Yesterday was my shopping day and we have a sitter who looks after Meg whilst I pop out to local grocery store. I try to get all of this done in just over an hour if I can but the local traffic can make a difference to the timings. Today, we go to 'The Lemon Tree' for our weekly treat of a bacon butty followed by a quick tour of the local charity shops to see what takes our fancy.
Whilst working at the Central Office of Information (COI) I quickly came to appreciate that I had to acquire some 'A' levels in order to get into University and I also made application to a range of Northern Universities to study almost anything. I secured an interview at the University of York which was then only about a year old - the University consisted of an Elizabethan manor house (I think) called Heslington Hall and the rest of the university was under construction but it was a largely green field site. I was interviewed by the Professor of Sociology (Raymond Fletcher) who I subsequently discovered had written the definitive student textbook on 'The Family and Marriage in Britain' He was assisted by a very young Economics tutor called Douglas Dosser who asked me various technical questions in Economics which I struggled to answer. But the older Professor asked me some other types of questions, one of which was whether there were any concepts in Economics or the other social sciences for that matter that had applicability outside the immediate field. I rather took the bait at this point and waxed lyrical about Marginal Utility theory which is the theory that increasing increments of a good (pints of beer) become of less import to the individual as one consumes more. At the end of the interview, Raymond Fletcher said to his colleague 'Are we decided?' by which he meant that he had made up his mind and his younger colleague was not in a position to argue. I had applied for a degree in Sociology about which I knew nothing although I had read a periodical called 'New Society' in earlier years but I was offered a place on their joint Sociology and English degree course about which I was over the moon. I remember earnestly requesting that they inform me of the grades that I needed to achieve and was told that all I had to do was to satisfy the matriculation requirements which meant, in practical terms, two 'A' levels at a grade of 'E' which was the lowest grade of pass. This was almost unheard of at the time but I think I know what happened in my case. Faced with the very unusual situation of a candidate with a good range of 'O' levels supplemented by the Civil Service Open Competition result and four years of work experience, they decided to take a gamble on me. At this time, in 1965, it was really quite unusual for mature students to apply to university but as the years rolled by the universities realised that students in this category were quite a good bet and of course the Open University was to underline that point when it was established in 1969, some five years later. Also, I have a shrewd suspicion that in the absence of a report from a headmaster, my immediate library boss had written me a reference which I suspect was sufficiently glowing for the reference not to be ignored. All of this happened, as I recall on a Friday and it was a very wet and rainy day in York. I remember walking through the streets of York going to the bus station with tears of joy rolling down my face but, of course, as it was raining so hard nobody noticed that I was weeping copiously. I mention the fact about a glowing reference because the following Monday, I received a scrappy bit of a duplicated letter from Manchester University without so much as an interview with the same offer. Hence I think that the admissions tutor at Manchester must have come to the same judgement and for the same reasons as the professor in York. As Manchester was an old and established university and I already had at least one school friend there, I chose Manchester over York because it was a case of the established versus the unknown. York University subsequently established a high reputation in the social sciences and had I graduated from there then I think the degree would have had the same street credibility as one from Manchester but the Manchester University offer seemed, at the time, to be the more sensible offer to accept. One complicating factor about the Norther Universities at this point was they demanded a 'University Test in English' in addition to one's 'A'-levels, even if you already had an 'A'-level in English. I think this was instituted primarily for the Science students but the science faculties argued that standards of English were declining and so everyone ought to take the test. It made the actual process of registered so much more fraught as you had to prove you had passed the test, even though a certificate was not issued to you (but rather a form 'Q' followed by a form 'R') when I worked at the National Lending Library, I did actually acquire an English Literature 'A' level at the grade of 'D' I actually feel quite proud of having achieved this certificate because I only studied for three weeks to obtain it. There were two Shakespeare plays of which one I studied one for three weeks and completely ignored the other. I read some Chaucer in translation the night before the examination and then faced with Chaucer in the original Middle English, I could just about remember enough of the story line to make it look as though I was actually translating rather than remembering. I remembered the poetry form what I had studied for 'O' level so the three weeks of preparation, plus a good memory allied with good examination technique '(aka known as 'Bullshitting' such as 'There are evident parallels to be drawn at this juncture etc. etc.') I must say I have always been slightly cynical about the value of 'A'-levels in the Arts subjects because it would be impossible to gain a similar qualification in the Sciences, Languages, Music etc. after only three weeks of study. To underline this point, my attempt to gain an 'A'-level in French failed and I got another pass at 'O' level which I did not need as I already gained this 'O' level some years earlier. In my later professional career, we used to recruit students without 'A'-levels if we could find some good alternative evidence that they could profit from a degree course but of course, 1965 was a very different era.
© Mike Hart [2024]