| |
|
It was a sunny Saturday morning in Brighton and I set off for my creative writing class with a spring in my step. Sadly, thanks to delayed buses and a bunch of recalcitrant cash machines I arrived at the university an hour late.
The class was being delivered by a visiting tutor and literary luminary, and was comprised of people I'd never, or only just about, met. It was with trepidation, then, that I crept through the door and came face to face with the disappointed gaze of the tutor and the frustrated mumblings of a newly distracted class. No one smiled, no one welcomed me. I was an intruder.
I smiled awkwardly, babbled some excuse or other, and tried to look inconspicuous, thinking that perhaps I could find a seat without causing any further disruption. Unfortunately it turned out that I would have to lift a heavy metal chair over the heads of my classmates (who resolutely refused to stop discussing my lateness and get on with the lesson) in order to position myself at a desk. Gingerly I hoisted the chair over the head of a disapproving woman in her early sixties, then over the head of a scowling man, and then... well then I smashed the casing of a beam of strip lighting, spilling glass all over half the class. Talk about winning friends and influencing people. There followed a vigorous debate about whether we could viably continue with the session (bear in mind that this was a special one off class) as hordes of people ran screaming to the toilets to remove shards of glass from their hair, clothing and skin.
Oh my god it was awful, but somehow we did continue and somehow, don't ask me how, I made it through the day. |
|
|
