AFTER 47 YEARS I WILL DELIVER WHAT WILL FEEL LIKE A HOMECOMING SPEECH

In September, I will deliver a speech at magnificent Newbattle Abbey College’s Graduation Day. For me, the significance is huge. It is 47 years since, I was accepted to a year’s residential study at the College. It was to become my educational saviour. Until then I was a waster, a rough sleeper, stupid, inattentive and distracted. Now, I was to study English Literature, Government and Politics. Although I had little education to speak of and no qualifications, they seemed like a natural choice.

Words had always interested me but now with the benefit of real-life experience behind me, some of it brutal, some beautiful, I was able to appreciate more the subtleties of words and their meanings and the vividness of the ideas they described. At school, poetry had seemed like nothing more than a jumble of indecipherable gibberish written by distant dead people that had no relevance to me or my life. It was not the sort of stuff that was written for me or about me and I had no interest in it or desire to read it. Yet the more I lived the more intense was my search for answers and explanation.

My life until then was explained by officialdom in simple pejoratives yet, with the use of language, I found a way of delving beneath those summary, lazy descriptions to explore more about myself and the reasons why my life had taken the turns it had

People just like me

My fellow students were all like me. None of them came from privilege and few had even the most rudimentary experience of education. they were postmen, factory workers, refuse collectors and waitresses. Many had lived in basic accommodation in working class areas; they dressed in what they could afford and they spoke in dialects with thick accents. Many had families to support, worked shifts and struggled to make ends meet. But they, like me, had a desire to better themselves through education.

Among them were some of the brightest, most creative and intellectually astute people I would ever meet.

Among the fellow students I me on the first day was a former coal miner from Nottinghamshire, an aspiring playwright from the Hebrides and a black South African man who had escaped the apartheid regime. There were accents were from all corners of the UK - Pete from Burnley, Patrick from London, Alan from Sheffield, Bob from Alloa, Bruce from Stirling, Alan from Sheffield and Jimmy from Glasgow. There was Jacquetta, Sheila and Elizabeth. Conversations that started tentatively were now in full swing. We were all vastly different but shared a mutual tag of failed at school.

 My room was in an adjacent modern block with views across a great huge lawn and beyond that the subdued fields of Midlothian. After the noise and the frenetic atmosphere of London it was a delightful bonus to be woken every morning by birdsong and to study to the accompaniment of whispering breezes and the rustling of leaves. In all of my time at the college, I never tired of its natural soundtrack.

 Having been used for so long to dealing with challenges that were physical, it was a struggle at the beginning being set and striving to meet purely intellectual goals. The clamour to survive had been supplanted by a desire to learn. Like all of my classmates who had worked for a living, attending lectures and tutorials was not a problem. Having worked on building sites I was used to early starts and I was always first in the class, sitting attentively at the front of the lecture hall with my notepad opened and a biro in my hand. Taking in new ideas and acquiring academic rigour was more problematic. Before I could learn, I had to learn how to learn.

Stupid? No

Having only every read for pleasure, it was a new experience entering a library and mining volumes of books for specific items of information. It was so different from school where discipline and learning-by-rote was more important than being able to construct an argument or to think for yourself. My first essay was a terrifying experience but I somehow scrambled it together in time for the deadline. It was marked with a few complementary and helpful comments.

Within the first few days I knew that I’d found my destiny. Having been dismissed as a failure and living on the fringes of society for much of my young life it was both a revelation and a vindication that I was capable of serious study. I never doubted my own intelligence – in fact I had long been convinced I was a lot smarter than many professional, well qualified people I met – but being able to demonstrate my abilities in a forum where my mind was respected was the most satisfying and rewarding experience of my life.