Jayne Warburton

WHERE HAVE I BEEN? WHERE AM I NOW?

Jayne Warburton was short and slim. She had thick brown hair cut short and slim. She was very bright and we used to talk about all sorts of things. Well, we did until I told her that I fancied the pants off her and after that we used to sit around in embarrassed silence. I remember one night when I decided to overcome my shyness and that the best way to do that was to neck a bag of speed. Not much changed. Jane sat around in embarrassed silence. I chewed the inside of my mouth off, climbed the walls and tapped my leg in furious but still embarrassed silence.

We still hung out together, but it was never the same. Eventually we drifted apart, me to Catherine, her to Liz. Liz was also short and slim with thick brown hair cut short and slim and my mate Mick fancied the pants off her. That also went well.

I’m not sure I can remember a lot more about college. Philip Morris, who had a motorbike and used to come round to our house all the time. Roy, the Welsh punk who, according to Friends Reunited now lives in Perth, Australia. Sarah, Paul Tomlin, Peter Monteith, the Afflecks Palace, that club, what was it called? Gas Panic? Or was that the one in Tokyo? Doesn’t really matter.

I studied – and I use that word with my tongue so far in my cheek it’s licking my ear – Politics and Sociology, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it now. I couldn’t tell you anything that I did, anything I wrote, anything I read. I couldn’t even tell you the names of my lecturers. (Mick told me a few weeks ago that one of our lecturers was called Phil Mole. “Phil Mole! Are you really telling me you can’t remember him?” he said as the words Phil and Mole hit my ears for, I swear, the first time ever).

I could tell you about Catherine and Jayne and Liz and Mick and seeing Joy Division and New Order’s first gig and meeting Tony Wilson, but I’m not sure that’s what you’re looking for. I could tell you about my formal education – eight O levels, three A levels and a degree. I went to Polytechnic. I left Sixth Form College with my A levels and went up to Manchester and went to Manchester Polytechnic. I quite liked the word. Polytechnic. It sounded modern and meaningless, shiny and completely lacking in any substance, but more than that I liked the way it wasn’t a university. If it had any meaning it was in defining what it wasn’t rather than what it was: it wasn’t a university. That’s what a polytechnic was, not a university. In a sense it fitted in with my story at the time - the playful inverted snob – but I genuinely liked the way it meant that I wasn’t like those people, those people who talked about “going to university” as if it was something special. I didn’t go to Manchester because of anything special. I went to Manchester because I wanted to see The Fall and Joy Division and I didn’t want to go to work. I went to Manchester because they offered me a place. I went to Manchester because I could. Life had its revenge later as it does. In the early 1990s, Manchester Polytechnic became a university, but by then I didn’t care.

A life spent in educational institutions until the age of 23 – but what did I learn there? In truth, when I look back I think I learned nothing. OK, that’s not true. I learned loads, but all of it was about life. I can’t remember a single academic thing. Not one essay I wrote, not one theory I spewed in and out.

That’s where I have been. Would I do anything different now? Of course, but that’s not the point. It’s all learning. Whether you like it or not, it’s all learning. From the moment you lift your head from the pillow to the moment you lay your head down you are learning. Everything you do in life is about learning. I’m not sure you can do anything without learning from it, whether consciously or unconsciously. Whether you take it on or not, that’s a different thing. And that’s what takes us to the where I am now. I’m Phil Mole.

When I started teaching at Brighton University, that experience in Manchester was invaluable. It was probably – no, definitely – more useful to me than it would have been if I’d have been able to remember what it was Weber said to Durkheim or whatever Derrida’s theories really meant. All that’s useful but what Manchester really told me was that – and this really quite upsetting – my mother was right. You get out what you put in. It’s about passion, about excitement, about enthusiasm – and that’s for both sides of the equation, the people who are teaching and the people who are learning. It’s up to the teacher to make his class swing. That I got nothing out of my class is just as much Phil Mole’s fault as mine. I was absent most of the time, but he should have made his class the hottest ticket in town.

Am I Phil Mole? Is my class the hottest ticket? Maybe. Probably not, but I think knowing it should be is the first step. Learning - education is important. Of course it is. Just like the shark moving forward, you never stop learning. And we all know what happened to the shark that stopped moving forward. Our job is to make that learning as exciting as meeting Jayne Warburton in the bar.