A train ride, a tube journey and a ten minute walk led me to The Barbican Centre. The centre is situated in the Barbican Estate, a part of London that was built in the 1970’s. Initially, I was perplexed by its brutalist design, frightening looking tower blocks and my constant ability at being able to become profoundly lost amidst its floating pedestrian walkways, but after a number of visits I have accepted it as a weird concrete gem amidst a city of increasing steel and glass conformity.
My next event was a ‘conversational English class’ hosted by someone called Andy. Since it was obviously intended for non-native speakers, I gave Andy a ring to see whether it was okay for me to ‘come along’. Not being able to get through, I left a rambling voice mail where I tried to explain what I was doing and why a native English speaker wanted to come to a class about English conversation.
After asking the third man who had dark hair who was in their mid-twenties whether they were called ‘Andy’, I received a text message: I was welcome to come along. I gave him a quick call, and Andy explained that due to an exhibition at the Barbican centre everyone had gone to the Cinema Café, which was another part of the Barbican complex. Andy said that I could contribute if I wanted to. In return, I offered some reassurances that I promised not to be disruptive.
‘We’ve got a chair for you!’ motioned Andy, as I walked into the Cinema Café.
I found six people all huddled around a table. ‘Now, tell us a bit about what you’re writing’. I had already decided to be brutally honest and had told Andy that I was doing ‘a project where I was pretending to be a journalist’. Everyone looked at me. I did my best to explain my quest.
‘Does everyone understand what Chris is doing?’ asked Andy. Some of the group nodded. ‘So, have you been to different Meetups, Anita?’ Andy asked the first student to his left. His class had started.
For the next half an hour, everyone took turns to discuss what groups everyone had been to: there was talk of social groups, business groups and dancing groups. Andy offered every gentle and positive encouragement. When someone had finished talking he would offer suggestions and corrections, whilst at the same time asking follow on questions to make sure that everyone had the time and space to speak.
‘How about you, Chris? What is the weirdest Meetup group that you’ve been to?’ I briefly told them about my trip to the yoga group in Ealing, my brush with socialism in Clapham, and my attendance at the Girls Book Club.
‘They let you in and you hadn’t even read the book?’
‘I’ve read the book now, though’.
‘What was the book about?’
‘It was about two teenagers who had cancer who fell in love’.
The conversation rapidly moved onto the subject of food; in particular, Italian and French cuisine. One of the students, Gabi, was part French, part Italian. We also discussed Korean food and the challenges that could accompany eating fermented cabbage, a Korean national dish called Kimchi.
‘The expression is: ‘it doesn’t agree with you’. You don’t say you agree with the food, but food might not agree with you, if that makes sense?’ said Andy, explaining one of very many odd and unspoken rules of English.
‘Another phrase is: ‘it goes right through me’’.
During these conversations, I kept my chatter to a minimum: I had opinions about Kimchi, views about French food and was dying to tell everyone about the time when I made an idiot of myself by ordering a cappuccino coffee at three o’clock in the afternoon when I was on a trip to Italy.
Remembering my visit to the Clapham Girls Book Club, I was mindful that this was their space: this meeting belonged to Andy and his students. I didn’t want to intrude; after all, all these students were paying for Andy’s time. I took his lead: if Andy wanted me to contribute or offer an opinion, I would do so. If not, I would try my best to keep out of it.
‘Okay, we’re now going to have a game…’
Andy handed everyone a card. On the back of each card was a word, an idiom or an expression. The game was that everyone had to explain what the word or expression was without saying it, and everyone had to guess what it was.
When it was my go, I spoke about a hypothetical party where I was happy to do whatever everyone else was doing, but Andy had chosen a phrase that explicitly connected with my Meetup experience.
'The phrase is about what Chris is doing.' Andy said, stepping into help me. 'He is happy to accept whatever happens when he goes to a group. He is happy to 'go' with something. What is the key word?’ Andy asked.
‘Flow…’ Everyone got it. 'The phrase was: 'to go with the flow'. Well done everyone'.
It was a great game.
Out of all the groups that I had been to, I felt that I had accidentally influenced this one more than any others. In some respects, I don’t want to influence, I just wanted to learn, to observe and experience; in other groups you can sit back and not be noticed. In Andy’s class, there was no place to hide: my presence was obvious.
Andy responded brilliantly to the presence of a new person in his group. It also struck me that he had a great skill at making everyone feel at ease: ‘Just go out there and talk; don’t be afraid of making mistakes. People don’t mind if you make mistakes, do they Chris?’
‘No, not at all. People won’t mind at all’.
Andy had also been making the point that it’s okay to feel uncomfortable sometimes; that learning to speak is like developing your muscles in the gym - you need to do the exercise, and sometimes it may ache a bit, and this is okay.
I thanked everyone for having me there; it had been a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting event. I couldn’t help but admire the determination of Andy’s students who were from Indonesia, China, Spain, Korea and France: they were attentive, made notes, made mistakes, tried new phrases, and gave examples. Some of them would be at his next class. In terms of ‘teaching’, it worked really well; it was informal and informative. It was also real and as well as being supportive; his students felt comfortable enough to discuss relationships, families and forthcoming marriages.
After the event, I briefly chatted to Andy. He was a fully qualified English as a Foreign Language teacher, and he had been running his group for two years. For a while he had taught English abroad, but had discovered he was able to find clients pretty easily through Meetup. It was a plan that seemed to be working.
I needed to get some lunch. I left the café and looked around; choosing a direction that vaguely looked promising and started walking. Within minutes, I was in the middle of a crowded street-food market that I had never been to before. Food vendors lined the streets, selling Thai food, Indian food, West Indian food, Turkish food, French food, Italian food, Spanish food, and London food. For a moment, I was tempted by a ‘pie and mash’ stall since this was something that I had never tried. Hungry visitors jostled for space with each other. Some stalls had roped off queuing areas; clear evidence of their popularity.
I bumped into some of Andy’s students who were also deciding on what to eat.
‘You going to eat with us?’ Anita asked.
After ordering a Turkish wrap I followed Anita. We settled down in a park to have lunch; another bit of the city I had never visited. We talked about technology, the joys of visiting Barcelona (I have never been to Barcelona) and the challenges of finding a flat in North London. It turned out that Gabi was only in London for a month, spending time in the city before she returned to Paris to continue her law training.
Three quarters of an hour later, we were ready to go our different ways. I opened my phone to roll the virtual dice. It appeared that I had a bit of time to kill before the next event.
‘Where you going now?’ Gabi asked.
‘I’ve got to get to Old Street Station. Do you know the way? I’m not sure where I am’.
‘Yes; this way. Follow me’ replied Gabi.
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