Might Do A Course, Might Not

I trip over the adult ed.course brochure on my way back in from
Tescos as it has been posted through every door in Murky. I have been
pondering doing a bit of the old evening class stuff for a while now
and so I pick it up thinking I could choose something for
September.

I've done adult ed. classes on and off for the last fifteen years. The
Golden Age was when I lived in Sheffield when the boys were very small
and the right on City Council in the People's Republic offered greatly
subsidised creche places. I enrolled for every class that had a creche
and over the two years we lived there I did Art, Singing, Video Making
(with a crazed Chilean tutor called Elio), Women's Health and of course
Creative Writing.

It was life changing (pardon the cheese). I had always written ever
since I could write. I have suitcases crammed with adolescent and
teenage scribbling - all angst ridden and so cringe making it would
make your tongue shrivel. And I only ever wanted to be a writer when my
little friends wanted to be firemen and nurses. I had never shown
anything I had written to anyone and I can still recall the palm
sweatery and throat driery of that first writing class.

The tutor was a madman, he wore a long black cloak and a black fedora
and had a sort of grubby, sly charm and super cynical outlook. I guess
now he had a drinking problem too and he would listen to our paltry
efforts and let out great sighs or snorts of derision before making
some heavily ironic constructive criticism. He began to take me aside
after classes and confess his problems. His migraines, his writer's
block, the way that nobody really understood him. I was flattered of
course but with hindsight I can see that I was the only woman under
fifty and must have had an impressionable look in my eye.

Writers groups tend to become like therapy groups in a lot of cases and
I can see now through my own experience of being a tutor how easy it is
to abuse that. Students bare their inner secrets, sometimes for the
first time, they are vulnerable and needy, often they are barking mad.
Writing classes are not like other classes in that they draw on the
students emotions and memories, everything is material. And they often
attract the type of person who needs to process a lot of psychological
unfinished business.

But I read my stuff out and people liked it. I was heady with success.
Better writers encouraged me and for that I will always be grateful. It
was the first step on a road I have been following ever since. Writing
has directly or indirectly opened the door to all the work I have done
and it has brought me all of my best friends.

Last year I did an introduction to Counselling and a course on
Transactional Analysis but I was deterred by the mad looks in the eyes
of the other students and how when we went round the circle introducing
ourselves, how many of them confessed they had come on the course to
deal with their own problems.

As I sit and flick through the evening class brochure I do wonder if
any of these courses could possibly have such an effect and I doubt it.
A motley selection of predictable courses are on offer yet again. All
those certificates in Business and whatnot, the computer courses for
the terrified upward, the language courses. Quite frighteningly there
is section named "Personal Development &; Interest". I am not
entirely sure why this phrase makes me shudder.

Advanced Psychological Survival nestles chillingly beside Wine Tasting.
"Be Warned this changes lives!" cheek by jowl with food and wine
matching. Horse and Stable Management is jaunty next to Feng
Shui.

I hurry onto "Fitness and Sport" but become mesmerised by Chinese Wand
Dancing. At last the "Art and Craft" section. I feel my anxiety subside
- but not for long. I realise the pottery tutor is a naturist and I
really can't face The Art of Paper Cutting. I am urged to make a roman
blind and to update my home furnishings; to make a corsage and a mossed
wreath, to sketch, paint, draw and make things out of wood.

Sweating slightly I put the brochure down and light a fag. Maybe I am
not cut out for learning these days. Outside the two easy chairs I
bought from the tip with the idea of reupholstering scowl at me.
Upholstery. Hmmm. I see the fee reductions are good for us poor single
parents.

I wonder if the upholstery tutor will wear a black fedora.