I have returned from Birmingham. I'm knackered but can't sleep due to my excessive sweets consumption today (Bournville, Hula Hoops, Coco Pops, Frosties, diet Coke vanilla, plus chips, beans and an apple for good measure). I managed to get up at half six relatively painlessly, I just could never make a habit out of it. Very few people had signed up for the trip, it seemed. The coach wasn't even half full. I think there was 17 students and four teachers in all. Some students were down as having registered to go, but didn't make it there before we left, around 8:10 or 8:15. I soon settled down to read
Daughter of Fortune, which I'm loving just as much as Allende's other books. How many other writers would describe a character's penis as being gherkin-like?
We got to Birmingham on schedule and went to look round this 'ere exhibition thing. We were all expecting much more than what we were presented with. Basically it was three small room's worth of work. And yes, the work was all fantastic and scarily good, but it wasn't exactly going to take us three hours to look at it. Everyone became intimidated by the standard of the work around them, our tutor, Matthew, had to give us a little pep talk, saying that there's nothing on display which we weren't capable of making ourselves. We didn't believe him. We all split down into groups and I followed Claire and Ruth around, who'd adopted another student, Isra, for the day. We had a look through the shops in the complex, one of which was a Pagan shop. They had some beautiful athames and other ritual materials. There was a miniature cauldron, properly blessed herbs, crystals, tarot decks, some lovely jewellery. I was a bit suspicious of the goddess keyrings though. Their book selection wasn't very encouraging either, it was most Llewellyn crap. Still, they did have an interesting range of tie-dyed babies clothes. I ended up buying two beaded bracelets. Claire bought a bumper sticker for her stepdad which said "My karma's run over my dogma." I would have laughed, had I not heard it repeatedly due to the miracle of the internet. "Be cautious in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" still manages to raise a slight smile however.
There wasn't really anywhere to eat, which was unfortunate as we were hungry. There was a small newsagents effort, but nothing edible for me in there, aside from crisps. I suggested going to a pub, but Isra's Muslim and won't go into pubs, or even beer gardens. It was a bit cold to be sitting outside anyway. We went for a wander and eventually I persuaded them all to go into the coach station, where, after much indecision and deliberation, we finally managed to decide on something, mostly chips. We went back to the exhibition afterwards, as at least it was warm there. We passed another shop on the way which was selling some ace jewellry, and Isra had to talk me out of buying a bracelet made from fridge magnet letters which spelled "kinky". They also sold bracelets made from keyboard keys, earrings made from guitar plectrums, and a range created from multicoloured foam shapes.
On the journey back, I settled down with my book and some CDs again, but ended up having a conversation with Paul, the Fine Art tutor, about education, art colleges vs schools, the absurd but required notion of giving a piece of artwork a numerical score in an examination setting, and other various related things. He was saying that if a student produces a piece of work that the examining board really like, the board can take it and refuse to give it back. There are things you can do to reclaim it, but it takes a long time. And that technically any work produced whilst on a course in college is property of college, regardless of whether it was created using only materials the student has bought themselves, made in their spare time and so on. The same goes for the tutors, and that if they make any money from any work they do outside of their teaching, college can claim a percentage. Paul did say that they'd have a very hard time actually getting the money though. It also turns out that he's a friend of Andy from Swarthmore, they used to be in a band together, before Andy lost his arm. I said I'd tell him that he'd said hello, should I bump into Andy again.
We'd left Birmingham on time, and somehow managed to make it back to Leeds 45 minutes ahead of schedule. I suppose not stopping at motorway services on the return leg helped by 20 minutes or so, but it was still unexpected. I was glad to get home, via Morrisons of course, and found my latest purchase from Ebay had turned up, along with the prospectus for
Norwich School of Art and Design. They obviously thought more about their acronym than the site I came across recently for an American university who didn't realise what the initials of "School of Communication And Theatre" (I think it was) produced. I'm investigating possible degree courses, so I can decide if I truly do want to explore that route, and thus take a Foundation course, or if I should be expecting to be job hunting in 18 months time or so. I think by next summer I should be just about ready for full time work again. As I said to my psychologist last week, I have to face the reality that soon I won't be too ill to work any more, and the state will stop giving me benefits. This means either getting a job or investing funding whilst studying. I don't expect to have to do this within six months, but certainly within twelve, it should be an issue. The course I'm interested in at Norwich is the
BA Visual Studies. It sounds like the kind of thing I'd like to be doing, so I've asked fellow B3tans who live in Norwich for their opinion on the city and so on. Obviously, the largest percentage of art and design courses are in London, but I know I don't want to go there. I suppose there would be no harm in researching what was offered however. It's better to make an informed decision than just to make presumptions. I'll try to do that later this week then, as I won't have time this weekend. I'm looking forward to going away, it will be nice to Cinnamon again, and to see some potential huggers (is it bad to think of people in terms of how many hugs I can extract from them?)
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