DID any of you catch Ivor Cutler on Andy Kershaw the other week? For non-aficionados, Ivor Cutler is a cross between Bertrand Russell and Chic Murray. His poems, sketches and musings defy definition and he himself claims to be never knowingly understood. Example. “I put my hand in my pocket, to see what was happening there.”
Or you might prefer a strange love story about a girl whose hand is a brush who meets a boy whose hand is a dustpan. The audience at his gig seemed bemused, baffled and bewildered, but they laughed all the same. I feel a bit like that myself. Bemused. Baffled. And slightly bewildered. My classes seem to be inhabiting an oblique Cutlerish world just now where logic and language have been tossed into an empty cardboard box and given a good shake.
Example. Kate’s logic. Her work experience is reaping good rewards and a job offer might be on the cards. She would like to go to university, though, and has a conditional offer. “And,” she added, “I’ve got big plans for the summer.”
I’ve known Kate since she was an NC student. A baby. So when she said she was getting married in the summer, I reacted rather like Steve Martin in Father of the Bride. “Married?” But that was a long time ago in college years and here she was, a young woman of 19, a Higher National Diploma almost tucked under her arm, and her whole life ahead of her. “Yes. You see if we get married while we both work for the same firm part-time, we’ll get a double discount.” Well that clinches it, obviously.
Not all classroom romances end like a match made in heaven of dustpan and brush. You go through all the sidelong looks, the sitting close together, the whispering, and then you have to put up with the flak. Tradition states that the one who does the drop comes back to class smiling a bit too brightly and with a faint air of bravado and the dropee takes a couple of days, sometimes weeks, off.
Sadly, sometimes they drop out of the course altogether. This week, two school links girls hung back after a taster session. “How soon can we join the course full-time?” they implored, jigging up and down. I knew the session had gone fairly well, but that well? As we discussed the various entry levels it became apparent they were only interested in this course, and joining now, this minute. “She fancies him. That boy on the HN course. Steve,” her mate said.
This block’s literature class has only two girls and they, thank goodness, are indifferent to the blokes. Perhaps it’s the style: Tommy Hilfiger hats pulled low, long, shapeless T-shirts. Or perhaps the girls are immune to their charms because the lads talk a different language.
I’m trying to learn it, fast. Once upon a time, when I was learning Gaelic, I used to sit hunched over Padraig Post, simultaneously translating from the Gaelic for my completely uninterested son: here comes Patrick the postman. Hello, Patrick . . . and feeling jolly pleased with my linguistic ability.
Now I’m listening to Ali G with the same concentration, so that I can understand some of the conversation among the lads. Then I’ll be able to explain that Booyakasha is not a literary term, and twist the knife by telling them the eight-year-old Sacha Cohen won an essay competition in The TES singing the praises of his school and the importance of speaking and writing good English.
It’s not going to be a one-sided effort, though. I may distribute a few of Ivor Cutler’s poems, and see what they make of them. After all, I don’t see why I should be the only confused person around here.
Dr Carol Gow is a lecturer in media at Dundee College.
