Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, N.H

We new arrivals live in three massive concrete, four story blockhouses. Our rooms are plain and square like the cells of Benedictine Monks, the gloomy whitewashed corridors linking them echo with every footfall and as you walk along them you get glimpses, through open doors, of the mass of humanity stuck together here. However seemingly depressing our building seems though, it is also alive. I read somewhere that those giant jellyfish that wash up along the shore, the Portuguese Men of War, are a collection of a myriad of smaller organisms and that is very much like our dormitory block. The mere presence of so many souls in such close confines makes it almost a living, breathing thing rather than a building.

Outside the buildings dozens sit on rigid benches in a concrete yard, drunk, high or bored, seeking respite from piling papers and impending exams. I sit, the collar of my heavy pea-coat pulled up high, and watch them with my one black eye from rugby. It is always the same characters, I realised early on, that lounge there, smoking cigarettes late into the night and looking up blearily as strangers walk by on their way to upper-class housing. Many of them are my friends.

There is the rugby team, of which I am one, sitting often in a small huddle as if we havn’t quite got used to not being in a scrum. Cool Ethan, a 6.6 stick insect of a man talks to Gay Chris, who wears a hat that was once some sort of furry animal, possibly road-kill. Tavis looks on with his new drunken-rampage induced Mohawk as little Mark slips in and out of the conversation with his one bloodshot eye, returning from womanizing in the girls dorm. Occasionally little Carlo bumps into us, his nickname now Borat, his head filled with crazy dreams of professional wrestling after college. We sincerely hope that the little chap is not crushed to death on the rugby pitch.

There is Bogey Dave, who looks like a native American with his long black hair and dark complexion, smoking on his ever-present cigarette and surrounded by his gang of giggling stoners. One wears a T-shirt with “Cigarettes for $5” scrawled across the front in pen and another smiles with glassed eyes.

There is Ben Moss in his suit jacket and bright orange baseball hat, watching Cameron and another try to chug a pint of milk within an hour and laughing when they fail and vomit. Next to Moss is little Lauren, or drunk-ass, with her huge fringe and huge eyes, “like a racoon’s” she says. She moves like a bumper car at the fete, bouncing from conversation to conversation as Asian Mike with his ever-present grin tunes up his guitar and sings a song about me fighting dragons.

There are many more, that fall into one clique or another. Roid-raging Jocks on the baseball time, geeks in trench coats with fake swords, my mate big Mark who talks like Eeyore and rides a bike with no brakes round and round the litter bins. L. and her friend, both in pink slippers who are suposingly easy, a Venezuelan who’s name I never remember and who speaks to me in Spanish, Kevin in is pea-coat and watch-cap.
This is how I will remember where I now live. Like most dorms, it might be a ugly, hulking building but inside it lives a group of villainous, lovely and wild people, kids learning lessons of love and life, becoming adults through trial and error as I look on, remembering when I was one of them.

Franklin Pierce University, Rindge N.H

I am not used to people of learning calling my mother a whore. In the United Kingdom, the mere idea of a group of university professors walking up to a picture of my dear mum and scrawling “SLUT” over it would probably result in scuffles, protests and at the very least a lot of tut-tutting and the expulsion of the professors. In America however, things are different and the general openness of this country is one of the things that I try to appreciate.

In Scotland, were we to have problems with racism or sexism on a university campus it would most likely be hushed up and brushed under the metaphorical carpet. If there were offensive slogans such as Nazi swastikas painted on walls they would be ignored, whether from lack of impact or general British mentality, a situation that would seem bizarre to most Americans as us Brits were nearly invaded by the fascists. At Franklin Pierce though, such things are viewed, quite rightly, with open outrage and efforts are made to instantly quash them.

To this end I was forced to sit through a one-hour seminar entited “Whores, Sluts Dykes and your Mother” that was designed to decrease the amount of sexism in the university. During this time the F.P.U community was encouraged to talk openly and frankly about sexist slurs and their impact, and to address ways in which we can end the sexist culture. The main activity behind this constituted the activity I already outlined, where-upon the picture used to symbolize my mother was destroyed with a quick “SLUT” across its front.

Though I thought this was interesting, and made me briefly question the use of my language and how hurtful one can be, I didn’t feel it successfully addressed the sexist culture that I think is rife in America. Yes, through seminars such as this the use of such words as whore, or dyke, or slut may diminish slightly for a small while, but a general, horrid lack of regard for women still remains in the United States. In this country the media alone is hugely damaging, with pictures of photo shopped, unrealistic beauties bombarding girls from a young age, with size zero clothing being introduced into shops, with modern music insulting and critiquing women constantly. There are now almost specific guidelines drawn up as to what is cool and stylish, enforced not by written decree but by public opinion and scorn to any who do not follow them.

In the end, if we want to question sexism at university we must ask the right questions. We must hold seminars questioning media, film especially, to successfully understand how deeply chauvinism exists. The community leaders and faculty must make efforts to understand teen culture successfully so they can communicate with the student body. Our current approach of general apathy, dispersed with moments of outrage and themed events is not effective and though of course I approve in principle I think a harder path may be necessary.

Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, NH

Now is the chance to see if I can combine schoolwork and blogging without churning out endless reams of lame rhetoric designed to make me pass exams. The idea is that, if I can, then at least I know my essays have reached some acceptable standard for showing them to the wider world holds me accountable. Now, I shall be writing about uni in general as soon as I can, and supplying pictures as well. It’s been a roller coaster of an experience already, with new people coming to and fro like characters in some Evelyn Waugh novel, and experiences taking place that are almost as surreal and bizarre in their unexpectedness as those from the backpackers road.
The following piece was for my creating writing course. As I know that my father will be reading this and crying out for progress reports and proof of money well spent, I can reveal that I was awarded my first A for it.


Scotland and me

I grew up, I think now, in a time and place that suited me perfectly. The reels dances in pine halls, dinner parties between dear friends, stalking in the highlands over the summers and shooting pheasants in the winter, the old fashioned ways were supremely comforting for me. While my brother would later reject the way we were brought up, sporting bleached blonde hair and moving to Edinburgh I embraced it.
There are many memories I have of Scotland, the land of my birth. I see it when I close my eyes, high mountains of green, grey and purple crashing down sharply to the churning Northern Sea. It is part of me, this expanse of springy heather and harsh granite, a land without pity or sentimentality. I am like it in many ways, proud and distant at times and light and joyous at others, keeping to my ways while the rest of world moves on. It forms the basic structure of who I am.
One memory of growing up in Scotland sticks out above the others, a thought of happy childhood that leaves me with the strong smell of wood smoke in my nose and the taste of fresh mince pies in my mouth. It is one of the straws I can grasp onto, when life gets too much and I feel very, very far from home. It reminds me of who I am, and gives me pride in the pit of my heart, pride enough to stand up straight and face my troubles. It is the memory of winters spent working on my godfathers estate as a beater, trudging through mud with a stick in one hand and a old army kitbag belonging to my mother over one shoulder, following the noise of shotguns into woods.
I remember. I would gather with the men in the early hours of the morning outside Hatton Castle, all of them bigger and gruffer than me, their thick bodies in Barbour jackets and heads hidden by threadbare caps, dirty country dogs winding between their feet. They were good sorts these country men, letting a young boy in thick gloves and a woolly jumper under his anorak stand next to them shivering. They would offer me small sips of whiskey to protect me against the cold, laugh and joke to make me feel included. At the time I don’t think that Jamie, my brother, really understood why I loved working outside so much, for he was blessed with an easy disposition and making friends came naturally to him. For me it was different, I was awkward and troubled growing up, I felt a deeper connection to the windy forests of Hatton, Bortie and Haddo than I did to my own peer group.
Standing by the beaters shed, as we waited for the day to begin, I felt part of something bigger and that was supremely comforting. Eventually, just when we were beginning to get cold, a tractor belching smoke would rumble slowly forward along the country lanes, a horsebox hung on the back. We would all ride inside the box upon bales of straw, good training for me as later I would encounter similar conditions hitchhiking in Guatemala. Dozens of dogs would be squashed between our legs and we in turn were wedged against each other, our only light a narrow strip around the roof of the trailer.
I remember being happy as we were jolted too and fro, I felt I belonged there, felt part of something bigger than I, part of the highlands. I would look at the shadowy, laughing faces opposite and feel tradition run through me. Eventually though the tractor would stop and we’d all climb slowly out though the dogs would shoot through our legs to land writhing in the cold grass and moss. A man would hand us wooden clappers and sack-cloth flags which we’d stick under our arms or wedge into thick pockets. Then we would walk.
Later in the forest, we would stand waiting, breath steaming in the cold, feet stamping down hard on wet leaves to keep our circulation going. The bare branches of the trees reached up above us like grasping fingers and looking up past them I could see a lone pigeon wheeling lonely in the crisp air. In that moment I felt connected to this land, to the huge beech woods and rolling fields in fallow beyond, the burns lying dormant under thick sheets of ice and the dark castle brooding under a thin plume of smoke rising from the fireplaces.
A shout would make me pay attention, a thick Scottish accent telling us to “come on boys, get up boys.” I’d unfurl my flag and, in time with the others, flick it towards the ground so that it made a sharp crack. A line of us, thirty or forty, would advance into the woods and all my thoughts would vanish as some primeval thrill took control of my body. With a clackclackclack the clappers would start, the dogs would be let off straining leashes and the hunt was on. My heart would beat fast as we entered the woody undergrowth, like every small child aping adults I wished desperately not to muck up, not to trip and fall. I’d stumble forward quickly, trying to keep in line with the others and suddenly, with a beating of wings and strange burbling noise a female pheasant would shoot upwards from the frosty bracken and disappear forward above the trees.
The birds would appear in a flash, and be gone in the next instant, dozens of them, leaping upwards to be lost in the cold air as they sought to escape the impending danger of man and beast. After a moment there would be a sharp pum, pum as shotguns were discharged from a field we could not see. The paying customers or invited friends of the Laird, the lord of the castle, would stand, no more than ten of them in a straight and orderly line and wait for the birds to appear fast overhead. We many beaters, with out sticks and dogs were but an expensive decoy employed by the privileged few, scaring innocent fowl up over the trees and into impending death.
As a child any humanitarian concerns were lost to me, blood thirsty and excitable I would want the pheasants to be shot, want my father or my godfather to bring them down so we could string them in the game larder for plucking and eating. Dad was, at that time one of the finest gentleman shots in Aberdeenshire, would seldom disappoint. With skill and poise he would stand in the field waiting for the frenzied “Brbrbrbraa” of male pheasants approaching fast over the tree-line, my trusted Labrador standing sentry-like by his wellington boots, she as exited for the kill as her masters.
They would come fast, the cocks and hens propelled by my flag, appear for a few brief seconds and in that time my fathers shotgun would rise up in a perfect ark, the stock biting his shoulder. There would be two explosions in quick succession, a bird would tumble earthwards and he would break the shotgun and have it reloaded in an instance.
Afterwards, as we beaters finished combing the woods, godfather Duff would blow on the white bone horn hanging from one shoulder to single a end to the shooting. I would stop walking for a minute on the brow of a hill overlooking the drive where I could just make out the shapes of men, dogs and guns, grip my hat in hand as the wind ruffled my hair and lean my stick against a tree. In that instance, and this is what my brother never understood as he gave up his gun and the countryside, I was truly a part of my land.

Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Finally, I have my voice back. After a long absence I am a student again, I can open my computer, look around for a second and begin to write. This is motivated by the fact that, by Thursday lunchtime, I shall be in America. My old blue backpack on my back and Blunstones tramping down upon the road, my destination will be Franklin Pierce University in the wooded border of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, close to where I boarded the white Shackleton school bus for the first time. Something obviously drags me back to New England and like Simon I find myself wondering every time I arrive into Boston’s Logan Airport quite why I’m there.
Things are different now from how they were, I no longer have quite the same mentality I used to. Yes I like to have fun, and perhaps I over do it on occasion but now I am determined to work. I am returning to the world of students, and this time I am ready to sit down and study, to stand out from the crowd in a positive way and become the best role model I can.

As I’m going to be working very hard I technically won’t have as much time to write the blog as I used to. Because of this I will be compromising slightly and, if I work on a piece for a class that is relevant or that I like, it will be included. If you, the reader doesn’t like the way this is working out at any point just fire me off an e-mail. Anyway…

I had to write an application letter for the school and helped get me in, I wrote it like I used to and put as much passion into it as I could. It was a small essay but it meant something to me, for I wrote about El Salvador. I let myself be brought back to standing in a hot room in shirtsleeves listening to the sound of children’s laughter and looking at the alost-jungle through the open hospital door.

Franklin Pierce Application Essay

It is hard to tell the age of a child or young person in rural El Salvador. One sees kids, playing in groups along the sides of dusty roads or standing quietly outside their mud-brick houses in little more than rags, but who knows how old they are. Many are so malnourished that in some cases that they could be mistaken for seven when they are in fact eleven, their arms spindly and their skin covered with a patchwork of rashes.
I realized this soon after arriving in the small Central American country for the second time, standing with sweat forming underneath the broken stethoscope slung around my neck, an old air-conditioner in the corner, vainly fighting back the tropical heat. A young girl, maybe fourteen, stood before me in a dirty red dress, pretty despite a strange blankness in her eyes, clutching a screaming baby that was in the process of emptying its bladder upon the dirty hospital floor. As the girl noticed the puddle at her feet she was embarrassed and quickly tried to mop it up with one shoe, though her efforts were in vain and the once-white tiles just looked even browner than before. As her attention was taken by this operation I turned to Dr. Perez, my boss, and asked some vague medical question about this girl and young girl and her baby sister.
‘That’s not the sister’ Perez replied, looking at me with his owl-like glasses and crooked yellow teeth, ‘That’s the mother. We try to stop them marrying before they finish school but it is very difficult’
Later that night, as I relaxed on my bed, looking up at the corrugated iron ceiling I thought about the young seventeen-year-old boy who shared the small breezeblock room with me. I had interviewed him the first time I came to El Salvador, as he was the leader of a socialist youth group, and even then I had realized that here was yet another young person without childhood. He had been born not in the village of Santa Marta where he now lives, but in a dirty refugee camp across the Rio Lempa in Honduras, soon after his whole family had fled across that thin blue line with government troops hard on their heels. Many of the very young and very old were killed by mortar fire or drowned in the river and those who survived either picked up guns and returned to their country as hunted rebels or eked out a living in the Honduran camps.
To have been born in the camps is normality for the teenagers of Santa Marta; all of them were. Now they and their families have returned to the village, where they must try to live again, reminded of their past most of the time but talking of it only in the quiet hours before bed, when the village is silent except for the wails of howling dogs.
It will be a little easier for those born now, there will be no memories of crowded U.N tents, swooping government helicopters or any of the harsh war memories that inflict so many of the older generations. Though their bellies will not be full, as I know too well from watching Perez drawing the line diagrams that show the progression of their malnutrition, their minds will be fresh and looked after, untouched by war. I remember watching them on my way to work, running and shouting with smiles on their faces and queuing for a check-up at the hospital in a long boisterous line. It gave me some hope for El Salvador, though at the back of my mind I knew there was a group of child soldiers guarding the road junction just up the valley, their faces placid and guns in their small hands.

It has been months since I wrote. Maybe later, when I have sorted out the abysmal state of my apartment, paid my rent and taken care of my cast-away style beard growth will I sit down and fill in the blanks. For now, as I am tired yet still want to publish, you will have to be content with a small offering of photos dredged up from the depths of my computer, just a few of the thousands that have begun to filter forth from my digital S.L.R.

My first job helping the literary magazine

"Standing Outside the Library" Boston

" State House at Night"

"David"

"Apple in Window"

"House on beacon Hill"