Polytics

It was sunny again this morning, but also bitterly cold, and there was strong frost on the school playing fields as I walked to school. We had an Ingham assembly on Aesop's Fables and then we just had time for a coffee before the coach showed up.

We all piled on and sat at the back and got to Purswell Poly at about half-ten. After milling around for a few minutes upstairs we were assigned to our various destinations. Jeremy, Lee, Duncan and I and a few girls met Mr. A. P. Butcher in the Humanities department. I liked him immediately; he really put everyone at ease. He ushered us into his tutorial room in Y-Block and told us all about the different Humanities courses offered at Purswell, but he mainly focused on the Politics course. A look at the walls of his office explained why: they were blathered in posters of Che Guevara, posters of NUM rallies, and posters touting French communism. We found this quite amusing, but I found myself getting really taken with the idea of a politics course, and was even more pleased when Butcher told us that in his opinion there was no difference between polytechnic and university courses: "I think we offer better courses, if anything." He went on to say that once you’d started, it was virtually impossible to fail a degree course. "Your best friend is your examiner,” he told us. Now I feel that Political Philosophy (or perhaps Oriental Studies), is the course for me.

At twelve we had our sandwiches and then Claire, Evelyn and Christine and I waited around until half-one and our next venue, which was Teacher Training. Our tour of the Teacher Training department was really quite off-putting. When we said that we were doing English and History at ‘A’-level, we were greeted with hoots of laughter and a “hard luck, hee-hee” attitude, which was pretty depressing. Why didn’t they tell us Arts students are really going to have such bad prospects when we chose our subjects? The tour of this department was pretty dull and I’m glad I’m not hooked on teaching. After a quick coffee we were back on the coach.

Jeremy, Lee and Duncan came to my house afterwards, and we listened to records and just sat about in my bedroom and they left at five-ish. It would be a nightmarish situation if Duncan or Jeremy got hold of this diary! It doesn’t stand thinking about!

All evening Mum and Dad were moving things from the living room upstairs into Andrew’s room, because tomorrow morning we’re having the new fireplace installed, and then they’re redecorating.