08 September 2016

Polonius’s Moment

What to say to them as they go off to university.

By Chin Chin

The beginning of the academic year is the time for a Polonius speech.  Student loans are in place to cover university fees but the amount available for living expenses looks woefully thin.  It is the moment to agree the parental contribution and, after a morning spent vigorously tidying its room for the first time in a year, the offspring stands before its stern parents and looks nervous.

“Ah, yes,” says the father, looking up over his newspaper and perching his spectacles on the very tip of his nose. “Your allowance. I had been meaning to have a word with you about that. I suppose you’ll be going back to that university of yours soon.”

“Yes,” replies the offspring. “I decided to go back a little early so that I could read in on the coursework.”

“For a week’s partying, more like,” puts in the mother acidly.  The occasion when she decided to drop in on the library in which her offspring claimed to be working has not been entirely forgotten.  “I hope that dreadful girl won’t be there.”

“I don’t suppose she will” says the offspring, just a bit too casually, and conveniently ignoring the fact that he and the girl have just been texting to arrange for him to stay a few nights with her.  “I believe she is somewhere on the other side of the world at the moment.”  True this time, but ignores the additional fact that she is on an aeroplane headed for Heathrow.

The father, who (for someone with a walrus moustache) is quite observant, picks up on that present tense but holds his peace.  He is more sympathetic about the girl who, although clearly trouble, is also rather attractive, and anyway he does not want to come across as a killjoy. Time to change tack. “Remind me, which course are you doing now?”

They all know that it is exactly the same course as last time. After all, if you are too hung-over to get up for your summer exams, you must expect to have to retake the year. There is some shuffling in response to this and a furtive glance towards the drawer that contains the cheque-book. Can the agony go on for much longer?

Everyone knows, of course, that in the end the allowance will be given, but the parents are in no mood to make it too easy.  They have suffered for years from untidy rooms, failure to help with the washing up and unauthorised borrowing of the car. For once the whip is in their hands and they intend to use it.

“Now my boy,” starts the father and relaxes into the luxury of delivering a long-winded and patronising lecture contrasting his offspring’s failures with his own largely imaginary achievements.  His audience shifts from foot to foot, caught between the instinct to run and the practical need to secure the cheque.

It is great fun, of course, that glowing account of one’s own university days, racing from library to boathouse to debating chamber under a veritable hail of firsts, blues and plaudits; not to mention the odd special prize, something with the words “character” and “endeavour” placed in an elegant juxtaposition in the title. And while you are at it, there is the military cross you picked up on your national service.  The offspring is far too ignorant to know that national service was abolished before you were born.  Something about “conspicuous valour” as you recall the citation.  It is as well that he hasn’t seen your degree certificate, or those claims that your peers regarded you as more like a don than a student might sound rather hollow.  Still, as your audience is fixed to the spot like a dummy, you might as well give it full throttle.

Yes, it’s fun, but is it effective?  For a bit, perhaps, but eventually even the stupidest of students will begin to wonder where it all went. All those avenues which your brilliance opened up: the job opportunities; the offers of parliamentary seats; the chance to join the church at the level of bishop. Was it really a publicly-spirited desire to give the other chaps a chance which made you spurn ambition and take a job at the very bottom of waste management? Why did you not rise up the ranks?  A reluctance to lick backsides?  That doesn’t fit very well with your attempts to socially climb your way into the golf club.

Perhaps, then, it would be better to take a different line. Just accept that the allowance you pay is likely to be wasted and restrain yourself to saying a few words which would actually be useful.  Some surprising fact might do it, like the one about a clock supplied by Bertie Wooster to the pupils at a girls’ school to help them to win wagers.  Better still would be something about wine bottles and how different bottles reflect the different wines which are sold in them.  That can be of inestimable use to the student.

Imagine that he is sitting slouched in a room full of his friends when somebody produces a bottle of red wine. The bottle has square shoulders to it so he reflects on the paternal advice and drawls out, in rather a man of the world sort of manner: “Splendid, I’ll have a little claret”.  There it is; he is a man who knows his wines.  That is sophistication by university standards. If he can just add some comment about preferring lighter/ more moderate/ heavier/ more distinctive tannins he is made. No one there will have the slightest idea what a tannin is.

Actually the knowledge can be used to win money as well. “This wine tastes as if it comes from the Mosel” your offspring might say, while eyeing the tall green bottle out which it has just been poured. “Bet you a pound that you’re wrong about that” says someone anxious to debunk him.

Of course it is important that your words to your child should teach something deeper than this, but they probably will.  The knowledge that you can tell a wine by its bottle will diffuse into a general confidence in superficial impressions. Men in suits are selling insurance. People who wear dirty T-shirts are great musicians. The prettiest girls are always the most intelligent.  The brochures to believe are the glossy ones.  None of these attractive propositions is true, but he will learn some sharp and useful lessons as he finds this out by experience.  What is more, leaving him to dig himself out of the mess will be a fitting revenge for twenty years of his failing to tidy his room.

 

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