Alma Mater of Fact

Rich kids had their alma mater.

Blazers. Latin mottos. Speech days and prize giving ceremonies. Photographs in frames. Names etched into boards.

Gap years in Provence. Fine wine. Ski seasons. Finding themselves.

Mine smelt of wet rubbish and shit. And my “gap year” was Ten months off sick after a blood clot was removed from my lung.

My university reversed into cul-de-sacs at an hour most people only see if they haven’t been to bed yet. It had a hydraulic lift that screamed louder than any headmaster. My lecture hall had three seats in the cab and a thermos of tea wedged between them.

The dust cart was my alma mater.

Not because I didn’t want anything else. Not because I’m pretending it was Oxford in hi-vis. But because that’s where I was educated.

You want to learn about human nature? Empty bins for twenty-five years.

Sit in the parks and under bridges with the lost and lonely.

You’ll learn who waves and who stares through you. You'll learn who apologises for putting a bag out late and who thinks you’re invisible. You’ll learn how pride works in people with nothing and how entitlement works in people with everything.

No certificates. No caps thrown in the air.

Just work.

You learn quickly on the back of a wagon. You learn balance. You learn rhythm. You learn that if you don’t pull your weight the other two blokes notice. There’s no hiding on a crew. You are exposed every morning.

You also learn humour.

 The dark kind.

The kind that keeps you sane when it’s freezing sideways rain and your gloves are soaked through by 7am — which, for the record, was nearly lunch break.

The sort of humour that once had me performing the disappearing hankie trick for a resident mid-complaint.

I finished with a great big, “TA DAAA!”

She stood there, totally perplexed.

Then she laughed.

The lads howled.

Complaint forgotten.

The older lads were my professors. They didn’t quote philosophers. They quoted experience.

 “Watch your fingers.

”“Get on with it.”

There’s more wisdom in that than some people pay nine grand a year to hear.

The street was my campus. Every front door a case study. Every estate a different module. You could chart social history just by what people threw away. Toys before Christmas. Diet plans in January. Broken fans in July. Lives in black sacks.

That’s education. That’s sociology. That’s psychology. That’s economics.

It’s a matter of fact.

Alma Mater of Fact.

But do you know what?

I could always read.

From being a kid, I could read well. Books were an escape hatch. Words made sense to me. Stories made sense. I could pronounce things most people around me couldn’t. That was never the problem.

The problem was putting them down.

My handwriting looked like it had been written during a minor earthquake. My spelling was guesswork at best. I spelt things as they sounded. Confidence without evidence.

I learned early to dodge it.

Fill forms in block capitals. Keep it short. Let someone else write the long bits. If you don’t write much, nobody can judge it.

On the dust cart, it didn’t matter. You don’t need immaculate grammar to lift a bin. Nobody ever asked me to conjugate a verb on the back step. The wagon didn’t care how you spelt “Wednesday.”

So I got by.

I worked hard. I earned my money. I turned up. That’s a qualification in itself.

And of course, I always had Alison.

She didn’t arrive with a red pen and a marking scheme. She didn’t sit me down like a disappointed teacher. She just noticed.

Little things at first.

A birthday card I’d written that looked like it had been signed by a stressed spider. A note I’d left on the side. A word I’d got wrong three times in the same paragraph.

She never laughed at me. Not once.

She just said, gently, “I think that’s spelt like this.”

No judgement. No sigh. No superiority.

Just correction.

I remember once arguing with her about a word. Convinced I was right. Certain. Stubborn as anything. She went and got the dictionary. Didn’t gloat. Just showed me.

There it was. In black and white.

I’d been wrong for years.

The dust cart had taught me about pride. Alison taught me when to put it down.

Slowly, things changed.

She’d read something I’d written and circle a word lightly. “Nearly,” she’d say. Nearly. Not wrong. Nearly.

That word matters a lot to me .

Nearly means you’re close.

Nearly means keep going.

The first time I wrote something longer, properly longer, and she didn’t have to correct half of it, something changed,  not triumph. Not genius. Just… progress.

The dust cart taught me how to work.

Alison taught me how to spell it.

Between the two of them, I was educated.

One gave me stories. The other helped me tell them.

One toughened me up. The other softened the edges.

One taught me endurance. The other taught me refinement.

Neither handed me a certificate. But both handed me tools.

When I signed copies of my book at Slimming World and looked down at my handwriting — still more “dustman scrawl” than calligraphy, I felt that old embarrassment flicker. The lad who avoided forms. The man who writes in block capitals.

But then I looked up.

I’d written a book.

A whole one.

Not perfect. Not polished like a university thesis. But mine. Built from a hard life and experience

That’s the graduation photo.

No mortar board. Just hi-vis and love.

Rich kids had their alma mater.

I had a dust cart and a woman who refused to let me stay at  nearly.

And that’s more than enough education for one lifetime.