Never Let the Saucepan Boil Dry Chapter 4: October, Part 3

     I settled in well at Aberdeen College, finding it liberating compared to school. It was run-down, paint peeling, but I liked it. Most students were a lot older than me, though some were near my age. I even saw one or two from the Grammar. This was liberating also. I enjoyed talking to some, and learning from them. They were a lot more down-to-earth than those at the Grammar who had been successful and intended going to university. I told one older lady that it was my third attempt taking Highers. ‘I admire you for not giving up,’ she said, which left me a bit taken-aback. I was quite used to feeling and being a failure by then. 1992 was the first autumn I had had since 1988 which was not marked by a significant failure, either academic or social. I had another ingrowing toenail operation. My 18th birthday was shared with Donald, Cathy and Michael, an Irish student from the church. Pride of place among my presents was a Doctor Who video, ‘Earthshock’, a big favourite since it was first broadcast in 1982. I was still not altogether in the real world regarding study. We were retracing much the same material as before, and I was getting heartily sick of seeing the same pink papers, now doing past papers from 1991 and 1992 I had sat when they were new. The attitude of the college lecturers was quite different to that of schoolteachers, and I also appreciated this. I had a more fulfilling time in all over 1992/3 than I did in the whole of secondary school. I learned to wear contact lenses, and tried out a hearing aid for my long-term hearing difficulties. I walked the two miles down to Deeside and back in all weathers, and enjoyed going to Donald and Cathy’s house in Donside.

     Our Easter holiday in 1993 was spent at St Andrews. I discovered Echo and the Bunnymen. Irene grew more frustrated with school, with what would become her last year there. I read a lot of George Mackay Brown around the time of my Highers in May 1993. True, he was on the syllabus, but I was still slow to revise what I actually needed. Runrig released their ‘Amazing Things’ that March, it gave me inspiration and a lot of hope in some ways. I also gained a place at Aberdeen University’s Summer School programme, designed to help people who did not’ measure up’ in conventional academic terms. I had real hopes I would get in for the autumn term. The course director, Dr Cudworth, advised me to apply for Aberdeen College’s HNC in Arts and Social Sciences for after the summer, but I was too excited at the thought of actually going to the University, too much in an all-or-nothing frame of mind. Getting a provisional student card indicating I was to start in the autumn should I be successful only fuelled these expectations. I had another ingrowing toenail operation late May, just after my Highers. I recovered sufficiently to be able to attend the Summer School from July. I took English Literature, History and Philosophy and enjoyed them all as never before.

     The heaps of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and James Joyce’s Dubliners on tables to borrow in the English class were like piles of sweets. The ten-week session began. The American Civil War was succeeded by the study of medieval Scotland to the Reformation. It was all so detailed, so intense, I felt I was really there, back in the past. Philosophy, particularly philosophy of religion, I found the easiest. I did well in the related essay with relatively little work, quoting the Bible and the Shorter Catechism on the old freewill/determinism question. Studying English was quite exciting. I narrowly failed an essay on a short story from Dubliners, did better with the next one. History required the most preparation of the three, and offered potentially the most rewards. I was to have done an essay on Queen Margaret’s reforms of the Celtic Church in the eleventh century. Mum and Dad went away in Glenisla, and I joined them for part of it.

     I enjoyed the local university experience quite comprehensively, getting buses out to the old campus at King’s College. I had good relationships with a few fellow students, too. The further I went on with it, however, the more it became clear I might not pass. I might have passed Philosophy, but certainly not the other two, which had exams. I was still completing my second and final history essay when I took the exam. It never was completed.

     At the start of September, I realised I was not getting into university that year. I had left it too late to get a place on the HNC in Arts and Social Sciences, as Dr Cudworth had suggested. I faced up to the possibility of taking my Highers for the fourth consecutive time, done as evening classes this time and taught in Higher French by Mum at home. It was the more bleak and bitter for me for having been so close to my goal. At least I knew now I did in principle enjoy studying, and that Aberdeen University was a very fine place to be.

     I felt very negatively towards myself, inclined to cancel celebrating my nineteenth birthday. In all this time, I was very regular in attending the APC, and took their values seriously. At one point, Cathy suggested after my failing the summer school that I give up trying to get Highers. This seemed shocking to me, bordering on blasphemous. ‘Why?’ I said, taken aback.

     ‘Because you’ve had academic problems for years,’ she said mildly. There was the prospect of their leaving by the end of the year, with his job changing and the arrival of their second child. Irene left the Grammar, did a business studies course at college, which she then quit on her sixteenth birthday.

     I related well to both the college lecturers taking English and History. French with Mum often got strained. We endured a rather Gothic holiday at Easter in Argyll, featuring an outside toilet full of spiders and a less than substantial living-room wall. I felt I deserved the pain of my latest ingrowing toenail. The lack of a TV was unexpected, but possibly a boost to my creativity as I grew to enjoy classical music for the first time, savouring tapes of Handel’s Messiah. I wrote the religiously-themed war story ‘Covenant’. This was Cathy’s country. She came from Lochgilphead. The mornings were cold, even by my standards, with a great view of Arran out in the sea. I also enjoyed a tape of Beethoven’s ‘Greatest Hits’, savouring the Ode to Joy in particular, winding the tape back over and over to enjoy it again. I played Dire Straits in the car in Campbeltown, with the ironic song ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

     Irene had left home in troubled circumstances in February. We went briefly into the Christian outdoor centre in Perthshire known as Ardeonaig, where she was now based, on the way back. On returning from Argyll we had a notice from the FPs in the post, which basically told us to quit the manse. Dad said they would be unlikely to break in and repossess it as long as we lived there.

     In May I retook my Highers. French was in Northfield Academy. I elaborated on dreams and nightmares as part of it. Yet another ingrowing toenail operation was planned, as the orthopaedic department had not dealt with it properly the previous year. I took out my contact lenses, as Mum described the Flintstones to me on the ward TV. Ever the bibliophile, I requested my Bible when confused with the anaesthetic afterwards. Donald and Cathy, now dear friends, left in June, shortly after the usual quarterly communion. In the recovery time over June/July I got sad and bored.

     I went to Lochcarron, home to Rev Jackie Ross, founder of the charity Blythswood, and his family at the start of August. His daughter Lois, my age, was known as an eccentric with an advanced sense of humour. I did routine office work the first week. There was a party where Lois decided to use me as the subject for a game of ‘Chubby Bunnies’, involving stuffing my mouth with marshmallows. I ended up being spectacularly sick, only just making it to the sink in time. I threatened her with a spectacular revenge for days afterwards, which never came. I marked Bible studies the second week, and much preferred that. I visited my Granny in Dingwall at the weekend. My Higher results came at home in Aberdeen. Dad reported it over the phone. ‘Not as good as expected,’ he said, though I passed Highers History and French. I had to appeal to pass Higher English, and was successful. Mum had thought I might have got a ‘B’ for French. I had now passed Revised Higher French, Revised Higher English, Revised Higher History and Traditional Higher German, all ‘C’s. I had applied for a place on the HNC Arts and Social Sciences on the Gallowgate campus of Aberdeen College this time, and had got a conditional place. I now had my place confirmed with my successful results, and at long last prepared to be a Norm: to realise my potential. The pain of my academic failures finally seemed behind me. To quote Martin Luther King: ‘Free at last, free at last, free at last!’