Wilson, the marriage-breaker
Bill Grundy
Sir Harold Wilson is fond of saying that if there is one thing he would like to be remembered by, it is by the fact that the Open University was his idea. It is a touching remark, and there is no doubt the Open University is one of the great successes. Six years after it started teaching, it now has at least 60,000 students and has already awarded some 21,000 degrees. But there is one thing about the effect of the Open University Sir Harold may not have noticed. If he has, then it must cause him, happily married man that he is, considerable concern. For the fact is that the Open University has added a great deal to the amount of marital disharmony in this country.
Just think about it. A married couple have been together for years and it does seem a day too much. They arc leading lives of quiet desperation, more and more bored with each other. Differences in education and intelligence become more obvious and more irritating. Then along comes the Open University, At last, a chance to stretch one's mind and imagination, instead of listening to rubbish in the evening about what it was like in the supermarket this morning, or why the office was bloody today. Something solid to sink one's teeth into.
So one of them enrols on a course. It opens new windows in the mind. The books are spread out on the kitchen table each night once the meal is cleared away, and there is the welcome relief of not only not sitting in front of The generation Game or Crossroads, but of having a splendid reason for not being able to. The stimulation is terrific. But unfortunately the gap between husband and wife widens. The non-student may come to resent the other's absorption in study. The domestic scene becomes ever more drear.
And then the days begin to lengthen and the student hears about the summer school, which is part of the course, and is compulsory. How different from home life it turns out to be! New people. Intelligent people. Interesting, because fresh, people. Ni'Vhat a joy to be able to get away from the strings and shallows of the too-familiar hearth. What a joy to meet people who are similarly interested in widening their own mental horizons; people who may have taken up their courses for exactly the same reasons as oneself. The summer schools are for both sexes, of course, and are 'live-in', so the opportunities for meeting other people are manifold.
The inevitable happens. Romance rears its head. The experience has all the freshness of first love. It blossoms in an atmosphere at once sympathetic and stimulating, an atmosphere where dishes don't have to be washed, where gardens don't have to be dug, where lino doesn't have to be polished, where rates don't have to be paid. In such an atmosphere, like minds cannot help cleaving together. As a result, intimacy has been known to take place. When the summer school is over, home looks all the drearier. As the winter nights draw in, and the books cover the kitchen table once again, it is hard not to drift back in memory to that wonderful hectic week, to look at the liaison through a golden haze.
You think I exaggerate? Then let me lead you through the agony colums of,'Sesame: the newspaper for staff and students of the Open University'. Here's one notice that will back me up straight away: 'Thank you for the memories and the madness. The summer warmth still thaws the winter cold'. And I wonder what suffering is hinted at in this one: 'Are withdrawal isicj symptoms always as long and painful as this? Miss you very, very much'. There's poetry, presumably from those reading Humanities. Some of it is Shakespeare: there's one made up of a big chunk of true love cannot be love if by alteration it itself alters. It ends with the words: 'Oh, no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken . . .
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken Love's not Time's fool . .
After the Shakespeare, there came this touching whimper: 'Housebound, I sign as you once with endearments addressed me. Dearest Beloved'. Oh dear. Here is another. 'I may confuse Orion with the Plough when the moon mirrors the water. There is however, something not confused, so please ring, my darling'. It is also clear that something once happened in a punt at a certain summer school: 'Ducks on the river, beer cans and pastries, sheep on the hills, milk first or after! The sun always shines somewhere. Thank you. Take care, take care'.
Some of the messages are a little more down-to-earth: 'Thanks for a lovely week. Have recovered from blackout, lusts, and late-night swimming!. Some are on Cloud Seven: `To Jonetheus from a mortal. Five minutes better than fantasy. Can the wind bend? Lovely memories. Thank you so very much'. One or two are exquisitely polite: 'Cher Monsieur Descartes. I hope we may resume our friendship during the week'. And there's desperate hunger, too: 'What next? Do we have to survive on our fantasies until next year?' Yes, I'm afraid you do.
There's the usual ration of incom prehensible ones: `Radiosodium decayed to neon after all!' That one was signed 'Frogskin'. The next one wasn't signed at all: presumably the recipient would know who it was from: 'Robert Browning, are you still eating your apple cores?' But, incomprehensible or not, they, like the preceding ones, were all quite clearly from people who have had it, liked it, and are looking forward to more. There are sadly, some from those who haven't had it, but would dearly like to, although one or two are perhaps too specific about who they want it with: 'Bachelor, 33, wishes to meet single lady who is quite tall and has large build, prefer around 6 feet and 14/15 stone. Looks, age, nationality unimportant, but stature essential'. There's a mirror image of that one: 'Scintillating, single, fragile little flower seeks stalwart but sensitive, caring male'. I hope they'll be happy, but obviously not with each other.
I find them sad, all these attempts to break out of the deadening monotony of life, to experience the intoxication of new learning, to stretch, to exert, to test oneself. And for many it must end up as an emotional entanglement that can only result in a deepening of their domestic gloom.
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