And Goodbye To All That

Alongside this text will appear rather inadequte pictures (yes, taken on my antediluvian telephonic implement) of the two books I returned last week to the university library. Their subject matter (evident from their forbidding titles) will tell you where OG was felt to be lacking in his first submission of his doctoral thesis Shakespeare and Bagehot: a Study in Drama and Politics. 

Having now kicked over the traces of the opinions of my learned examiners, I am more than happy to concede that they had a point. So what is this all leading up to? Well, I will mention this just once (not entirely sure that I will keep this promise) but my formal studies are at an end. On October 11 2023 I received an email (no snail mail I'm afraid) addressed to 'Dr David Roberts'. It took me bloody years and no small amount of doubt and panic but I got there. No more examinations for Dr. Dave. 

About those two books. After I had consigned them to the returns bin, I instinctively turned left to go to the literature shelves to seek more obscure tomes for my studies, only to pull myself up short - I didn't know what next to read. The necessity had gone. There was a mild tinge of regret, followed by a knowing grin. It is over. I hope I never stop learning, but there are no more badges to be won. In 1978 I failed to do myself justice in my A Levels. I think I have now, and only now, atoned. To all who kept me going and put up with me, thank you. The Nobel laureate Bob Dylan sums up my state of mind best: 'I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now'.