Uninterrupted

Oxford University in 1978. I was there for two days of interviews to study Poltics, Philosophy and Economics. My straight path to join the elite was interrupted by a bug and I did not let on.

Liverpool University 1979 and my Politics degree was interrupted by me being totally ill-equipped for life outside the structures and strictures of a Catholic education.

Manchester…..well, you get the drift. And there was a lot of drifting.

Middle-class white boy from an all-boys, rugby playing grammar school on my way to being an emotionally challenged, narrow-minded brute. I was interrupted by three angels, Georgina, Sarah and Bernadine, who opened my eyes to gender politics and saved my ignorant soul.

I was asked today who I would be if I were uninterrupted and I thought I would be a monkish writer who founded an educational charity for orphans. But had I not been interrupted in my previous lives, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. 

A pearl starts when a foreign element gets between the mantle and shell of an oyster. This irritation causes the oyster to attempt to protect itself, producing nacre to isolate the intruder. These layers become the pearl.

I hate just about everything I am experiencing now in my life. The loss, the feeling of failure, the absence of  realistic options and more. But interruptions have given me insight and perspective which, on a  good day, I can marshal.

Who would I be if I hadn’t been interrupted?  Someone else. Probably someone I wouldn’t like.