I was watching Billy Elliot and a load of memories came flooding back. The movie is set in northern England in 1984. I was going to school at the time I had finished my compulsory education and had done well in my O - levels. Yet I had to put up with so much shit from my father as I wanted to to do A-levels.
It was always "feast or famine" in my family. There were times when we get really great birthday gifts like a new bike or toys and other times when we didn't have enough 50 pence pieces for the electricity meter, or when I had to pretend to the rent man that my parents were out.
Later on when my father was unemployed and the only money we got was my his
dole money. He couldn't understand for the life of him why anyone should study books if they
didn't have to.
I remember applying for university and having no more idea of where to apply than I had about which opera to go to, just like in the movie when the kid is asked about studying ballet in London. Even the trip to the unversity was a major expense and not just a "trip"
University was a completely alien planet, as far from what I knew as... well, think of something so far beyond your realms of expection as to seem a dream or myth.
Also check out Educating Rita.
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