Toys

I mention toys and it seems to really excite people.

It's like I have suddenly got traction into their memories and childhood.

"Oh you could get some of these." people say remembering their childhood favorites.

"You could get a PS1" said the Geek, excitedly.

It seems like there are generations of toys. Like Transformers. These apparently are coming back, and first time round they were my younger brothers all time number 1, he's now thirty. So the kids of today and people entering their third decade have something in common. But it seems the students missed out on them.

My childhood of course was marked out by that most iconic of children's toys: Kenner Star Wars figures.



Of course what I want to know now is what generation of toys did my students have in their boxes? Bear in mind they were born between 1986 and 1989.

In fact, if you are not a student, what generation of toys are yours?

Wanted

Anyone know where I can get a whole bunch of second hand toys?

It's not all about work

I lay awake. The bedroom bathed in a light green light, cast by the digital clock at the side of my bed.

It's funny how the light from digits changes through the night, at first it seems quite friendly almost like a night light, but around 3am it seems cold and unremitting. Passively reminding me of my inability to sleep.

It's hard to sleep at this time of year. Too many late nights, too many conversations in the stags head, too many times having the last car parked on campus. Too many 3ams.

I don't have a body clock at this time of year. The presidential elections didn't really help.

As I lay there I considered the drop off of activity on campus. The fact that I regularly hear students going on about having put in their assignments weeks early. Going on about how students who go out on college nights are mad.

Essentially if students are working flat out in November, what will happen when we actually get to exam time?

That's right, they're going to go absolutely fucking nuts.

And we have to stop them, ladies and gentlemen. we have to remind them that actually University is about growing, and learning in more ways that in the classroom. Most people meet friends for life somewhere on campus. Quite a lot of people meet that special someone. Quite a lot of people discover their true vocation. How many actors and comedians have started down that road while at University?

I need a way of making that point to the students.

I wondered about sneaking pints of larger and leaving them strategically around the library. Or alternatively logging all the library computers into facebook. Maybe I should get 1,000 condoms and write "It's not all about work" on them and then insert them into library books.

Maybe I just need to get together with a load of other people and we can just leave random stuff around campus. I don't know what, objects of some sort, maybe they need a colour to link them together, like purple, or yellow or green, or maybe they need a common theme, just something to make your average student stop and workout that work is just a part of uni life, yes the most important part, but not the whole.

The government is going to put up tuition fees to £6,000 a year at a time when graduate unemployment is rising at an alarming rate. Everyone is worried, I just want them to take the day off.

Am I alone in this?

False hope

"...in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope"

Barack Obama

I sometimes find the speeches of the president elect, have too much of an eye on the history books. However the fact of the matter is that he seems to have understood something, which Tony Blair also understood when he dismissed David Cameron as a potential Prime Minister. That in order to win and election as opposition you have to present a new movement offering change to the people.

This is why I think George Osborne has made a fundamental error in talking down the pound, and David Cameron is making a fundamental error in speaking of a tax bombshell. Oppositions don't win elections by telling people how bad it is, oppositions win elections by offering people hope.

The truth isn't always comfortable but in elections, in a sense, a Kierkegaard pointed out we get to vote the truth into existence, I suspect we will chose the option which looks like the best future.

So I predict Gordon Brown will now do two things, he will paint the Tory party as the party that will do nothing in the face of a recession, after all he will say, that's what they did last time.

He will also start to appeal to us all, calling on us to pull together, and effectively paint himself as the new prime minister who will rebuild this country.

I'm not saying he's right, I'm just saying he's going to do it.

Words to watch: new, renew, rebuild, dawn, tomorrow.

To those of you who feel that gritty realism is a much more attractive and therefore vote winning option, I offer the following two pieces of evidence.

Enjoy!

There is no doubt

I am now certain. At first it was just a hunch. I noticed it while musing on the lack of Al Marshals at Games Soc. I was suddenly aware of the fact that Games Soc was using less tables than it had used last year.

So I started asking other societies if their numbers were down. Most I spoke to said yes. Chaplaincy has as many people hanging round it as it ever did, but the numbers for SCM are down, as are the amount of people coming to our Wednesday lunchtime service.

I keep popping into the Stag's Head and the other bars around uni and they are half as full as they were last year. In fact takings are down and apparently this is actually causing problems for the Student Union. It was only a couple of years ago that they were celebrating the first time their takings rose above a million pounds.

Meanwhile the library is heaving like a fresher in 2007.

I spoke to a third year yesterday who told me that everyone on her course has already written about 5,000 words for their dissertations. The dissertations don't have to be in until the start of next semester. Normally people start worrying about them around Christmas.

The University has the air of the week before exams. Half way through the first term.

Every student I talk to says the same thing: They are worried they wont get a job unless they get the best degree, and they will be 20,000 in debt and on the dole.

I speak to students and they all have the same answer, they are worried about getting a job when they leave and they want to work hard.

The University has credit crash-itous, and as a chaplain it is beginning to worry me. If students are this worked up in November how bad is it going to get when it really is exam time? Hpw do I get them to take the day off?

There is a response that this calls for I think this needs a huge reminder of what University is supposed to be all about. An act of monumental stupidity and pointlessness.

The question is what?

A converstion overheard

8 Year Old: Daddy Barack Obama won something, didn't he?
Dad: Yes that's right, how did you hear about him?
8 Year Old: It was on the news they said he won something. It was a race, wasn't it?
Dad: Yes it was, he won the race to be the next President of America.
8 Year Old: I saw a picture of him in the newspaper. He had to go to lots of different places, didn't he?
Dad: That's right, when they have an election in America the candidates travel a lot.
8 Year Old: He went round and round very fast.
Dad: Yep, he had to visit a lot of places several times because they had not yet decided.
8 Year Old: But he kept going round and round in lots of different places.
Dad: Yes
8 Year Old: Dad, why did he have 'Vodafone' written on all his clothes?
Dad: Um....

Finally

There was no partying. No popping of corks. No copious drinking of champaign.

No dancing. No music. Instead I sat and watch a hundred or so students who had stayed to the bitter end, and they sat in silence and listened as President Elect Barack Hussein Obama told them "yes we can".

There was no talking, the only noise was when crowd in the stag, joined the cheering crowd in Chicago with cheers of their own. Then as his speach came to a close they departed silently into the night.

I have been here for over 3 years and it is the most serious I have ever seen them.

Perhaps that is fitting for such a moment of history.

Then....

Then the announced the election of Barack Obama and the Stags went wild.

No knock out

3.50 and Obama still doesn't have it in the bag.

It's not really much of a party here, I think everyone is a bit too knackered!

Penn

Obama is predicted to win Pennsylvania. All of a sudden people here are paying attention

Hmmmmmm

Well this is scene in the election broadcast room



This is the scene in the bar....absolutely heaving.




At the moment it looks like McCain has a slight advantage in more states than Obama. The other tally is 7 broken glasses in the last hour.

Slightly depressing, but the night is young.

Lock in

That's it we're locked in.

They have closed and locked the door. Now no one leaves (unless of course they don't want to come back again).

For a second a claustrophobic panic washes over me.

Then I remember: There is a toilet, I have £40 in cash on me and there's a bar serving at SU prices.

I should be able to get through this.

Still no results.

Live Now

11:10 the first polls have shut.

Here is a picture of my first pint.

AMERICA DECIDES 2008

Welcome ladies and gentleman to our live election night coverage as

AMERICA DECIDES

Baa Baa Ba Ba BAAAAAAAA Dum de dum,

This is the scene in the west ref as the evening gets underway


Tonight as students who are totally politically apathetic and don't get a vote anyway sit in the SU bar drinking heavily till 5 am while ignoring a large screen projecting meaningless results our special correspondent from the Dark Side of the Moon will be with them every step of the way, asking the questions you want answers to. Like "Don't you have lectures in the morning" and "Who's going to clean up that sick".

Every four years America Decides, tonight is that night.

We'll be with you throughout.

History

It's started small, but now it's obvious. Like his advisers have been trying to say for weeks. We are finally seeing a McCain come back.

Yes, indeed, I now fully expect John McCain to come back to the US Senate...having completely failed to win the election.

By Wednesday at the latest.