Monday 25 January 2016

A pre-revolutionary weekend by the sea


Interesting statistic heard this morning: Inmates of a British prison achieved higher grades in Criminology than external undergraduates.

Green-Eye's boyfriend was recently refused funding for his college course, because they said the course didn't exist. G.E. said how could he be doing a course if it didn't exist?

Well, when I was at Cambridge (as a barman, not an undergraduate) I met an American girl who was undergoing a course on 'Arthurian Studies' (that's King Arthur, btw). I said I didn't know that Cambridge had such a course, but she explained by saying that they didn't until she created it for herself. She must have been rich and they will do almost anything for money.

About thirty-something years ago, most rich foreign students at Bath University were Iranian. These days they are mainly Chinese, but this is set to change. Shawn said that Saudi students can't/won't write. Somehow this does not surprise me.

I spent a very strange weekend on the South Coast of Britain many years ago, surrounded by a whole family of Iranian men, one of whom was my friend from Bath University.

We just sat around on the carpet (I don't remember any furniture) eating giant pistachio nuts, sent over in vast quantities from Tehran, with a small, white poodle scampering amongst us as we munched. I don't remember any conversation either, because it was all conducted in Farsi. We didn't make one single walk to the sea that I can remember either.

Over the next year or so, my friend became more and more deranged, thanks to his devotion to Guru Maharji's 'Divine Light' cult, and we drifted apart just before he decided to go back to Tehran.

Just after he returned, the Ayatollah's Revolution broke out there, people were being hanged from lamp-posts and I haven't heard from him since.

I don't think he stood much of a chance, unless he had the wit to lie low for a good while, and I cannot imagine that he did. His father was Secretary to the Shah's wife.

A few years later, I came across some more rich Iranian men in Bath, and I asked them if they had ever heard of Saeed Barzin when in Tehran.

"It is a very common name..."

19 comments:

  1. The more I read about your past life Tom - the more amazed I am! (and the more provincial I feel).

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    1. If you haven't sat on a carpet with a load of Iranian men, you haven't lived, Weave......

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    2. It does seem he's been everywhere and done everything.

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  2. Do I remember wrong or was the first Ayattollah revelled when going from Paris to Teheran (by Europe too)? I had a very bad feeling about him - and the smart Iranians who studied in Mainz (mostly medicine) too. And look what happened to the women. These days I will see the movie "Iraqi Odyssey" - but, come to think of it, maybe substitute it with "The Hateful Eight".

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    1. He lived in London before going to Paris. Khomeini. There were no women sitting on that carpet either. The men told me I would be very popular with the ladies in Tehran....

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  3. The Iranians I know wish the country were more liberal, more "westernized." Then they go home to live circumspectly in their compounds.

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    1. They have been wishing the country to be more liberal for about 100 years.

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  4. The universities in OK were full of Iranian students in the Shah days. They were all majoring in petroleum engineering.

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    1. Or just living it up in the West - like Osama bin Laden did.

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  5. Re the prison grades..
    Im not surprised
    What else have they got to do but study, bugger each other and play snooker?

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    1. Language Timothy. Anyway, you of all people should know that sex between men is not all about buggery. (Now I feel self-righteous!).

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    2. I've just thought of a joke about pocket-billiards, but it's too late now.

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  6. My wife has taught a lot of Chinese students at Queen's University in Belfast. She said their command of spoken and written English was mostly dreadful but whenever she wanted to fail someone's exam on the grounds of incomprehensibility the university would object on the grounds that they were paying massive tuition fees and expected to pass.

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    1. Now that does not surprise me either. $$$$$$$$

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  7. Why do you say, regarding the plethora of Chinese students, that it's going to change?

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    1. Unsustainable growth is causing a massive crash.

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  8. My only knowledge of Iranian students is from my time as an antique dealer in London. I got to know several who went grave robbing back home, then sold everything when they got to London, to fund their courses. I bought all sorts of interesting things from them, all of which went directly to Sotherby's.

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    1. These guys also said that there were as many secret service people as genuine students in London, and they had to be very careful.

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    2. These days, the grave robbers are ISIS, but there are still plenty of spooks around. MI6 have been voted the best equal opportunities organisation in Britain.

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