Had Hoc

Any day now I’ll be starting a once-a-week Special Interest course at my local Adult Education College. The course is Digital Camera and Creative Use of the Computer and I’m badly in need of the skills it might teach to help with my Storytelling Blog. When I went down the road to enrol, I realised I might also get a bit of a window on what we as a country are currently offering to the youth of my locality, Brixton, in the way of further education.

On the basis of that first experience, I was not encouraged. The college building looked dismally down-at-heel. To enter, you had to pass through a security gate and when I asked for the Enrolment Office, the security guard looked cross and puzzled. After speaking into his walkie-talkie, apparently to discover the answer, he waved me across to the area immediately next to where we were standing.

It gave the impression of being in a Social Security office. A long queue of people stood in front of the furthest window. Fourth in the line was a hollow-eyed youth, tall and skinny and somehow lacking in hope, a form held out in one motionless hand. Two gossiping women provided the only animation.

At the first window, I was told no places were left on my course although the previous day I’d been assured that there were. When the person dealing with me finally checked, I was glad I’d persisted. One place was still available. Next was to fill in the requisite form, a procedure which took me about 30 seconds. When I handed it back at the second window, I was told ‘Give me six minutes’ by the slow-talking official who explained that my details now had to be entered onto the college computer.

While I waited, I watched as the five or six officials behind the windows got up, sat down and bumped into each other as they passed pieces of paper and phones back and fore. ‘You got any system here?’ enquired the burly guy along from me in a strong Jamaican accent. I didn’t quite hear the muttered reply. But I did hear his forceful response. ‘Had Hoc,’ he said loudly. ‘What I is observin’ is all Had Hoc.’

Meantime, the queue at the end was moving. A brown-robed young woman looked worried. ‘Before?’ I heard her explain. ‘Before, I was refugee.’ Now third in line, the hollow-eyed youth still stood unmoving, holding out his form, tall and skinny and somehow lacking in hope.

‘Privilege!’ I suddenly found myself silently saying as the minutes ticked by. A sob rose in my stomach. ‘I have been so privileged.’ At every stage of my growing up, didn’t my family and schools affirm my curiosity, give me a sense of entitlement and awaken the desire for more? Organ lessons in St. David’s Cathedral. Nine months doing VSO in Kenya. Three years at Cambridge University. All my life there’s been education and during my thirty years as a storyteller inside and outside education, the sense of engagement which has been at the heart of it is what I’ve tried to give back – a sense of engagement, a belief in potential and a desire to share the magic of life.

As to the commitment to more education which has been at the heart of what everyone’s been saying is needed since the terrible riots of a few weeks ago – education and jobs and community-building and giving young people better things to do than joining violent gangs – we’ll see what happens when the course begins. The other day in Brixton at the enrolment office, there was no engagement, no sense of potential and not even a hint of magic, just a tedious sense of second-best. Had Hoc indeed.

Mary Medlicott is a writer and professional storyteller. Her website address is: www.storyworks.org.uk