(J) Bristol 1974-1975

Bristol University

And so to Bristol – in the 1970’s that hotbed of subversive teacher trainees. In retrospect, I’d have to say it was an adventure - like most other chapters in my life. At the time though it was a pretty boring place to me and another Nixonian ‘Outsider’ experience-one which had to be ‘endured’ rather than enjoyed. I was lonely there –I think of darkening evenings in the autumn- trudging up and down the streets of Whiteladies road –killing time- not knowing whether to eat in the pizzeria or the University refectory. Both were soulless. But the food gave me comfort. This was the beginning of an addiction to salt-one of many addictions in my life. Apart from the terror of my early teaching experiences, the cultural differences between Ulster and the South of England soon became all too apparent.

I have always been mystified by comments of people who look back on their University days with nostalgia. People talk about them as if they were a time of relaxation and recreation on some tropical island. I remember them as grim –to put it very charitably. Everything was grim-my apartment, the lectures themselves, many of the lecturers, and even the southern English themselves..

The city centre looked like a bombed out concrete jungle-which is exactly what it was of course.

My cooking was grim, the long lonely evenings, the even more lonely weekends and my first pathetic attempts at teaching were grim.

Above all the English themselves were grim. They were a total disappointment –they seemed almost dumb to me- they didn’t speak. They rebuffed any attempt to approach them. They all seemed to be paranoid about someone taking advantage of them in some way. I couldn’t work out what it was they had that any one could possibly covet. Maybe they all had secret stashes of gold somewhere?

They were positively allergic to visits to their apartments. They stood in the doorway with a stupid grin on their faces looking over your head into the middle distance as if I there was a ‘SWAT’ team behind me taking aim at them.

Thus they valiantly defended the stashes in their castles from a lonely but well intentioned Ulsterman who just wanted a bit of a chat.

They were helpful of course, but that wasn’t what I wanted. The English are ‘doers’. Like their Australian derivatives they are obsessed with doing things. The Irish, on the other hand just are. We just like ‘being’ –not doing. We are not lazy –we just like to be – if you get my drift. I could never get on with the English or the Australians.

Why did I end up in Bristol? Well-it was like this: I became obsessed with education at Trinity College in Dublin. I avidly read, noted, and inwardly digested the radical philosophies contained theirin of Messers Ivan Illich, Everett Reimer, John Goodman- and other anti establishment ‘Deschoolers’ of the day.

In hindsight, although I thought I was at the time, I was not really interested in teaching in schools per se but more in the ‘Idea’ of schools. I have always been excited by ideas and I was excited by the idea of education itself. What was it? I had no idea really but I spent the next several years trying to define it and, in fact, after 33 years I still don’t really know what it is, although I probably have a clearer idea of what is not.

Anyway, in those days I wanted to abolish schools altogether. I believed that on balance, the negative influences of schools on society outweighed their positive effects. Above all, I believed that it was the ‘Hidden curriculum’ of schools that was the problem. Marshall McCluhan was dead right when he said “the medium was the message” I agreed. Schools existed to engender conformity and dependence-and not to truly empower students.

After thirty - three years I basically still believe this though with a little less passion than I used to (but not much less). I do admit that schooling as a default position for a developing culture is perhaps more desirable than the anti school Talibanic approach proposed by Islamic extremists. But to admit that is not to admit very much at all.

In those days I was so theoretical it just wasn’t true: I was basically ‘offered’ a place on the PGCE course at Cambridge by George Dawson, now deceased – my professor at TCD. (through his connections at Cambridge). But would I accept it? Oh no! – someone had told little nerdy Nixon that Cambridge was full of failed rugby players-not true educationalists like himself in pursuit of worthy causes and who would spend years wasting time trying to define education.

True educationalists justifiably scorned the idea of chasing a ridiculously shaped piece of leather around a muddy field in order to compete violently with other males for the attention of even dumber females.

I was having none of it. I was going to go to the most progressive teacher training course in the United Kingdom – to Bristol University. Yes, (I mean ‘no’ actually), I wasn’t going consort with Rugby players and I was determined to cut off my nose to spite my face to prove it to everyone –especially myself.

Besides, I could get drunk and have sex without playing rugby. Even though there was no internet at that time there were plenty of X rated movies cinemas to visit to take care of the sex  and Dad had foolishly given me enough money to buy booze should I wish. As it turned out I had little of either  in Bristol (sex or drink).  I got the idea (“Bristol” that is, not the sex and booze) from E O., a lecturer at Trinity College who had supervised my vacation work in County Mayo. So, it was “Thanks, but no thanks George (my old professor) old boy–no Cambridge for me!”

If  you are thinking that I was immature and a presumptious prat at this age I would have to agree that I was. Some might say I haven’t changed all that much. But I hope I think have faced my demons enough to have changed just a little. Maybe you should ask my wife if I have changed much. On second thoughts maybe you had better not ask her. (Actually, I went ton Bristol seven years before I met her)

I think education became an obsession for me at Trinity because I was such a social misfit. It was a substitute for everything in life that was pleasurable and to which I did not have access: laughter, joy, social fulfillment, academic success, sex , fame-in short-all the really good things in life. Every day was a struggle for me –a struggle to enjoy myself. Everybody else seemed to have at least something – and it seemed to me I had nothing. I was a miserable, nervous wreck. But- the one thing I did have which others didn’t have- was a passion for education.

Pitiful? Yes, it probably was.

So, off I went to Bristol arriving one cool September night on my ownsome at ‘The Quadrant’, Coldharbour Road, off Whiteladies Road, to spend a year learning how to be a teacher.

The first major problem I had to face in my little ‘flatlet’ was the toilet. It was an ancient design consisting of a chain pulled from a tank high above one’s head. I must have spent fifteen minutes trying to get the damn thing to flush. Eventually, I had to ask the landlady –how embarrassing! Even worse, she wasn’t able to fix it, and her gorgeous sixteen year old daughter had to go into the toilet and show me how to flush it! What a humiliation. I don’t think I ever used that toilet again for the whole year I was there. More importantly, I was never able to look that lovely daughter in the eye again.

Social life in Bristol.

I quickly made friends with a Scotsman from Edinburgh who had just done VSO in Malawi. G F was an intellectual and in a way a fellow misfit. Reserved and retiring, he had a powerful brain and was basically much more mature than I was in many ways and certainly much more streetwise. For some reason, he seemed to appreciate me and we had a lot of common interests. What united us most was our interest in Africa. We spent hours and hours together chatting about Africa as well as philosophy, politics, books and of course education. In retrospect, a fly on the wall would have noted that we never talked about women. The simple reason for this was that we were both terrified of them and neither of us knew much  about them. We played table tennis, squash, dived into and pounded up and down the swimming pool.

The days passed. G became a good friend. He couldn’t resist an argument and I was always up for it. I can remember coming back to my flat for coffee and spending hours talking to him –both of us smoking ‘Embassy Regals’ till the room was a dense fog of smoke.We just liked talking for its’ own sake –a characteristic we shared with Africans and Latin Americans –but not with The English or Australians.

Two years later he married a delightful girl named K and I am still in touch with them thirty years later. I was always aware that G was an intellectual heavyweight.

Other memorable characters included ‘E’ from Liverpool –‘fooking ‘ell man’! Who was on cannibis for much of the time when he was not sleeping with a succession of gorgeous girls who couldn’t seem to get enough of him. E was mad. He had long hair down to his waist, never stopped talking, was funny, good looking and well-built. The girls couldn’t keep away from him.

G and I just marvelled at his success with women.We oozed and groaned with jealousy. So, that’s it! I would say to myself women want humour, a good body and good looks? This was a devastating realization. What chance did I have then? G and I had none of these attributes of course–so we hung around E and his harem, irritated and fascinated; half-deriding him , and half hoping that some of his animal charisma would rub off on us. E had a terrible temper but this didn’t seem to worry the girls at all. In the end he was thrown out of the course after losing his cool with a lecturer. He hardly ever attended lectures anyway. He was definitely unstable. I wonder where he is now. He was into Neil Young.

Then there was G –the upright German. Cool and confident in a shallow way. I didn’t really like him and I don’t think he liked me. He seemed too self assured. I was jealous. But he seemed to respect G so we often hung out together –the three of us –in the cafeteria - or in the bar.

Those were the days! But I spent a lot of time on my own. I remember also becoming very interested in books about the Yaqui Indians in Mexico by an American Mexican author called Carlos Castaneda. When I was bored, which was almost always, I would go the library and dream about the mystical way of life of the Yaqui Indians. Very romantic.

It was a beautiful spring which turned into a wonderful summer. Mum and Dad came over to Bristol at the end of the year and we all went for a tour around the south of England. I remember Mum and Dad fighting a lot in the car. At one point, Mum got out and stomped off up the road. Dad turned round and said to me. “You know at a certain time in their lives women get very moody –that is what is happening to your Mother now”. As far as I was concerned Mum had always been like that –and so had he.

On the same trip on another day, I also had a huge fight with Dad. Eventually Mum intervened on my behalf saying…

“Well, you won’t have to put up with Donald for much longer, Cecil, because he will be going to Africa soon and you won’t see him for two years”. Mothers always seem to support their sons against their Father-something I have learned with my own children. It was true I would be going to Ghana to do Voluntary Service Overseas that September.

I was very lonely in Bristol and I made a first attempt at writing there too – introducing an autobiographical short story with a main character called ‘Macmillan’. I had it typed. I was so embarrassed when the typist asked me questions about it. She liked it and said the character of Macmillan was very ‘Irish’–whatever that meant. That was 1975. All I can remember is that it contained a lot of “F” words which I was so ashamed of. I’ve lost it now-no idea where it is I probably lost it deliberately in a Freudian sense because it contained the ‘F' words.

I never wrote another word until the year 2001!

In a way I was a model student at Bristol. I got an ‘A’ in all my assignments. But I blotted my copybook at the very end by saying in my last assignment what I really felt- -that I was a ‘deschooler’ and didn’t really believe in schooling at all, and saw schools as instruments of social control rather than education. A D, my tutor, didn’t like it and gave me a ‘C’. I thought Angela was shallow and didn’t appreciate my intellectual profoundity. I’ll bet she wasn't giving ‘C’s to Andy - the shallow, smooth-talking, good-looking hunk on the course.

Why do women always fall for…..oh.. what’s the point?

Jon and Jacky A were a very pleasant couple. Simple and straightforward. John had an old model of a car-a Ford ‘Prefect’. At the end of the year I invited them and another couple –N H, a hot headed Londoner, and his girlfriend U B over to Donegal to stay in a rented Caravan. I brought them over to see my parents in Port-na –Blagh and we all went surfing together. At Tranarossan youth hostel I remember N putting up the Union Jack outside his tent. This was 1975 –when the political turmoil was at it’s height. It was a provocative and a very imprudent thing to do to in catholic rural Ireland, to say the least! I was appalled. He could quite easily have got himself a visit from the local IRA had we not persuaded him to take it down. It was one of my first lessons in ‘realpolitik’.

I remember becoming a bit tetchy in the Caravan as my departure date for Ghana neared. I always become irritable when I am close to a major change. I used to think of myself as ‘laid back’ when I was young man –but I think the truth is I have always been quite the opposite– very highly strung. I have only been able to see it more clearly in my latter years.


One incident I remember clearly was a rock climbing trip up the Avon gorge near Bristol with J D. I expressed an interest one day, and at his suggestion we went climbing together in the gorge. He went up first and I followed blindly. It was cold and it started to rain. About half way up I realized that I could go neither up nor down and that I was “stuck’. I panicked and in the end had to retreat to the bottom, trembling with terror. I have never rock-climbed again. It was a case of ‘Once bitten , twice shy’

A similar experience occurred on a November afternoon in the Mendip hills.as part of the outdoor education unit. A group of us went caving. I was excited and was expecting to see a large overhanging structure under which I would walk from a wide tapering entrance to a fairly narrow tunnel or cave at the back in the shadows. The sea would be heard lapping amiably on the stone shore at a friendly distance from the entrance to the cave.

You can imagine my surprise when we piled out of the van into a field in the fog one Sunday afternoon. I looked around me for the sea-and there was no sea. Nor did their appear to be a wide cave entrance under which I could walk. I was too scared to ask anyone and reveal my ignorance to the others so I just tagged along as we made our way into the field. I began to think that the entrance must be quite far away in the distance when suddenly the leader stopped and said.

“ Ok then, here it is …I’ll go first. Now, you go in backwards- just follow me.”

I noticed he had taken a few steps into a dip at the centre of which appeared to be a hole with a stream running into it. He suddenly turned round with his back to us, sat down in the river, leaned back and crawled into the hole backwards disappearing from view in a few seconds. The next person followed him. Incredibly, I did too. I amazed myself. I had not had enough time to protest or be frightened. But, if this was caving then to hell with it….

I never saw nor heard from most of these Bristolian friends again, but I can remember them thirty years later as clearly as if it were yesterday.

The Bristol course was well resourced. This was the early seventies. I did an outdoor education option and we went canoeing one memorable day on the River Wye in winter. We also went camping in a tent on Dartmoor in January. I was never very good at these things and I suppose I was one of the least fit. Everybody else seemed to be fit and ‘Hearty’ but I grumbled about this and that. I remember ‘Tony the Straight’ the group coordinator getting annoyed with me once-I don’t quite know what for – it was something to do with a box of matches. Tony didn’t like my droll sense of humour – I think he thought I was a loser. I thought he was supercilious and shallow.

We camped on Dartmoor and broke camp in the middle of the night. The next morning we jumped into the river Dart in our boots with snow on the ground.

I loved it and it helped to make a man of me I’m sure.

Lecturers at Bristol

In the seventies the Staff on the Biology PGCE course were almost all liberals and optimists. In fact, for me they were so optimistic they could have been Americans or Aussies.

There was A D –the Coordinaator of the biology Unit. Angela was a large hearty , premenopausal female with white teeth like vertical piano keys constantly on display . She had a a permanent smile on her face which I thought at the time meant she was a profoundly happy person. In retrospect, she seemed too happy and I think it probable she was into toy boys or sex toys. Her toothy smile was so huge that it made a little nerd like me nervous. At times I found myself thinking she might actually open her mouth and swallow me. Like a crocodile I hoped that she would keep her teeth firmly shut and not open her mouth.

Angela was a kindly lady really but beneath that smile she revealed herself at times to be phony. I found this out at the end of the course. I had got ‘A’s for all my assignments throughout the year until the last one when I introduced my ideas about deschooling society and abolishing schools altogether. For me it was easily my best assignment-well researched and original-if a little controversial. That was the bottom line of course. I got a ‘C’.  So much for freedom of expression at the most ‘progressive’ teacher training College in the UK! I went off Angela in the end.

Lecturer S had written a book which he had recommended as part of the course he was teaching. He was a tall, reserved but imposing figure. When speaking to him it became obvious that he was painfully shy. He was very nervous and his hands shook visibly during conversation. I found myself feeling almost protective towards him and yet he was many years my senior. The difference in status didn’t seem to affect this feeling. He had written a book called ‘The reluctant learner’. I couldn’t imagine him coping with a bunch of recalcitrant 15 year olds-but I suppose he must have been able to do it as he had written a book on the subject. In fact he looked like a taller version of what I imagine myself looking like to others today.

The roles were reversed with Professor T. He was the father figure and I felt like the son. He would conduct his seminars with an avuncular style smoking a drooping pipe. I would say nothing usually.

However, there was one memorable seminar I remember in which we were discussing third world development issues. I felt awful at these seminars – I was sizzling with suppressed rage at the inequities and injustices of the development process -and my pathetic attempts to articulate a meaningful response to them. I stayed silent for long periods because I lacked confidence and then I blustered and blurted out inappropriate things when I finally did speak.  It was a time when there was much criticism of the way governments in developing countries had imported western schooling willy nilly-and the negative influence on the recipient cultures.

One day I finally had my chance –I had been building up to this moment all year. . After a group discussion to which I had contributed nothing, Professor T finally asked me what I thought. I decided to speak and proposed the abolition of schools entirely as suggested by Ivan Illich in “Deschooling Society”. I was a ‘deschooler’. Prrofessor T paused, looked at me, puffed on his pipe, and then said very carefully:

“You mean the complete dismantlement of industrial society and the schooling system as we know it?’

“Yes!” , I blurted out – with just a little defiance in my squeaky voice.

“Hmmm…” said Thompson puffing on his pipe again. He disappeared from view in clouds of smoke…

I don’t think he was too impressed but it was difficult to tell through the smoke. Anyway I never said another word in his seminars again just to be sure.

And he never asked me another question.

I remember the day before teaching practice started going into my room and being in a panic with nervous tension at the idea of teaching the next day. I wondered if I had chosen the right profession.

I was in tears with an attack of anxiety. But I was on my own and no-one ever knew about it.

This was my first panic attack in my life.

I didn’t realize up until that time that I had a nervous disposition which is prone to such attacks.

They have recurred at various times when I have been under pressure. Sometimes it seems to me extraordinary and irrational that I have propelled my self voluntarily into so many stressful situations time and time again in life. You would think I might have chosen some other profession. No doubt the psychologists would have a field day with these reflections making the perfectly useless observation that I was ‘sabotaging myself’ or some such nonsense. Not that I don’t believe in the concept of self sabotage: suicide bombers really do sabotage themselves- but not nerdy Irish adolescents living in England.

My teaching practice was done at Bristol Cathedral school. But first we had to team teach at a comprehensive school. I remember having to give a lesson on the blood circulation with three other students. I was doing the double circulation using an Overhead Projector. It was almost my first time public speaking. I have never been so nervous in my life. It was worse with my peers there. I was more nervous of them than of the students. It was excrutiating. I can still remember it vividly.

At the Bristol Cathedral school I was very lucky to have a decent supervising teacher –Peter Templar who graciously allowed me to teach his lower sixth. I did respiration with them. Basically, I just lectured to a small group of them and they were polite enough not to ask me questions. They were good Grammar school boys and played the game. I could see they felt for me. If they had asked questions and I hadn’t been able to answer them I would have dissolved into tears. I think they knew this.

I began to realise at Bristol that I had had a pretty sheltered background and was not ‘tough’ enough to teach in the normal government schools. I would have been mawled. I had a third year class in which I remember getting them to draw a Goldfish. They were all well-behaved –and it was just as well because, had they chosen to play up, I would have had no idea idea how to control them.

Funny Story! I was demonstrating the preparation of Oxygen using Potassium Permanganate with the form ones. They were a bright and very well-behaved class. I had on a new purple cashmere sweater which Mum had given me for Christmas. All the little squirts were up at the teachers bench watching my demonstration. I was so nervous I lost my concentration. I remember I was listening to myself talking. I just kept talking and talking and didn’t realize that my right elbow was on fire until the smell from the smoke became overpowering. The kids were so polite they didn’t dare tell me until there was a sizeable hole in my brand new sweater! As I ‘Put out my elbow’ they giggled and snickered just a little-but not enough to embarrass me. I maintained a straight face.

Oh God! In most schools I would have been laughed at mercilessly for such a blunder, and probably later sacked or sued for negligence.


I loved it and it helped to make a man of me I’m sure.

Around Christmas time, Under Gibson's influence, I had definitely made up my mind to do Voluntary Service Overseas in Africa.(I had been thinking of this since third year at Trinity). G kept me enthused as he had done V.S.O. in Malawi. I went for the interview and I remember they asked me some really weird questions one of which was

‘Mr Nixon. are you looking for real poverty?’


“No. just a bit” I said

and the doctor asked

‘Do you bite your knuckles?’

“No. well just a bit” I lied

And the doctor persisted ‘Why do you bite your knuckles?’

‘Oh! that’s nothing’ I lied ‘ I didn’t even know I was doing it!’

But the Doctor had noticed. Little did he know that at the age of ten Mum had taken me to the doctor with this problem. (Biting my knuckles-not my fingernails) He had got me to paint my knuckles with a revolting tasting paste which hardened to an indigestible flaky brittle stuff.

But I loved the taste.!

I was a nervous child.