“My view of human nature is that all of us are just holding it together in various ways – and that’s okay. We just need to go easy with one another, knowing that we’re all these incredibly fragile beings.” – Alain de Botton
i. Have You Seen The Saucers?
“I heard some good news recently,” says Rami. “Something that I’ve been waiting on and expecting for a long time.”
“Really?”
“You know that big climate change conference that took place recently?”
“The World Economic Forum? The one where that guy told Greta Thornberg to shut up and go to school?”
“That’s right.”
“So what was the good news?”
“The good news was that beings from beyond our solar system, let’s call them extra terrestrials, E.Ts, contacted world leaders and offered them the technology to put out all the fires that have been happening lately. But only on the condition that they don’t use the technology to make weapons.”
“Ah…”
“None of them have signed the agreement yet.”
“Hm…”
“If they sign it they’ll let us join the Galactic Federation.”
“Right.”
“The same thing happened at the end of the second world war.”
“Did it?”
“They contacted Eisenhower, but he told them that on behalf of the American people he couldn’t agree to their terms.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t just sign the agreement, get the technology and then renege on the deal. It wouldn’t be worth the piece of paper it’s written on. Would it actually be a piece of paper? Can E.Ts hold pens? What would the E.Ts do if we went back on the agreement? I’m not surprised they don’t want us to join the Galactic Federation. We’d be an embarrassment. Can you imagine?”
ii. Für die Ewigkeit
“Sonnenbrand…” Derek drones, ominously. “Sonnenbrand….”
Derek is a tall, grim, silver haired, ziegelhaus of a man with a booming, monotonous oratory and memorable calfs full of bulging varicose veins (I have seen him sockless in his summer shorts and loafers). His class of a dozen retirees, mostly ex-teachers themselves, are uniformly dour and unsmiling.
There is no sense of joy to be had from Derek’s German class; none of the ebullience of the Italian classes, the optimism of the ESOL students, the joie de vivre of the French. I wonder about the motivations of the relentlessly sombre German students, they feel somehow more to do with the past than the present or the future. I look at their secretive faces and can almost hear the echoes of memories stained dark with regret. I’m not a fan of the German class. They give me the fear.
Derek recently started teaching again at a local boys school, but they let him go after two weeks because his teaching methods were deemed too old fashioned. Nonetheless, the older students who attend his lessons here remain loyal to a fault, they’ve been studying under him now for years. The title of his class has consequently changed over time from German Beginners to German Improvers, a boundary-less plateau beyond which his students will never pass; the rest of their lives and Derek’s now unhappily entwined forever.
“…Sonnenbrand. Die Bräune. Die Bräune. Sun burn,” Derek explains in English with a rare, pained smile. Some private joke, perhaps.
iii. Marlene
Marlene is in her mid-fifties and has a bit of a thing for Colin. It’s possible that she regards me as some sort of rival. She times her surprise visits with cups of coffee and pieces of cake for when she’s certain I’m not here and can have Colin to herself, undisturbed. Whenever we do encounter one another she will appear surprised and unnerved, her expectations thwarted.
“Where’s Colin?” she will ask, peturbed. And then, in a cloyingly fake attempt to sound casual and indifferent: “When will he be back?”
We first encountered Marlene attending astrology talks at the centre, then she moved on to running her own tarot and astrology workshops. By day she works as a cleaner in the local psychiatric unit. Last year she bought in to a pyramid scheme selling essential oils. Now she hosts sparsely attended aromatherapy workshops, trying to reel in customers and orders. She arrives with hundreds of little blue essence bottles which she arrays on white linen draped tables while she pitches to middle aged women as she was once pitched to herself. She talks about the oils and their properties and makes her clients cups of herbal tea in an attempt to soften them up and make them more amenable to her charms.
Which is pretty much the same approach she takes with Colin but he’s not buying in either. He says he just sits there and listens to her talking nonsense while he drinks the coffee she has brought him, eventually stops talking and goes away again. He says he gives her nothing of himself yet still she returns, time and time again.
Although Colin has noticed that she’s not as easy going as she used to be, he’s at a loss to explain why.
I could give him a clue.
Community Corner 