20 Images : 10. Scawsby College (1981)vc

20 Images : 10. Scawsby College (1981)

I am told that what we call soap isn't really soap. Equally, I am given to understand that what we call chalk - the sticks of stuff you write on blackboards with - are not chalk at all, but gypsum (which may have been mined from Mam Tor or may not, but that is besides the point).  For fifteen years of my adult life I worked at what they call "the chalkface", and my clothes would have a permanent deposit of chalk dust (or gypsum dust) upon them.

Scawsby College was part of Doncaster Metropolitan Institute of Higher Education, and I was a lecturer in the Department of Management Studies. Luckily few asked me what management studies were, which is just as well as I had no real idea. My chalk-filled days were occupied with teaching economics and industrial relations to both managers and trade unionists. My qualifications for such a role were to have avoided working in industry by reading text books on economics. When not chalking demand and supply diagrams on blackboards, I would sit in my office, smoke the occasional cigar, and listen to the complete recordings of Duke Ellington on my little cassette recorder. In retrospect, I have to confess that i was a strange life.