A sleepy, but lovely day with Nick was thrown off course by Some news from Nina's friend A. He has been having some problems with his A'levels and has decided to spend an extra year on them. I found out through a jaunty, but cryptic message on Twitter. I offered commiserations and support although A is unlikely to accept any help I could give. I like A very much. He shines with energy, creativity and individual spirit, just as he did when I first met him, aged about 8. Before his voice broke, this was called 'silly' by the adults and a lot of his contemporaries. He was funny, but irritating. This last couple of years, his humour and writing style has blasted ahead, and is often dazzlingly sophisticated. It seems trite to say that, like thousands of sons of working class single parents living in inner cities, he faces challenges. He does have a lot to deal with though, and the most difficult is in the area of self confidence which comes easier to kids who have a middle-income-middle-England background.
I'm surprised at how concerned I am for him. I think I had been depending on his progress as I still regret not being able to help Nina to achieve what I still feel she could have done at A'level. I see her taking what seems to me to be the harder, longer road through less than minimum wage apprenticeship, and un-challenging training, working for people with whom she has little in common. In spite of my feelings, Nina is happier now, and I am proud she has stuck with it. I sort of hoped that A would hit the bases she missed and that I could celebrate with him, although I know that I have no claim on him at all. I also know that there are lots of ways to achieve, and I am being a qualifications snob. Considering my own paucity of academic achievement I ought to be ashamed. I redeem myself, perhaps, in that I know in my bones that A will achieve something very special with his life because that is his spirit. I have tried to tell him this, just a little less effusively because I don't want to scare him.
Yesterday, I found out that of the teachers who taught me O and A'levels at the foetid institution that was Truro High School, only Mr Fee remains. According to my Mum, he does remember me. When he taught me, he was a young teacher of in his mid 20's. He was the object of many schoolgirl crushes, being affable and not bad looking. In common with all independent schools, most of the teachers at THS did national service (or their brothers did), so Mr Fee had the almost unique attraction of having his own teeth. I never fancied him though, my heart being already given to Mr Tinson, a teacher at my former Comprehensive where my loyalties lay.
I woke this morning remembering some of the things that Mr Fee taught me. Passages from the Merchant of Venice, Jane Eyre, Ernest Hemmingway, critical thinking around films, to watch the technical aspects of my written work. I was thrilled when he once said that I had an enviable writing style, and was less than thrilled when on another occasion he said that my observations were adequate for O'level. Seeing his face on the THS website, I have been reminded that my creative writing was very strong, and of how much I enjoyed it. I am tempted to email him, just to say.. what exactly?.. 'Thanks to you I remember all this stuff, and in spite of the encouragement I didn't fulfil my potential to write anything except reports, and I never did improve my spelling. Oh, and by the way, Mr Fee, what were you doing with your left hand moving deep in your trouser pocket while you read us Anthony and Cleopatra?'
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