that, I'm open to suggestions, too. What do normal people do? I badly need to get a life. 15+ hour working days including weekends isn't a satisfactory long-term lifestyle. I take an evening off once every month or so to go to the theatre, to see experimental drama, mostly. I'd like to go to the pictures,
but I hate going on my own, and going out for a meal without a companion is just too Anita Brookner to contemplate. I'm way too old to do idiotic things like salsa dancing (I was always too old for that kind of exhibitionism), too earnest for mindless chatter, too easily bored to watch soaps on TV, and too poor to do a lot of theatre and art. There's no shortage of things to do: write my book (more work), follow up my research (ditto), write some journal articles (ditto). But I do remember, once, a long time ago, that I used to spend some time both awake and not-working. Hey ho. I'll try and keep the gaps shorter next time: darling public, do remind me...