This image is a view of Lowlands University from “A Very Peculiar Practice” by Andrew Davies. The show is now on the BBC iPlayer to mark 40 years since its first transmission, which means it’s also four decades since I used to sit so very unhappily while facing exactly that view.<\/p>\n
For while the show actually filmed in two different universities, the main one and the one with this view, was Birmingham University. I didn’t attend Birmingham University and while I’ve spoken there, I’ve presented panels there, that was all inconceivable on those cold days in the 1980s when I’d spend half an hour staring across at those buildings.<\/p>\n
I suddenly think this sounds a bit Jude the Obscure, that I was sitting there longing to be in the university but that didn’t enter my head then, it didn’t enter my mind until this second. I sat there for the very deep reason that there was a bench. Just behind the bench, so just behind where the camera was for that shot, there’s a road which one beat later becomes a remarkably steep hill. At that time, every morning I would walk down that hill and every afternoon I’d walk back up it, unless I stopped to sit on that bench on the way home again and regret most of what was going on in between.<\/p>\n
This might give you the measure of the day. Walking to work, going downhill, used to take me about half an hour. I think: I’m struggling to remember the figures now but I know the ratio. And so I think the walk home, going up this steep hill, took 15 minutes. I remember being shocked at that, at how I was clearly reluctant to go in the mornings, and also at how long it had taken me to notice. The day I realised was definitely a day to sit on that bench.<\/p>\n
It was my first writing job. I was writing manuals for Apricot Computers and I lasted precisely, to the day, one year with them before I was able to get out. There were people I liked, there was a great on-site cook who made superb sausage sandwiches. But there were people I didn’t like and who did not like me. The one I remember was the Communications Manager and she was so foul to me that one day I actually laughed at something she was saying. It was a high point and a low point.<\/p>\n
But then here’s a measure of the woman. She left on maternity leave — oh! ask me about contributing to presents — and when she had her baby, she sent a pretty fancy card to go on the work noticeboard announcing it. That’s nice. Except here is an English Communications Manager and she had this calligraphy card done entirely in French. I suddenly remember seeing it and jerking my head like, yeah, a person summarised by their own writing.<\/p>\n
Presents, right, thanks. I was there for precisely one year, as I said, so unsurprisingly, every single person in that team had a birthday during my time. I want to say there were 12 people, something like that. Not sure now. But I do know that if I didn’t organise the card and cake or whatever it was, I certainly chipped in to all of them. Everyone was always nicely celebrated on their birthday, it was one of the good things that group did.<\/p>\n
Yes. What you’re thinking, it’s yep. Every one in that group had their birthday celebrated except me.<\/p>\n
There’s no possibility my birthday wasn’t known, that Communications Manager kept a list, I was just entirely ignored. It’s not as if I expect to be remembered when I’ve left a room — does that stem from this? — but I do now expect that on that particular day in that horrible year, I might have spent a while sitting there looking across at Lowlands University. I know I had this thing at the time that you can’t quit a job after only a short time, that it looks bad on your CV, and I also know that I couldn’t find anywhere else to go to. So I’d take the Communications Manager’s attitude, I’d eat those sausage sandwiches, and I’d sit on the bench.<\/p>\n
I was going to say that I’d sit there wondering what to do. But actually I think more that it was how I just sat, in a space between work that was pressing down on me, and home where thanks, yes, it was a very good day, how was yours?<\/p>\n
It seemed impossible that anything could change and yet here we are, none of this still on my mind until I caught that shot on “A Very Peculiar Practice”. Not to spoil the show, too, but it happens that this shot comes just as star Peter Davison’s character has reason to appreciate just being alive.<\/p>\n
Now I do too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This image is a view of Lowlands University from “A Very Peculiar Practice” by Andrew Davies. The show is now … Continue reading