Post by radged on Feb 27, 2013 22:45:55 GMT
In trying to think what to write here, it has occurred to me that BP did define what I have done since in a couple of rather unusual ways. One, through a daft policy, and one through a daft comment.
To the daft comment: in ‘interviewing’ for the sixth form, the guy in charge, (I think he was called Mr Grove) managed to say that although I might be generally thought to be an OK person, I would never be ‘academic’. To some extent he was correct that at that time, I really wasn’t ready to be sitting down and doing the A level thing and upon reflection, it still lacks a certain appeal. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, the comment must have got under my skin a little, because after going on to music college, and subsequently working as a free lance (session) musician for a couple of years, I registered for the London University External Programme (this was in the days when it was simply a syllabus you read independently for and then sat the same exams as the internals) and, somehow came away with a degree, in laws, that is not to be sniffed at. And at the graduation bash, I recall thinking that showed .... (had to be careful here not to break the forum guidelines). And so my career changed from music to law.
To the daft policy: that only the top stream classes could learn German. Obviously this policy came about because all Germans are of superior intelligence: lest the country be dumb. My first law job was working for the German Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) in Karlsruhe, and strangely, I’m fluent to bilingual in German.
I landed in Germany somewhat accidently having made it my business to meet a good looking German woman who lived over the road from me at that time in Newcastle. The book ‘The Xenophobes Guide to the Germans’ notes that having carnal relations with a German, is somewhat like undergoing minor surgery. Seventeen years later, and I am still injecting local anaesthetic. The relationship thing didn’t last (why would it), but I was in Germany for more or less eleven years. So, both the language thing and the academic thing were sort of Pferdescheiße. All curtesy of BP. Not that I want to sound negative, for I have many good memories of many good people (both staff and kids), but the constant definition of unformed people’s future as if they can be determined by the JMB syllabus insulted the intelligence of all involved.
I digress. Several relationships later, an LLM and a couple of jobs later, I have been back in the UK for the past five years with my wife Dagmar (a German who is apparently intelligent enough to speak her language), and son of 8 years Benjamin. We live in Bishop’s Stortford near Stansted airport which is handy for getting away to the German relatives for weekends and so on. And schools here – because of the airport – are great for Ben, who is, of course, a multinational kid in aprimary school where 16 languages are spoken.
Looking through the other profiles on the site, I am generally amazed at how in the space of our generation so many have moved into some sort of international life. It is one thing that no-one I recall at BP really predicted, although I have to say that the music trips abroad really made it clear to me that the North Sea is not so wide. Of course now with Ryanair we take less time to get to the relatives in Berlin or wherever than to my parents who moved away from Rawdon to Kendal on retirement.
Work, rather strangely sees me overlooking Holborn Circus from my office window where I am the in house lawyer for the Money Advice Service. And for those who have seen the ad’s; I remain entirely ignorant as to what MA may, or may not have said.