Pride and Prejudice revisited

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sixteen year old boy in possession of his own motorbike is not going to be best pleased at having Pride and Prejudice foisted upon him for his Higher English. Gordon Bennett! I swear that I read every word as if each was a tin of beans I had to check for defects as part of a stiflingly boring factory job. Past my eyes they rolled. I missed nothing. I missed everything. "It's so funny!" a studious girl in my class exclaimed. She must have been trying to impress someone by pretending to find the book amusing, I reasoned. Not for the first time I was wrongly attributing a base motive to someone because such a motive was the only one I could conceive of having myself.

In a rare act of rebellion I wrote a bitterly sarcastic critical evaluation of the novel. My English teacher, fully entitled to beat me about the head with the complete works of Jane Austen, nevertheless chose to respect my opinion. He commented that I should put P & P aside for a few years but should return to it at some point. It was not something I anticipated doing, despite feeling that I owed him as much.

Now, to get in the mood for the rest of this piece, you could perhaps stick 'Eye of the Tiger' on the stereo, because the rematch- Steele versus Austen- occurred this summer. I did not expect to enjoy the experience, viewing it like a tough hillwalk with visibility occluded by persistent drizzle. The best I hoped for at the end was a dull ache that would prove that the exercise had been in some way beneficial. Maybe this time I would at least be able to feel some sympathy for Elizabeth's father. Anyone subject to a sixfold dose of synchronised PMT was bound to arouse some emotion in me. Such was the downbeat air with which I approached my task.

But I liked it. Damn it, I almost laughed out loud a few times. The relevance to life that I had, (so cleverly I thought at the time) dismissed as a youth was there for anyone with a modicum of maturity to savour. My English teacher was right.

It has become important to me that he should know that I know appreciate his wisdom. His name was Mr Jimmy Anderson, PT English at Lanark Grammar in the seventies and, I believe, an assistant head on Islay thereafter. If you know him, pass on my regards, though the hope that he should remember me is doubtless a vain one in both senses of the word.