When I was 17 I used to have double English with Mrs Hammond once a week. That was 80 solid minutes of studying literature. There were about 6 of us in the class. I used to talk more than most, a fact which I was probably hated for by the others.
One week we were doing A Passage to India, and I made myself very unpopular 1 minute into the lesson by saying 'You know, Mrs Hammond, I just don't get this book, what's it all about?'.
For 79 minutes she spoke, without anyone else uttering a word. She hardly paused for breath. It was one of the longest monologues in history, it made Hamlet's soliloquy look like a limerick.
I can't recall anything she said, but the one thing I can remember from A Passage to India is 'Only Connect', which I take to mean that we don't really know the meaning of life, so we just need to connect with others, and there's meaning in that.
I had to wait for social networking to be invented for this to happen fully but now I'm more connected than ever.
I've found Paul and Stephen in Spain, Fraser in Australia, Charlie and my cousins in New Zealand, my other cousins in Sheffield, my friends the indestructible Holdsworths from up the road, Ute in America who used to be a German, I've found Pamela and Vanessa from Germany 83 and Sylke and Carola from Germany 85. I've found Mandy and Andy from 1990 at the CSC, and Phil and Alan and Dean and Kat and Elsa from just last year on the yacf forum.
I don't know what the mearning of it all is, but I'm more connected than ever. To the present and to the past. And a small part of everyone is in me. And a small part of me is in everyone else. And now I think I understand what Mrs Hammond was going on about.
As a postscript to this, I tried to find a reference to 'Only Connect' in Passage to India, but I could only fnd it in Howards End, another Forster book I read while I was attending Mrs Hammond's English classes. It was a bit like an early book group in that we all had to pick a separate book to read and report back on and I chose Howards End because I thought it sounded amusing to shout out 'I'll take Howards End', whereas I think Mrs Hammond had seen it all before and just thought I was being idiotic.
So, this has forced me to question my memory of the event, and it could be that during the 79 minute speech Howards End came up as well, I'm not sure. It doesn't really matter though, because ever since then I have had the little mantra of 'Only Connect' playing in the back of my head, and it also fits in with one of my other favourite quotes from Kurt Vonnegut which is 'We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is'.
I lack the certainty of conviction to be a sincere follower of one of the big religions, but I do sincerely want to connect, because when I look back at my life, all the times I was happiest was when I was connected to others, doing things, having fun, running around the English Garden or the rugby field, or going on bike rides or sitting around in pubs talking crap. There is a time for solitude and I need some of that too, especially to watch televised sport, but all the worthwhile events I can remember, I can remember being there with someone else, and that was what gave it the meaning.
And it hasn't always been the same someone elses. People have come and people have gone. Some have been lost and found again, and some have just been lost. But the feelings of joy and togetherness are often the same, no matter who it was or what the situation. When I look back at pictures of my 15 year old self laughing in Germany I look the same as the 41 year old me laughing in Scotland. I looked thinner when I was 15 and I had less difficulty bending down to pick things up off the ground then, but it's me all the same. And when I think back to the joyous feeling of winning a rugby match in the last minute against Giggleswick, I feel pretty much the same as I do about arriving in Saltburn after guiding a group of people on a coast to coast bike ride.
People sometimes say I'm a miserable sod, and a misanthrope, but underneath I'm not. It's just that I often get scared of the unpredictability of people, and I don't always know what to do with the fallout from behaviour I don't understand or can't cope with, but I like people really. And the last few weeks has brought that home to me.
Thank you Mrs Hammond, I'm all connected up now.
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