by Carl Halling

Created on: November 05, 2008

College Life at Westfield College, London University

Thanks to the generosity of my interviewers both at Westfield and Central, I'd effectively scraped in with two mediocre "A" levels at B and C. Ultimately, however, the one-time head of the French department and published author Dr M. advised me to seriously consider a career as a professional academic. Not bad for a secondary school write-off. Dr Mein was my principle tutor during my final year, and under her galvanising mentorship I studied the controversial and often disturbing writings of Andre Gide as my main subject. From the outset, she tirelessly encouraged my intellectual and literary inclinations in the firm belief that I had the makings of an academic or writer.

From the very first essay I produced for assessment at Westfield, I exhibited a caustic outspokenness in my writing at least partly influenced by my favourite avant garde artists but also reflecting my own tendency to mental bellicosity. While some of my tutors may have viewed these submissions with a dubious eye, Dr M. thrilled to them and awaited them with the sort of impatience normally accorded a favourite TV or radio series. How close this love of outraging by way of the written word brought me to a seared conscience I can't say; but one thing is certain, my compassion started to recede. This didn't happen right away of course. Yet, even during those first two golden years, some of those who were drawn to me on a deep emotional level betrayed a certain unease with their words.
So, why didn't I cross the line beyond which a person can no longer respond to the Holy Spirit? After all, from about 1983, I started to decline as a human being. Perhaps it was something to do with the prayers of believing friends and relatives. Or perhaps something precious was kept alive within me during those dark years. Certainly, I never fully stopped being a caring person, and I can recall being outraged by those avant gardists who advocated actual cruelty or the harming of innocents. How then did I square this with my adoration of certain favoured artists who thrived on verbal violence and scenes of madness and destruction? The fact is I couldn't, hypocrite that I was.

There was something about my truculent writing style that was what the French call criant, showy and overdone. In this respect perhaps I was a little reminiscent of the youthful Louis Aragon. He was the World War One medical orderly who went on to become a Dadaist in the Paris of the twenties,

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