Results Time!
The next day, on the Monday, we made our separate ways back home, where our ‘A’ level results were awaiting us. I thought I’d done okay, not brilliantly, but okay. However, when I opened the letter I was in for a shock. I got a ‘C in History, an ‘E’ in English Literature (by far and away my best subject) and a ‘U’ in Geography, meaning that I’d failed it altogether. I was reeling. I went into the park and climbed a tree - I didn’t know what else to do. My world fell apart. Failing Geography altogether wasn’t great, and only getting a C in History was poor, but an E in English Lit??!! Bugger. I was so shocked and traumatised by my results (although in retrospect they were what I deserved) that all I could think to do was to go over to the park opposite our house, wander about aimlessly and then climb a tree and sit in it for a couple of hours. The problem was, that I soon realised that there was nothing I could do to change my results; no amount of mooching around or self-recrimination or sitting in a tree was going to change things – my results were what they were, and that was it.
I had applied to read English Lit at University and unsurprisingly none of the five universities I’d applied to were remotely interested in taking me following my extremely poor results. I’d applied to Universities that were all part of the Russell group, which were universities considered to be of particularly high quality. I contacted clearing, but due to my abysmal grades they weren’t able to find anything for me either. English, they explained, was a very popular subject, and there was little chance of finding a course willing to take me with my grades (or rather, lack of them).
Damnation. What to do? My whole life up to that point had been based on the premise that I would go through school, and then go to University to read English Lit. and suddenly the whole plan was destroyed, just like that. I had two options: take the year again, re-sitting my A levels at the end of the following year, or go for my ‘insurance’ application to read History at Portsmouth Polytechnic, for which I had been offered a place, but I had not yet accepted? Now, at the time Polytechnics were seen very much as second class institutions, not on a par with Universities, and certainly way below those universities in the Russell group, and I suppose I was a bit of a snob. Decisions.
In the end I was just too proud to face going back to school, having to re-sit my final year with students who were a year below me, whilst all my friends were off at Uni. or wherever, so I opted to go to Portsmouth and read History, reluctantly accepting the place that was thankfully still on offer. I was good at History, and quite interested in it, but as subjects went, as far as I was concerned it was far below my preferred subject of English Lit, and it had been a hard decision to make. Whatever the case I prepared to set off for Portsmouth – where was that exactly?
It had been the first real knock-back I’d ever experienced (apart from never having been picked for any school team in any sport during my entire school career!) but I took it on the chin, got my stuff ready, and my brother prepared to take me in his VW Camper van to the digs in Southsea that the Poly had provided for me. Little did I know what awaited me at college (college, not university) and little did I know what a completely mad and topsy-turvy 3 years it was going to be, in every way!
CHAPTER 2: MY FIRST TERM AT PORTSMOUTH POLY
I'm a student!
Welcome to Pompey!
I had been born and grown up in Oxford; one of the most beautiful and bohemian cities in the country. It was what I was used to – lovely stone architecture with a learned air, steeped in history, together with a fairly laid-back counter culture driven by the large student population with bars and trendy shops and great pubs. Portsmouth, however, was pretty much the exact opposite to Oxford.
Portsmouth was a very staunchly working class town with a strong naval history with architecture (or rather a lack of it) to match. Instead of students there were sailors (known as Skates to the locals) and they tended to be quite right wing and working class in their orientation. There weren’t the bars and pubs and cafes and general air of culture that there had been in Oxford. Portsmouth (Pompey) was very much a naval dockyard town, and proud of it.
Of course the seaside resort of Southsea was also a part of Portsmouth, and that was great, but it was very much harking back to a past era, one of candy floss, and deck chairs and penny arcades. It had its own fairground with rides that even then had seen better days, and this only added to the sense of a seaside town that had once been great, but had been in decline. So, not only was I leaving home for the first time and living on my own in a new city, the contrast between the city I was leaving and the one I was going to, could hardly have been more marked.
Facilities
Notwithstanding the culture shock that I was about to undergo, right from the start I had problems to overcome, the first and main one being my accommodation, or rather the lack of it. Portsmouth Poly was trying hard to develop and upgrade its facilities (and in subsequent years it did a great job), but at the time their facilities were still meagre, especially in terms of halls of residence, of which there was only one. At the time I arrived, there was no real campus, only a selection of old buildings just to the North of Southsea and the pleasure beach, bought up by the then still quite new Polytechnic, and then re-purposed as different departments. There were virtually no purpose built buildings at all.
The History department building was actually an old hotel that had been partially, and hastily converted into a college. The name of the old hotel, somewhat optimistically named King’s Rooms, had been removed from the front of the building, but where the letters had been, they had left an indelible mark on the stone façade and the name could still be quite easily read. Hence the History department building was still known as King’s Rooms. For a start this meant that there were no catering facilities in the department, and as there was no central campus, we would all troop to the café next door when given a break between double lectures.
Apart from this there were a collection of old Victorian houses that formed the administrative blocks, and various other buildings (old schools and the suchlike) that were used by various departments throughout the college, with the Students’ Union being in an old warehouse. The old library (that was finally replaced in my third year with a wonderful new building) was housed in a very unsuitable building, with cramped rooms and poor lighting, which wasn’t great, but even worse was the lack of resources. There were some books that were so in demand, yet of which they had so few copies, that the library operated a short term loan system. Nothing unusual about that you might think, but in our library if a book was marked as being on short term loan it meant that you could only take it out for 4 hours! If you didn’t get your reservation to borrow the book into the library in time, you were stuffed (and sometimes you were anyway as previous borrowers sometimes simply failed to return the book on time).
Fellow students - from later in the course
My Accommodation Part 1: Pepe’s
When I arrived, the good news was that they had just finished building a brand new hall of residence; the bad news was that although it was brand new, it was the only one they had. Fear not, however, as first year students were given top priority to live there, and that included me. But of course I had only accepted a place at Pompey late in the day, and that meant that the hall of residence was already full, and so there wasn’t a place for me.
This was a major blow, as being in a hall of residence in your first year had many benefits, foremost among these being that you were living amidst