Looking at the sheet music of my ground-breaking popular music classic, "The problem that we face is trend!" I am slightly astonished by how much I clearly knew about the technical aspects of writing down music. I knew everything. Right down to the fact that the spoken "Ha!" should be denoted as a note with a cross at the top instead of a circle. I seem theoretically proficient, if not exhibiting any actual musical ability. And yet if I was asked to write down a tune on a piece of paper now I would not get very far. It's terrible to think of all the things I once knew that I now have no knowledge about whatsoever. I find it incredible to think that I have two Maths A levels, when I can hardly even do mental arithmetic any more, let alone understand calculus or mechanics or statistics (which would be useful, given the amount of poker I play).
The idiotic 16 year old me was armed with all kinds of knowledge, though perhaps not the wisdom to implement it properly. Now I have neither knowledge or any wisdom, beyond being wise enough to realise that I don't know anything about anything. I still wish that we could carry on going to school when we are grown up - to schools for grown ups, I don't want to hang around with schoolboys and anyone who says I do is lying. I would like to have to have kept all this stuff up, so that I had more than a set of excellent exam results, which are useless to me now (and to any potential employer, should I ever be forced back into that route) as I may have an A in Pure Maths A level and a Chemistry O level, but could not be trusted to add up numbers or be left on my own in a laboratory.
I don't want to go to an evening class. I want to have to get up at 7.30am and then go to a school, where all my day is mapped out for me on a timetable and people teach me stuff and I get to have a break where I can play football with a tennis ball, against the other 40 year old men, and then there would be after school clubs where we could put on plays or have quiz teams and every now and again there would be a disco where I could snog some of the 40 year old women who were in my class, after I had sneaked in some vodka to put in the punch. Why can't we have that? It would be great. Why do we have to work? Why can't we just learn stuff and have everything planned out for us? And then have a six week summer holiday, where we hang out up Cheddar gorge, playing on the video games and trying to get 40 year old women to talk to us.
My diaries suggest that I didn't enjoy school as much as I imagine I did, but I think maybe I just didn't realise how brilliant it was. Or how much it suited me to have this wonderful resource set up for you.
And I pay taxes and a lot of those taxes go to education and yet I don't have any kids to benefit from the billions of pounds I have given to Tony Blairs and his so-called government. I think they should set up one school for childless adults and just see how it goes. I think enough people would attend to make it viable. If there were cups and prizes for the best students. It could work.
Especially if everyone had to wear uniforms. It could be a massive hit.
