Learning Resource Centre

At my college the library isn't called the library, it's called the Learning Resource Centre. It's an amusing contrast with the libraries in Cambridge. Unlike the University Library's austere corridors, it's open plan and I keep getting caught up in the graphic novel section on my way to Social Policy. The Divinity Faculty Library thought itself terribly forward thinking and liberal because it allowed you to whisper "excuse me" or "have you finished with that?" without the head librarian belting you round the head with Cruden's Concordance. The other day I was sitting in the Learning Resource Centre and two young gentlemen began playing the rap music of a popular beat combo very loudly on YouTube. This would be a sending down offence in the UL but in the Learning Resource Centre, after about five minutes, a librarian scurried over and said, with the utmost politeness, "Boys, this is a library, could you turn that down a bit please."

I like that it's practically the polar opposite of the Cambridge libraries. It means that even if it's never quiet due to ESOL lessons going on in cordened off areas ("Used to is pronounced useter. Repeat after me 'useter, useter, useter'") or teenagers much cooler than me shrieking with laughter, I can spend time there getting work done without the panicked and tearful feelings that the DivFac and the UL useter inspire in me. I've noticed over the past few weeks, however, that the relaxed atmosphere has lead to something I've found common in public libraries: nutters distracting you when you're busy.


My favourite nutter of the past term has to be Christine the Christian. I first met Christine when she asked a friend from my class to help her understand a sociology question. It transpired that she had the same teacher for Sociology as us. Later that afternoon, as I was diligently working away, I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Christine. She asked if I could help her with something and, naively believing that that something would be to do with sociology, I agreed.

Christine the Christian: I wonder if you could help me understand this, "I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God."
OGH: Erm...
CtC: What do you think it means by crown?
OGH: Um, which book is it from?
CtC: Revelation.
OGH: Well, I'm not too sure that anything from Revelation should be taken literally given that it's most probably an allegory for the fall of the Roman Emp...
CtC: [louder] What does it mean "so that no one will take your crown"? What crown?
OGH: [wearily] Er, I expect it means your belief in God. That people will try to persuade you away from your faith.
CtC: [with a big smile and wide eyes] Yes! That's a very good interpretation! You know your scriptures! Thank you!

At that point I should have pointed out that although I'd spent a good few years studying Theology, I was in fact an atheist and not interested in joining her God club. However she was already walking across the library with a beatific grin on her face so I left it. Big mistake. Now whenever Christine sees me in the library I'm greeted with a cheery smile and a bible verse. Or worse.

OGH is sitting working. ENTER CtC.
CtC: Hello!
OGH: Oh, er, hello.
CtC: You are working hard as usual.
OGH: [Nods while trying not to look up and make eye contact]
CtC: Do you like my hat? [Brandishes a hideous woollen pink and purple number] I got it from Fat Face, you know Fat Face?
OGH: [Looks up, resigned to the inevitable conversation] Yes, yes, very nice.
CtC: [Grins maniacally] I love it, it's a present from Jesus.
OGH: [Looks away very quickly to avoid a laughter incident]
CtC: What are you studying?
OGH: Sociology.
CtC: Ah, yes. I gave that up.
OGH: Really? Why?
CtC: I found it too difficult to think about. And the scriptures say that you shall call no one father except God but we were being taught about the founding fathers of sociology. It was confusing.
OGH: I can imagine. But that's just a figure of speech, surely.
CtC: What do you mean, a figure of speech?
OGH: Right, erm, you know in the Bible, when Jesus talks about the sower of the seed?
CtC: [nods enthusiastically]
OGH: Well, he's not talking about an actual person sowing actual seed is he? He's talking about the different ways of coming to belief in God. So when we say 'founding fathers' we're not saying that they are physical fathers, just that they were the first people with certain ideas.
CtC: Oh. Well I spend so much time studying the scriptures that I don't have time for it.
OGH: [looks at CtC's notepad and sees that it is full of painstakingly written out bible verses in a carefully constructed chart, rather than college work.]

See? Nutters. I feel slightly sullied by engaging on her level but I honestly don't think she's all there. Her course? Access to Teaching. Next week on Lizzie's Loons: the African plumber that keeps asking me to go out with him, despite the fact that I'm a snorting, wheezing snot-monster at the moment.

Political correctness gone mad

I don't know if it's a peculiarly British thing but I think most of us secretly like being a bit offended or angered. There's a sign on platform 6 at London Bridge that proudly proclaims, "90% of South Eastern Trains run on time!" and when I'm waiting for a train I take a perverse enjoyment in standing in front of it seething, muttering like an enraged Gollum, "90%! 90%! South Eastern have the temerity, the audacity, the gall to say that when I am late at least twice a week!" It's like a pressure valve, or something.

I would, however, hate to turn into the wrong sort of offended. The sort of person who rants into the comment boxes on newspaper websites. The sort of person who, when presented with a harmless, if banal, question on the BBC Have Your Say website, such as, "Are you bracing yourself for the cold weather?", rather than scrolling on by is gripped by rage and feels compelled to give answers such as these:

The worlds most sophisticated weather system exists in Britain.
it's called sticking your head out of the window!
Why are we so obsessed with the weather? It's winter, it's going to be cold and snow. Get over it.
Harry James, Warwick, United Kingdom

To be honest, we may as well throw our bodies out of the window too as we'll never be as enlightened as Harry James. Except maybe this next commenter, both called Harry, separated at birth?

The BBC have been telling me that the planet is getting warmer for years, and now ITV now inform me that the polar bears are dying of heatstroke, so I will be breaking out the deck chairs and tee shirts this weekend.

Why does the British weather, which is exceedingly agreeable and temperate by any measure, animate the British so much ?

Its the weather, not the apocalypse. Get a life.
[Potty_Harry], Coventry, United Kingdom

Before the Harries get too animated, here's Dave to calm it all down:

The weather in this country is NEVER cold in world terms.

How do you think people cope in Canada, Finland or Russia cope? Or what about Central Europe where it is consistently colder than this for three months every single year?

Slow news day, BBC?

Davie Hay

Glad we cleared that up. And finally:

Hello? It's late November; what are people expecting, a heatwave? I wouldn't trust the BBC to tell me what the weather's going to be like anyway. A couple of weeks ago in work, we all had a good laugh at the current weather map on this site, which showed a cloudless sky over the whole of Wales. It was chucking it down outside!

[BrimfulOfAshes], Cardiff

Hello? Can I be your friend Brimful? Please? I bet Comic Relief at your work is hilarious.

I worry when I find myself almost tutting at someone standing on the wrong side of the escalator that I might be turning into someone like this. Is noting spelling mistakes on signs with amusement the start of the slippery slope to writing into supermarkets informing them that it should be "Eight items or fewer" rather than "Eight items or less"? Will my irritation with South Eastern trains grow until it leads me down the dark and sullying path of writing a letter of complaint to The Metro? Do you secretly like being angry or offended? What apparantly trivial things anger or offend you?

And I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats

Carol had short brown hair and "ethnic" dangly earrings. She was wearing elastic waisted trousers, probably made from fair trade cotton, and had the sort of gold cross around her neck that is supposed to be discreet yet managed to be the first thing I noticed about her. Her smile dripped with so much pity that I wanted to punch her. Instead I sat down opposite her, next to an ailing spider plant probably being slowly choked to death with fake empathy, and waited for her to start. "So," she sighed, "how are you today?" I was in the Cambridge counselling service beginning my second (and last) session.

The previous week I'd sat in the waiting room staring at a poster proclaiming, "Depression feels the same in any language!" with a picture of several people of various creeds and colours standing united in an act of multicultural misery and wondering what I was doing there. This feeling only increased throughout my session and reached a peak during the second session where I was subjected to a barrage of sub-Freudian techniques. Regard:

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX
Carol: Now last week you said you don't get on with your father...
OGH: No, I said we weren't close. That's not the same.
Carol: You see him as a distant figure?
OGH: I see him as someone who is busy working hard for his family.
Carol: [disappointed] Oh.


FREE ASSOCIATION
Carol: [Stares at me with a gormless expression mirroring that of the Jesus in the icon of the crucifixion on her wall]
OGH: [Stares back]
Carol: [Sighs]
OGH: [Stares]
Carol: Why all the silence?
OGH: Er, you haven't asked me a question yet.
Carol: [sighs with what sounds like the tiniest bit of irritation]

THE ELECTRA COMPLEX
Carol: How about your mother?
OGH: Really, my parents aren't to blame for the fact that I'm a miserable cow.
Carol: You're being rather obstructive to the therapy process.

LAST DITCH ATTEMPT AT ANALYSIS
Carol: You're all dressed in black, with black hair and black make up. It's as if you're in mourning and I wonder what you're in mourning for?
OGH: The lost minutes of my life spent with you dear.

The other day I was watching Bad Girls with the wife (shh, I only watch it for the lesbians). The story line was tackling a particularly gritty subject with its usual rigour when I interjected, "For god's sake, they'd have got a social worker in by now," and then a smile crept accross my face. It finally hit home that I'm going to be a social worker. (Well, in about four years' time if I can find the money to fund another go at university.) And I've got Carol to thank for that. I walked out of her room in 2004 and have spent a fair part of the years since then in the throes of drooling mentalism. After that bad experience it was a year before I sought help again and by that point it was too late for me to remain at Cambridge, but that help was good. I was diagnosed bipolar and have CBTed myself back to functionality and along the way I decided that I wanted to make sure people got the same help I had. That sounds vomitously trite and I do apologise but I could tell you horror stories, there's a lot worse than Carol.


So I've just done the first half term of an access to social care course, with a view to becoming a mental health social worker, and it seems to be going well. Leaving Cambridge was hard, it was so mentally shattering that until quite recently the mere sight of an academic book had me reaching for the whiskey but now I'm actively enjoying using my brain for more than counting out change. I appear to be living up to the potential that I thought I'd comprehensibly pissed up against a wall. It's nice. And it will be even nicer not to be on the receiving end of the social care for once.