Africa course..week 1.

Week 1) My new adventure.

I attended my first ever WEA lecture today, and I can honestly say I’ve never been so bored in my entire life!
All I’ve learnt, is the fact I have no interest whatsoever in plate tectonics (the ground deep below us).
I had no idea a course on African History & Culture would take me back 600 million years….. and there's no sign yet of any culture…..yet!
How one man can spend two hours on the subject of "Africa has moved a bit" is mind-numbing. (As were the slides of the maps).
I’m the only one in the class who isn’t collecting a state pension, and the only one who’s never attended a WEA course before, so it really is a case of being a square peg in a round hole.
I’m now clutching at straws hoping that it improves next week.
Things weren't helped by the fact that one old crone took exception to me using up far more space than my allotted chair's width (despite the fact there was plenty of space to be had) and made me shift all my clutter so she could squeeze up next to me.
I do rather tend to like my OWN space (some might say I'm messy, but I know exactly where everything is) and I like to spread out all my worldly possessions to the limits of my arms reach whenever possible.
Another faux pas was the fact I had nothing smaller than a £1 coin for my 40p Nescafe at break time, so the old bat pouring drinks had to ‘tut’ loudly while digging about in a small pot for the 60p change.
Our lecturer only has personal knowledge of Zimbabwe & Mozambique (and geology of course!) and punctuates every sentence with "ummmm".
He’s easily distracted, and frequently goes off at a complete tangent.
During the first hour he only showed one slide (a map of Africa) as he apparently "forgot" that he had slides with him.
It was only in the final 15 minutes that we actually got to see more slides of maps.
By far the most interesting part of the lecture was the 5 minute discussion at the beginning entitled "Shall we leave the heater on and shall we open the windows?!"
Several old dears were yawning towards the end.
The room had that special `old people` smell, rather like charity shops (a mixture of lavender water and pee).
There’s a class know-it-all, who often interrupts and corrects the lecturer, and wears mini-binoculars whilst sitting in the front row in order to get a better view of the screen ……located just 10 feet away.
There’s an ancient lady, so advanced in years she could barely make it to the canteen, and she arrived just in time for her to turn around and head back to the classroom for `act two`.
There’s plenty of `in jokes` about the Second World War, which obviously go right over my head.
I found myself studying my boots when we were asked for a volunteer librarian to guard the book box…… footwear-fascination also took hold of me when a class secretary was asked for in order to take the weekly register.
I was waiting for someone to ask for a milk monitor!
At the end of the session, a newsletter was handed out which declared that a minimum of 20 students per class were needed in order to make courses financially viable................and a head-count today showed there are 18 in my class, so I'm not entirely sure if the whole course will be cancelled.
Dying of boredom will probably bring the class size down even further.
Oh well, things can only get better (surely?!).