We speak British, you know.

Yes I spoke and I survived without killing anyone, although I think I might have made an enemy in the process but I made a friend too, so it all balances out.
So why is it that all through the week I can just about get the Littleone to school by 9:00 but on a Saturday I struggle to get out the door by 9:30? To cut a long story short let me just mention the words Pre-schooler, nail varnish, duvet, carpet, clothes, five minutes before I needed to be out the door. Oh and she spilt yoghurt on my copy of Germinal. An omen maybe?
So I arrived at the venue with ten minutes to spare, which is strangely surprising as I travelled by bus, and we all know about my history with the Cambridge bus services. The next task of my day was to find the correct room. Thankfully there were arrows pointing us to a room allocation list and standing by the list was a very helpful porter to point you in the right direction.
‘PS2?’ He said politely ‘That’s easy. Just round the corner there. Can’t miss it.’
Except I did. Three times.
In case you were wondering, PS2 is the room between PS1 and PS3 except unlike every other room in the building, it had no number on the door. To confuse all the Literature students, it has the word ‘PHILOSOPHY’ instead.
Yet I sat down and still had enough time to go and get myself a coffee and engage in a little conversation about our previous courses.
There’s always one, isn’t there? They’ve always got the loudest voice and can’t wait to tell everyone how brainy they are. So we were discussing amongst ourselves how long we had got until we have completed our degree, when this one woman declares;
‘Of course I have already completed my degree. I’m doing this course for fun.’
I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt, I wouldn’t say that it was hate at first sight, just that she had to work harder to make me like her. But she shouted on.
‘Ha. Ha. I guess you could call me a Literature Veteran!’
Well that wasn’t the first name that sprung to mind, but as she wished I shall from henceforth call her the Lit.Vet.
At this moment the tutor walked in, arranged her books in front of her and started by saying,
‘Now as this is the first tutorial for this course I thought we’d spend the time introducing ourselves…..’
At this point she really did take a sip of coffee whilst I was surveying the escape routes.
‘…to the texts we are about to study.’
If there was a sudden gust of wind reverberating around the environs of Cambridge at precisely 10:32 this morning, that was me, heaving a sigh of relief. But alas, it seems I relaxed a little too soon, for she went on…
‘But before we start. I think it’s a shame that we don’t really get to know each other until the end of the course.’
Uh oh!
‘And I know how nerve wracking it can be meeting people for the first time…’
No I don’t think you do…
‘So I thought we’d break the ice.’
Would you believe it? She used those actual words..
‘By going round the room, introducing ourselves…’
No!
‘I don’t want a couple of sentences or a list of previous courses. I want to know who you are, what brought you here and where you think you are going with this course.’
And there was me thinking that it couldn’t get any worse than my worst nightmare..
So she started with herself and managed to talk for about half an hour on her oh- so-interesting life, which made mine look so incredibly dull and embarrassing. After that it slithered around the room until it got to Lit.Vet who explained with exaggerated hand gestures that it took her nine years to do her degree and they were the most painful but exhilarating nine years of her life. Oh and did she mention that she had already passed her degree with flying colours and she is just taking this course for fun?
In the middle of this gushing speech a latecomer came stumbling through the door, asking if this was PS2 and apologising profusely for being late. Already she had my deepest sympathy because that is usually me. After concluding that she was in the right place the latecomer sat down in the only available seat, next to me. (Paranoid? Moi?)
Within minutes it was my turn to break that ice, and considering my fear, I did reasonably well. I can’t remember exactly what I said but I didn’t humiliate myself, and that is the main thing. Next was the latecomer, in the next two and a half minutes she won me over completely. It turns out that she did the same course as me last year and like me she loved the course but hated the exam and how it disheartened her so much that she had to recover with a stiff whiskey. Did you hear that? She said whiskey! Anyone who mentions whiskey in a literature tutorial, can be my friend for life.
I realise that this is getting long, so I will move on swiftly. Next up the tutor asked us how helpful we were finding the provided textbooks.
My whiskey friend compared them favourably to those provided on the last course.
‘Last year’s were so poorly written that even if you were an English speak….’
‘We say British thank you.’
The whole class fell silent and turned their heads towards the source of the rude interruption. Yes you’ve guessed it, it was the Lit.Vet.
‘I – I’m sorry?’
‘We say British.’
At this moment I’m afraid, I snorted.
‘Oh – I – err didn’t mean to offend.’ faltered, my whiskey friend, but encouraged by my friendly smile, she began to stand up for herself.
‘But I was talking about the English language. I was trying to say that even if you were an English speaker, you still have to translate those books.’
Do you know that during this sentence the Lit.Vet managed to tut and sigh three times?
How rude! My friend had stumbled through the door with little time to prepare and had still managed to speak coherently and that jumped up idiot had to pick her up on a pathetic point. I’m as PC as the next person but I don’t think I have ever heard anyone say that they speak the British language, I’m not overly fond of that word either because it drums up allsorts of disturbing connotations, such as empire. Ugh!
But that’s a discussion in itself and I am writing about my tutorial.
At some points it was like being back at school because the tutor made us take it in turns to read out paragraphs of Northanger Abbey but I actually think I might forgive her because she managed to explain everything well without patronising us, which is a skill in itself. Plus she obviously has such a passion for the subject that I really did feel that I came away with something.
I’ll suspend judgement however, until I get my first essay back.