Blasts from the past

This weekend sees a very significant anniversary for me. I am going to meet up with my oldest and dearest friend in the city where we went to college. I have no doubt that we will revisit all the old haunts and be terribly disappointed when they are no longer there, or changed beyond recognition. I am sure that we will tell all the old stories and be transported back to a youth that we wish that we still have, or that we wish that we had mis-spent differently.

College days were very special and the memories lie deep and are well rooted. Some things are best forgotten but that is not really a possibility until senility wipes out what is written only in our minds. I find it very sad that old age and death remove, from the earth, treasure box after treasure box of memories that can never be replaced. People say that we should not look backward but forward, and though I can see the sense in that, as we get older, there is far more to look back on than there is to look forward to, and there is much pleasure to be gained from reliving the good memories.

My course at college was Junior/secondary Biology, which meant that we had to study a whole host of subjects as well as Education and our subject of choice. The idea being that we would be prepared to teach accross a wide age range, and thus there was a necessity to be as versatile as possible. The course was not great in terms of its educational value I have to say, and most people could get by with a minimal amount of effort. The real learning took place in the three teaching practices, and not surprisingly, these were the times when some people failed and were thrown out. I don't recall anyone having to leave on the basis of a failed exam.

For general subjects we were placed into "Curriculum groups" and these were fairly random in their make up. I guess that they wanted each group to have representatives from all subject areas. Anyway much of the week, we were a unit and moved around from department to department, suffering the joys of a range of tutors.

We had lectures in Maths, English, Art, Music, PE, Drama and RE and were expected to pass in all of them. It wasn't hard, though you did need to turn up now and then i order to be recognised. My friend managed to turn up to two PE lectures atthe beginning of the course and then hung up his kit. I think he still has the shorts - they never needed washing.

Mostly these sessions were seen as social gatherings, though some tutors did engage us, and attendance for their sessions were pretty good. I have fond memories of Art, Drama and Maths, and I have to say that I enjoyed PE and never missed a session. In those days i was quite athletic and enjoyed playing team sports such as basketball, hockey and athletics. I never had the legs for football.

Our resident lunatic tutor, was in the Art department. I'll call him Dennis as that was his name. He was an enthusiastic potter among other things and I think that he found our particular group quite hard to handle. Never in the history of the college had so many cynics been brought together. They say that all education is subversive. We certainly were. Is it me I wonder? but I have always found myself in subversive groups! Dennis's lectures were fun though I don't think we ever learned anything curricular. It did give me inroads into the typography department however and that kindled a life long interest in type and layout.

I became the only one who could use the ancient presses and soon became responsible for printing all the tickets for social events, posters and invitations too. There were no word processors of computers then and it was all done by hand. Images were done in linocuts or hand drawn, I wasn't able to use silk screen, type was all hand set and the presses all manual. I loved the typography and spent many happy hours in there by myself. Eventually though, I managed to break one of the presses in a moment of exuberance and was banned from typography forever.

The real joy of college though is the people that you grow up with. And i guess that that is what we were there for. To learn from each other and to grow up. Some did that very quickly, and I believe that I have yet to meet that objective.

I am looking forward to our mini re-union and although nostalgia is not what it once was, we will revel in the past for a whole day, which will no doubt terminate in a curry!