Remembering our old Philosophical Studies Christmas parties. When Cicero was in charge.
Guests from all over the university … Cicero’s guardian angels, she used to all them. Lofty people! Senior people! The great and the good, among the academic staff, like a protective guard, over our unit. Over Philosophy!
And that choral music Cicero used to play. Beautiful. And the way we’d head out on the town. To Jilly’s. Cicero liked to watch us drink. She liked to watch us down pint after pint. She like to find us in the zone – the drunken zone. On the drunken plateau. And maintaining it, our drunkenness, for hour after hour. How she admired it! Our pacing. Our deliberation. Our steadiness. The fact we were out for the long haul.
And back to hers … Out to the coast. Out to Tynemouth. Ascending the stairs to her flat, in the Sir James Knott Memorial building. Falling asleep one by one, Cicero laying soft blankets over us …
Did you ever wonder – really wonder – why we’re here? Why Cicero picked us? When we’re so … pathetic. We’re at a Russell group uni. Do you think that was by chance?
That was just to amuse Cicero. She was perverse like that.
Don’t talk about her in the past tense!
But she’s gone, isn’t she? She’s not in Newcastle anymore.
Cicero’s beyond the uni now. Beyond philosophy, even. Cicero’s undergone a phase change. She’s passed on to another level of life.
Cicero picked us out …
Sure, we’re Cicero’s army. Cicero’s ragtag. Cicero’s band of … what? Cicero’s philosophers … Cicero wanted to recruit a posse. She wanted a gang. So she went out and found us.
And who were we? Doomers. Losers. Off the rails. All of us, teaching part time. Magellan, business ethics at Bangor Uni. Ava, the ethics of chemical engineering at Teeside University. Little Hans and Big Hans, busy with applied ethics at various London universities.
Sven, covering the teaching of sacked lecturers in a university that was closing all its humanities departments. Sven, seeing the last few students as the university reinvented itself around him as a new media hub …
Barbarossa, practically shaking when Cicero found her. Barbarossa, plagued by academic bullying. By concocted charges of something or other. Because she refused the advances of an older academic. Who swore he’d make sure Barbarossa never worked again in academia.
Barbarossa, now with a stammer. A stutter. But Cicero saw beyond that.
Cecil, teaching TEFL somewhere, Cecil, forgetting he ever did a PhD. Forgetting the papers he spun out so effortlessly from his PhD. Forgetting his legendary early promise. But Cecil saw the advert, by chance. Cecil applied …
And there I’d been, busy with pregnancy cover in Hatfield. Hatfield! Living in Hatfield! A nowhere place! A nothing place! The most dead-ended of dead end unis. In the London suburbs. In the nowhere suburbs.
And Cicero, coming to find us. Cicero, doing the conferences. Cicero, asking questions: Who should she employ? Who are the best? The brightest? And avoiding the most obviously bright. The most obviously best.
Cicero, showing up at obscure symposia at obscure universities, keeping her eye out. Cicero, scouting the conferences for the up and coming – and the right kind of up and coming. The desperate. The spiritually intense. The put-upon. The cornered.
Cicero sought us out: the prospectless. The defeated – spiritually. The lower class. We were low-born: that’s what she like. We saw things from a low point of view. From a rat’s point of view. We looked for corners to hide. For cracks in which to disappear.
The bordering-on-resentful. The embittered. The skint. The all but down and out. Who’d never normally be given a lectureship at a Russell Group university.
We were the desperate – which she knew. Because she thought she could shape something from our desperation. We were the bitter – she knew that, too. Because she thought she could make something of our bitterness.
So Cicero swept us up in her angel’s wings. We were saved, lifted, when we didn’t expect to be. We’d escaped, when we never expected to escape … From certain mental illness! Certain suicide! Certain soul death! Certain life murder! Certain fuck up! Certain doom!
Cicero swept us up. Cicero scooped up the philosophical undesirables. The philosophical no ones. The seven … what? Seven idiots. Seven mediocres. Seven fuck ups. Seven failures …
Work in Progress 