Saturday 5 September 2015

On becoming mature and sophisticated

September already, and I need to get back on track. Last month, I only updated the blog once, for which, as it was the school holidays, I have no excuse. We did manage get away and see The Daughter in Cornwall for a couple of days, but apart from that, we didn't really do a lot. (Well, The Husband was working - I was the one who wasn't doing a lot.)

So, now the new school year has begun and I've just received the books for my final Open University course, ready for an October start. Because I'm halfway through a rather good book (Touching the Void, by Joe Simpson), I've not really looked at the course book, other than to read the introduction. Worryingly, the aims of the course include being able to write 'with a mature and sophisticated style'. Hmmmm. Just as well this course won't change the final result for my degree...It also says that I should end up being able to contribute to group discussions and 'be supportive, yet appropriately critical'. I am useless at group discussions; I'm usually the one that's passed the pen to record things ('because you have nice writing') and that means I can look busy whilst contributing very little. As for being supportive and appropriately critical, I take it that's not the usual thing that happens on courses, when we all sit around nodding wisely, before complaining on the way home that it was all absolute bollocks. I think, for this course, we have to read people's work and critique them on a forum. I tend to avoid forums as everyone else appears far more intelligent than me (I?) and uses long words. I'd probably get thrown out and returned to pre-school for writing, 'Well, I liked the ending.'


Actually, I did learn a new word, whilst reading Angelmaker (which I mentioned in my last post): 'myrmidon'. A word, like 'serendipity', which I love the sound of, but can't fit into my work without sounding pretentious. Or would such words add the maturity and sophistication I'm striving for for which I am striving? Nah, I can't do it. I will aim to develop an individual style, known as 'uneducated country-dweller'. If Cormac McCarthy can write whole books without speech marks, I'm sure I can dump the sophistication. Mind you, he is a lot more famous than me (I?). Sigh... Perhaps I should have gone with Art History. 

As proof of a total absence of maturity and so forth, I am getting ridiculously excited about going on the Harry Potter studio tour next month. And there's a special Dark Arts exhibition specially for Halloween. If I was mature and sophisticated, I wouldn't be able to have my photo taken pretending to push a trolley through a wall on Platform 9 and three quarters (how the heck do you do fractions when you're typing?). 

And I need a Hufflepuff t-shirt because I did the official quiz and that's my house team, apparently. I'm so unsophisticated, it scares me. 

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