Appearance and Illusion , livre ebook
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English
Ebooks
2019
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153
pages
English
Ebook
2019
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Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
24 septembre 2019
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781913227302
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
24 septembre 2019
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781913227302
Langue
English
Appearance and Illusion
Rob Stuart
Appearance and Illusion
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2019
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874 www.theconradpress.com
info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-913227-30-2
Copyright © Rob Stuart, 2019
The moral right of Rob Stuart to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk with thanks to Liane Stuart for photographic inspiration.
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.
Also by Rob Stuart: A Place in the Country The Conrad Press (2018)
To all those who laboured at the chalkface in IFCELS, 2000-2016
Part One
1
D r. Wendy McPherson drags herself into the open-plan office she shares with eleven other underpaid minions and slumps down in her carrel. She sinks down in her seat and holds her head in her hands. Her long red hair falls forward over her hands, covering her face. She sighs.
Another bloody Friday afternoon, she thinks, and what have I got to look forward to? I’m thirty-nine, not in a relationship since that bastard Tony walked out two years ago. I’m overweight, drink too much, spent three sodding years working on my PhD thesis ( Berkshire Hunts: An examination of the Origins of East London Rhyming Slang in the Mid Nineteenth Century ), live in a crummy flat with a mortgage I can only just afford and all for this – trying to teach English for Academic Purposes to a load of pre-undergrads who always have an infinity of excuses for not turning up to classes. I bet they all have better lives than I do, better things to do with their time than study Western History and Culture on a wet Friday in November. I’ve had it!
She is painfully aware that the best she has to look forward to is a drink (or seven) with some of her female colleagues in the pub after work. She will get nicely oiled and take the tube home to Acton in a pleasant alcoholic haze. No doubt she will finish off the bottle of Pinot that sits in her fridge waiting for her.
I haven’t even got a bloody cat to kick, she thinks bitterly. They say a pet is a great comfort for the lonely. Fat bloody chance! And then what? A cold and empty desert of a double bed.
She fires up her PC to check her email. A page of departmental announcements scrolls onto the screen. Meetings, details of in-house training seminars, emails from students excusing themselves from her classes. The best is from a student who says she has locked herself into her room and can’t get out until the halls of residence maintenance men arrive to free her. That’s an anecdote for the pub later.
The one nugget of gold amongst the dross is an email from Frank Brice, who teaches on the Politics and International Relations course, and spends his days surfing the internet looking for amusing stuff to forward on to a select group who he thinks might do with a laugh. Wendy is high on his list of recipients. Right now she could do with cheering up so she opens the email in anticipation of a chuckle.
The subject line says Lost in Translation . She scrolls down the page. There follows examples of literal translations taken from, amongst others, Chinese restaurant menus and public notices.
Beware of missing foot; Cock soup; Nanometer silver Cryptomorphic condom . What the hell is that one about? Fuck the duck until exploded. Some kind of Chinese culinary method, obviously. She makes a mental note to give the crispy duck a miss next time she is in a Chinese restaurant. Soup for sluts. Ditto. Although given the barren state of her my life, chance might be a fine thing, she thinks. And then she sees a picture on the screen that makes her stop and her heart gives a little flutter. It is a photograph of a lawn. At the edge of the lawn is a small sign and written on the sign are the words: Do not disturb – tiny grass is dreaming .
She sits back in her chair and closes her eyes for a Zen moment, contemplating the image of the dreaming grass. Make the most of it, she thinks, some bastard is sure to turn up with a lawn mower to give you a nasty wake-up call.
She moves on to the last image. A hand-written sign offers Engish Lessons . She lets out an audible groan.
Dr. Sheila Jones, seated in the next carrel, leans over. ‘That bad?’
‘Have a look at this; Wendy says, indicating her screen’
‘See what you mean.’
‘You up for the pub later?’ Wendy asks.
‘Can’t tonight. First assignments are in: Globalisation has a positive impact for developing countries. Discuss. Preferably in English rather than Engish! Although I’m not holding my breath.’
The two women teach in a unit of a red brick university in central London that specializes in foundation courses for international students hoping to apply for undergraduate and postgraduate courses at British universities and paying large fees for the tuition, foreign students being very useful milch cows to the coffers of British Higher Education.
For many international students the idea of having to think for themselves arrives as a bit of a shock, coming as they do from educational backgrounds where cramming for exams is the norm, as is the expectation of being spoon-fed by their teachers with the ‘right’ answer. Getting free-flowing discussion going in seminar groups, Wendy reflects, is about as much fun as bashing your head against a wall. The girls are often too shy and too culturally conditioned to speak up and the boys, released from their pressure cooker secondary schools, don’t bother with the required reading.
And then there is the question of language skills. While the unit does have strict language competence guidelines, commercial pressures from competing, and less scrupulous academic institutions, means that there is a steady erosion of standards to ensure bums on seats. English lessons play a major role in the curriculum alongside academic units. It can be an uphill struggle of the sort that might give Sisyphus pause for thought.
Class sizes are relatively small, ten to twelve students on average, but David Rhys, the Head of Department, is in discussions with Jim Smythe, the Society of University Lecturers rep, to increase to fifteen, a move that Smythe is resisting at the moment but he will, inevitably, have to bow to financial imperatives. None of the staff relish the idea of an increased marking load and there is muttering in favour of strike action.
The student body is solidly behind the staff on this issue as it means a break from classes and the university authorities don’t mind because it means they can dock the strikers’ pay and save money. The reality for the staff is that they will have to turn up and man picket lines in the rain, lose pay and, in the long run, end up teaching the bigger classes.
Unrest is rife in the ranks. And the general consensus is that things will only get worse.
2
W endy stands in front of the mirror in the ladies’ loo, putting on her make-up ready for the night out with her colleagues when Jamila Khan (Development Studies) comes in. She is a pretty, young woman in her early thirties whose family came to England from Uganda during the Idi Amin expulsions of Asian families from that country. She is always cheerful and gives Wendy a beaming smile.
‘Are you joining us for the weekly booze-up?’ asks Wendy.
‘I’m just coming out for one drink.’ Jamila replies. ‘Hubby and son to look after. He can’t boil an egg, even with written instructions.’ She laughs and enters one of the cubicles. ‘See you outside.’
Ten minutes later, Jamila joins the four other women huddled out of the rain at the entrance to the building.
As well as Wendy, there are Annabella Rossi (forty-eight, plump and comfortable, with dyed red hair); Pauline Queen (fifty-two, thin rather than svelte, blond hair turning to grey); and Mary Bowyer (forty-four, dark-haired, tall and always reminding Wendy of Morticia Addams, or perhaps Cher).
‘Right, ladies,’ says Mary, ‘are we hot to trot?’
‘Ready and willing!’ says Annabella.
‘Bring on the Chardonnay!’ says Wendy.
‘Slug and Lettuce here we come,’ says Pauline. ‘God, I need a drink after the week I’ve had. Talk about battering your head against the wall!’
‘Let’s go. I can taste it already,’ says Mary.
The Slug and Lettuce on Northampton Road is a brightly-lit wine bar, all pine tables and classical piano music with a long bar with bottles of wine in racks from floor to ceiling behind the bar. By six o’clock, it is packed with punters enjoying an end-of-the-week drink with workmates and friends and the place is buzzing. The five women manage to find seats by the loos and away from the speakers. They shake the rain off their coats and hang them on the back of their chairs, carefully covering their handbags away from the sharp eyes of casual thieves.
‘Kitty?’ asks Annabella.
‘I’m only staying for one glass,’ Jamila says.
‘Everyone else?’ asks Annabella again.
‘Tenner each?’ Wendy suggests to general agreement.
‘Good start,’ says Mary. ‘I’m up for getting hammered. What a week!’
By nine o’clock, with Jamila long departed, the four remaining women are much the worse for drink, having disparaged the University management, bemoaned the state of their love lives (although Pauline is married and Annabelle lives with her long-term partner, a solicitor called Carol; Mary is divorced) and discussed the foibles of their students.
Pauline, who lives in Tooting Bec and Annabelle, who lives in Clapham Common, decide to stagger off together to catch a Northern Line tube home and set off into the night and the rain, leaving Wendy and Mary to finish up the last bottle.
The wine bar is still heaving as some drinkers leave and others arrive; the two women h
