Faculty Off The Clock - Featuring Simon Lewis

What happens when faculty step away from the classroom and the lab? In this episode of Faculty Off the Clock, we sit down with Professor Simon Lewis to explore the passions, pursuits, and pastimes that shape their life beyond academia. From unexpected hobbies to meaningful side projects, discover a different side of the faculty you thought you knew. 

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🎙️ Produced by Michael Overholt

📍 Recorded in Podcast Studio #1, Addlestone Library

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:07

We welcome you to this episode of Faculty Off the Clock, a podcast series hosted by the College of Charleston's Office of the Provost that highlights the personal and lighter sides of our campus's professors. I'm Mark Del Mastro.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

I'm Chris Corey, Associate Provost, and your host of Faculty Off the Clock. This episode, we welcome Dr. Simon Lewis of the Department of English. Welcome, sir.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

So we start off, even though this isn't about your time here at the college, as a faculty member, we do want to know how you ended up here.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Well, it's a pretty circuitous but also rather fortuitous circuit. One way would be to say that I drove about six hours north to get back to the South because I came from the University of Florida where I'd done my PhD. But that's uh very much short circuiting the whole process because I didn't do the usual thing of going on from undergrad to graduate school after I graduated as an undergrad. Uh I worked in a library for a year. I did one year as a undergraduate student at USC Columbia. And then I had a career as a high school teacher. I was nine years a high school teacher in England and Tanzania before going back to the University of Florida to get my PhD. Wow. Yeah. And then by the the the fortuitous part of this is that it was remarkable that I ended up with two job offers coming out of my PhD. Oh, nice. Exactly, which is really nice at that time of time of uh the nineties, mid-90s. But one was in Savannah and the other was in Charleston. And my wife is from Columbia, South Carolina, so it was incredibly fortunate that I ended up just two hours away from uh my in-laws, basically.

SPEAKER_04 1:51

Yeah, wow, that is terrific.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

So um we wanted to get a better sense of sort of how you how you got um eventually here to the state. So where were you originally born and raised?

SPEAKER_02 2:04

So I was born in England, but then when I was eight years old, my family moved to South Africa. And I was nine years in South Africa, so fairly formative period of time.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

Was that a pretty traumatic transition for you as a kid? I mean, uh how how did how did you receive that? That's quite a move.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Honestly, no, it wasn't uh particularly traumatic. Okay. Yeah. I mean I I I reveled in the the change. And I was little, I hadn't really um hadn't really developed any close friendships or anything like that in my place in England. Okay. So it was just where where the family was going, and and I went there and once I was there I had an absolute ball. I mean, I had a blast in in South Africa as a kid because the the weather was so much nicer than that. Okay, yeah, sure. And you could uh play all sorts of extraordinary sort of ball games that I'd never probably had the uh experience of before. It was a new beginning for me. It was it was the the person it was traumatic for was my mother though, which is why uh we basically even on arrival in in South Africa we knew we were going back to England at the end of it because my mother immediately that she got there was deeply, deeply homesick. And so um the sense was always that uh home was England and we were eventually gonna go home. And pretty much sort of the a timetable was set up. Uh my parents had shifted out there and it had taken a lot of money to to shift out there, they couldn't then immediately shift back again. So they said, okay, we're gonna see the kids through school. Right. And then when they're finished school, then we'll go back home. So that was kind of always understood that this was going to be a limited period.

SPEAKER_04 3:53

So during your childhood, did you have any specific interests or activities that you like to share?

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Oh, I was um always crazy about reading. Uh-huh. Uh and always crazy about surprised. No, exactly. That's not surprised. But I was always crazy about uh ball games. Um I think I probably must have driven my my mother absolutely nuts because in the in the summer um months I'd be out on the stoop with a tennis racket whacking a ball against the uh the wall of the house. Boom, boom. She must have been driven absolutely nuts. And then in the uh the winter months I'd be out there with a soccer ball uh kicking it again, and there were a couple of downspouts of drain pipes uh on one wall of the house, and there was a a brick layer of about three foot around the bottom of the house. So that you had these two uprights and you and you had this vertical across uh horizontal across it that gave you essentially the the crossbar. And so I would play elaborate games of um goal kicking, basically. And you you scored three points if you got it between the two downspouts, and two points if it actually hit one, but then it also hit the wall and and all sorts of things. And I would do that for hours and hours on end. I was very, very rarely without a ball in my hand.

SPEAKER_03 5:15

Did you play other ball like cricket?

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Uh rugby, all that sort of stuff? Absolutely. I was introduced to cricket and rugby and tennis and hockey, field hockey. Wow. Yeah. So I was I was always, always with a ball in my hand.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

Now were any of these activities ones that you carried forward through your adulthood or uh I carried on, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

I mean, when when I was a school teacher, so I was a school teacher in these these English public schools. Yeah. The the school in uh in Tanzania was a little different because it didn't have the same kind of traditions, but the uh the English public schools that I was teaching at, I was uh coaching just about everything. Um coached cricket, coached hockey, uh coached rugby, coached tennis. Um I took kids off to the real tennis court in Oxford from from the school I was teaching at in in Radley. Um yeah, I I I did a lot.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

Um so yeah, growing up now, I guess in South Africa, did you have a favorite vacation spot down there?

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Well, family didn't really do um summer holidays so much. Uh the the big thing was every three years, so twice in the time we were there, we we had to come back to to the UK. Um and those were honestly not a whole lot of fun because it was Christmas and New Year, and so you had to holiday. Not really, and you have these you have these sort of you know six-hour long days for one thing because it's in the middle of winter and you're missing out the long days of summer in South Africa. Um and we were being schlepped around from one family member to another, to old friends and things like that. Oh, oh look how much you've grown, kind of thing. It was a little tedious as kids, honestly. But I do remember one um wonderful holiday uh when I was 13, um, not with the family but with um school teacher, a guy who'd been the assistant housemaster at a boarding school that I was uh at as a kid. Um, and he rounded up a friend of his, another grad student, I think, and they loaded up twelve thirteen-year-olds and loaded us into the back of this old uh Mercedes kind of sprinter van kind of thing. Absolutely bursting at the seams. And we drove all the way from Cape Town to the Atosha Game Reserve, which is way north of Namibia, um, you know, about a thousand three hundred miles north, basically up through the Kalahari Desert and things. And that was absolutely fabulous. It was an amazing thing.

SPEAKER_04 7:44

Yeah. Now I don't um you know, of course, in in the US, a big part of our culture, particularly as you're when you're young, is getting a summer job, right? That's kind of like uh expected of every kid. Is that a thing in South Africa? And if it is, did do did you have a summer job?

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Well, I didn't I I was l quite little by the time I I left South Africa. And we we lived on a farm. Uh at least my my my family lived on a farm. I had a very sort of bifurcated kind of childhood in the sense that the farm was 40 miles outside of Cape Town, 16 miles from the nearest um town of any side. Hundreds of thousands of chickens. Really? It was a poultry farmer. Wow. It was a poultry breeding chicken. And what was your role? My role was absolutely nothing to do with that. I am I am the son of a far of a farmer, but I am not a farmer's son, if you understand. My brother is absolutely the farmer's son. He couldn't wait to get back from school to get on the farm and start driving tractors around the place and and leveling fields for new buildings and things like that. Um You didn't want any part of it. I wanted no part of that. I I I I was not didn't have that kind of competence at all. Um so and I was what just uh just turned 17 by the time I left. So it didn't really there wasn't really any option for um summer employment. But I did get some interesting jobs in England when I got there. Oh, tell us a little bit about that. So there's uh uh one particular uh job I had was uh there were two places right next to each other, just up the road from where we were living. Uh there was a an all all-night gas station, and there was a little chef. And a little chef would be uh like a roadside diner. I think the the closest um parallel I could give, perhaps, would be to something like an IHOP. Okay. And it's called the little chef. It's called the little chef, right? So and it was basically you know all day breakfast sort of stuff. And um the the the the the best moment about all of this was that I I actually pulled off the best April Fool's prank I have ever pulled off at this place because I was working at these two places at the same time, so they both knew me. And this is uh what would this be? Late, late, very late 70s, early 80s. So there's you know no cell phones or anything like that. Yeah. But the uh the gas station was actually a Heron gas station, and Heron was short for Henry Ronson, and it was this Ronson family that had uh basically created this chain of of gas stations all all across across England, and the the son had uh been asked by his dad, you know, what do you want for Christmas son? And he said, I want that gas station. And that's basically where this whole thing had come from, apparently. And um for some bizarre reason on April the 1st uh I decided I was gonna play a prank on the manager of the particular gas station I was working at, who was a very young, I don't think she was even 21, um, a young woman from Hull in Yorkshire with a very strong Yorkshire accent and an interesting person altogether. But I went next door during my break to the little chef and phoned her up because this was about Easter time and they were about to open up 24-7 for the whole Easter holidays thing. And this manageress was not particularly uh, shall we say, scrupulous about leaving documents around the place, and they were about to uh hire people for the overnight cashier position, and there was the applications all over the desk, and I'm saying that there's okay, there's a guy who's a police officer who's actually applying for this job as overnight cashier, so I phone up, put on a slightly silly sort of accent, say, oh uh I want to speak to the manager, please. Okay, can you talk to me? No, I don't I need to talk to the manager. Finally get Parla to the phone and they say, uh are you about to employ Patrick McCormick? Right? He's a police officer, right? Yeah. For a night cashier job? Yeah. Don't don't do it. He's actually he's an internal revenue spy. And I went on with a whole spiel about how this guy uh was actually um sent to spy on behalf of the internal revenue because they were in wanting to investigate Henry Ronson's tax affairs, right? Because they couldn't understand how he got to be quite so wealthy so quickly. And like there was a whole backstory. I had it in for this particular guy because I'd been on the police force and he'd shot me because I had actually stolen something from the back of a lorry when there'd been an accident or whatever. Anyway, it went on and on and on, and finally I was just cracking myself up and said, I was like, I gotta go, I've got to go, put the phone down. Went back from the little chef to the Henry Ronson place, and there um standing about five feet away from the cashier is this this Paula woman yelling at the cashier saying, Oh my, gimme some five P's, gimme some five P's, because you had to have five P five pence coins to put in the pay phone. So she was about to phone head office and tell him this thing was going on. And I walk in the front door and I say, April Fool? And she looked at me and said, I don't think that's funny. I wouldn't have either. That's a good story. Yeah. Anyway, it's so that's that's my my best story of a job.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

Yeah. So you had uh a lot of chickens. Did you have any other pets or 'cause a chicken isn't a pet at a chicken farm. Well, maybe some rabbits.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

No, stran strangely enough, so my dad was uh very much the entrepreneur, although the the farm was not his, he was a farm manager, but uh they were always looking for ways to expand on stuff. And and so they um decided they needed also to have ducks. So we actually had we had a very large or began a fairly large uh duck um production uh portion of the of the farm. And so we uh And was that for for eating? Yes, that was. So the other the others were for breeding, the chickens were for breeding, but the the ducks were actually for production. Okay. Um and but we we got to keep uh a pet duck. Oh and um this was uh this was 1970. This was a Pekin Aylesbury duck. So they're very white, okay, with beautiful orange beak, yeah, and um really quite characterful, honestly. And and we had this duck uh called Harold, because Harold Wilson was the um Labour Party leader at the time in the U.S.

SPEAKER_04 15:12

And was Harold very friendly with the family?

SPEAKER_02 15:14

And Harold was not particularly friendly with the family and and and was not my my parents' uh favorite politician. Um so we called this this pet duck Harold, and he used to follow us around the place and uh poop uh in all sorts of inappropriate places. As birds tend to do.

SPEAKER_04 15:33

As a kid, did you play in I mean you talked about you know the the your your love of the different activities with the ball, right? But uh how about any board games?

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Yeah, I mean I this is gonna sound really silly, but actually I was big into bridge. Oh strange. You still play? No. Okay. Uh although occasionally um uh my my two older kids, we we would play play bridge and we'd have to sort of figure out who would end up as dummy. Okay. Because there's only I would I would bid for two hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and then we'd play it like that. But uh yeah, one of the again, another assistant housemaster at the school I was at as a boarding school pupil, taught us how to play bridge. And um there's something called Auto Bridge. I don't know if you're familiar with that. But it was obviously a pre-internet kind of version of bridge where you could, you know, when you were on your own, because there were there was basically nobody else around uh at the farm. So when I when I went home, I was pretty much on my own playing these silly ball games against the wall. That's there wasn't anybody else to hit against. And so you'd have to play bridge all on your own, and and you'd set up these um auto-bridge cards basically and play for hours and hours on air.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

And bid against you know ghosts that are playing with you?

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Well the the the the um the the deals were sort of set as as little cards and you put them into um a sort of a template kind of thing and you could undo uh one at a time and and you'd end up getting sort of so the the bids would be set up in ways that you could you could play the whole game. It was it was it was it was actually quite a lot of fun. For me anyway. I mean I dare say a bit nerdy really.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

Right, right, right. So focusing a little bit on your grade school, grammar school years, is there a fun fact that you can share about yourself that might amuse our listeners?

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Well, I think you'd be surprised to learn that I actually was took up boxing for a little while.

SPEAKER_04 17:29

This is an incredible recurring theme among faculty. I don't know what it says about vigilant stress release, but uh boxing. Tell us about this.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Well, so I I it's not really that surprising. It's just it's just to do with uh again that the type of school that I was at, right? Which was uh it was essentially an English boarding school in Cape Town.

SPEAKER_04 17:51

So how old were you when you started boxing? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

So 10 years old. Okay. And and I didn't do it for very long because I was absolutely tiny. Right? I was the just basically the the the smallest kid in the school.

SPEAKER_04 18:03

Featherweight.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

I wasn't even of featherweight. I mean it I'm really, really tiny. And and one of the things that I learned actually was that um size matters because um I was uh this tiny, tiny kid, so nobody nobody my own age was actually um my equal in terms of physical weight or or length of reach or anything like that. And um you you have this deep sense of fairness instilled in you in these schools, right? And and and boxing is seen as a very sort of fair kind of training that you're supposed to have. It's being really matching person against person. You've got the Queensbury rules and all that sort of thing. And and so, you know, I I also, even though I was tiny, I knew that you weren't supposed to pick on people who are younger than you either. And so I said, no, I I I can't fight these little seven year seven-year-olds. I'm I'm nine and I'm ten. So you need to put me against the nine and the ten-year-olds. And I can still remember this kid's name. He was a very nice kid. He's called Anthony Ross. And I said, I want to fight Anthony. And so they said, Well, um, all right. He's you know about 20 pounds, 30 pounds heavier than you. He's got about five or six inches on the on the reach. And so I get into the ring with him and bam, boom. Bloody nose. And it was over in the space of 30 seconds, and that was the end of that. So getting close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:29

But overall, did you enjoy boxing?

SPEAKER_02 19:31

I mean, I I enjoyed it as a sort of principle. I mean, I didn't I didn't keep, it's not something I kept up. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

That's true.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Well, if I did, I would learn now that any kind of scruples about picking on people younger than me, no. Just based on weight. Yeah, so um one rather odd occurrence was when I was picked to uh be a character in a recording of a a Christmas record, um, which uh a person who was sort of vaguely connected with the South African Broadcasting Corporation um wanted to produce this this Christmas record. So I ended up playing the role of Ahmed um in this Christmas story. And Ahmed was this little um sort of crippled boy, had a crutch and he had a raven that went. And um he was sort of caught up in the whole nativity story. You know, he met the the three wise men, he met the shepherds and you know baby Jesus in the in the cradle and all that sort of stuff. So I ended up cutting a record at age 13.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Oh wow. And do you still have do you have a copy of it? Yeah, good question.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

I actually do I came across it uh some some years ago and I thought, oh, that's kind of curious. Have your kids heard it? Uh yeah, they've heard bits of it. It's it's it's really it's really embarrassing. I actually think I I think I got somebody here in the um in the library to uh to turn it into a scene of it. Digitize it so you you can actually hear it. I mean it was it was really the the production qualities were very very poor. At one point I'm supposed to be doing at least two different voices, and it's so obvious that that it's the same.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

So you you moved on to undergrad? Yeah, some i did you do that in the UK? Or some stories about what it was like as a undergrad at the time?

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Well so I w I was at Oxford, so that's a very different kind of experience than um you have here. And I I find it kind of odd that I've become a real champion of liberal arts education, you know, the whole breadth thing that you have here in the in the States. Um but you know, my degree was English, English, English, and nothing but English. I mean you're not majoring in English, you are you are reading English for three years, and that's and that's it. Um But the the Oxford experience is incredibly intense, uh, as I I think you can probably imagine. There's very small groups of people, uh it's all divided up into college colleges. So uh I was at Worcester College, there were about uh 300 undergrads over the three years, so 100 kids per year group. And there were eight of us who did English. Um and then you've got that replicated across the 30 odd colleges of of the university. But it was very, very intense. You have eight-week terms, three eight-week terms for each year, so it's 25 25 weeks per year. Um and you live at a pretty high rate of intensity because you're also doing uh lots of sport, cricket and tennis and hockey and rugby and soccer. I even played actually for the soccer third team for Worcester 11. Oh wow. Uh and I I proudly boast that um I scored twice in one game, once for us and once against us. Well, you're own goal. I was 1-1 in that in that 3-1 victory. Um but but the the other thing, it was it was also always a huge amount of um drama going on, especially after week five. So um week five, weeks, week six, weeks, week seven, week eight, there'd be all of these drama productions all over the um the campus and all these various different places and tiny little uh performance spaces and and up to up to bigger ones too. I ended up being actually on the Oxford Playhouse stage in a in a production of Bent. Uh one time I was uh uh a Jewish um uh concentration camp person in in Bent, uh probably in my last year. But then um I was also in cabaret and Kiss Me Kate, and one of the bizarrest uh events was that we had performed um cabaret during the term time, and it had been quite a success, and it had been a huge, huge amount of fun. And so the director, who was uh the son of a vicar up in Scarborough uh on the east coast of um Yorkshire, decided that it would be a great idea to reprise this production of cabaret and throw in a a performance of Kiss Me Kate at the um the Spa Theatre in Scarborough, which is actually a very famous uh theatre on in in Scarborough, it's where Alan Ackbourne, British playwright, has premiered most of his plays. But during the winter, um nobody goes to Scarborough because it's cold. The wind is coming off the North Sea, and you don't want to be in Scarborough in December. Um and he decided that we should go up and put both of these musicals on, and uh we duly went up, and this play that had been a huge hit and massively successful in Oxford was a complete and utter disaster in in Scarborough. The joke was you know, somebody would go to the curtains and say, How many in the audience tonight? And they'd say uh looks like nine. Oh my. And and then they go, oh no, make that eight. One of them's just died. So it was it was uh very unpleasant. It happened also to be just about the coldest winter in in many, many years. So uh people just didn't turn up. Right, right, right, right. It was embarrassing. Yeah. But it was fun.

SPEAKER_03 26:03

It was a great story. Yeah. So so you go from the cold and then you end up eventually in the swamp. Uh in Florida. Um, what was it like to be a graduate student down uh in Gainesville, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So um yeah, Gainesville was I I absolutely loathe the climate of Gainesville. Uh we'd we'd spent two years in Tanzania, so that's just literally a couple of degrees south of the equator. It's on the sea, so it's it's pretty hot and humid. But it's nothing like as miserable as the as the climate in Gainesville. I mean, the air seems to come in to Gainesville from I don't know which side of the peninsula it is in like mid-February, and it just seems to linger in a great miasma over over Gainesville until you know Thanksgiving. And I just I I I cannot stand that. I mean it's just I I really didn't have a nice time. Um and by that stage we already had uh we moved to Gainesville, I had we already had one kid, and we had the second uh our second child in Gainesville. Uh so I really was very, very professional about getting my PhD. Sure. Uh the the year I'd spent in Columbia in 1983, 84, you know, I'd been the complete gad about. But um in 93 to 96 in Gainesville, I was I was basically on the clock.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

Um and uh anything anything anything interesting or peculiar in the midst of that?

SPEAKER_02 27:35

So I'd and really not, honestly. I mean I would literally go into the office. I had a bicycle, I ride right into the office, I'd put on my sweater to go into the office because it was all you know hyper air conditioned. I would run downstairs for lunchtime and go, oh my god, why am I wearing a sweater because it's 95 degrees and 100% humidity and go back to my little hutch and and basically that was it. Wow. So I was very thoroughly diligent.

SPEAKER_04 28:02

Well, we're gonna switch gears and talk about the present now and your faculty off the clock activities. Is there a pastime or a hobby that you uh enjoy regularly? And and if so, how did it start?

SPEAKER_02 28:14

So I'm you know I don't think I I I I think I would use the term pastime rather than hobby. So I'm I'm still crazy about cricket. Are you? So I mean I don't play. Playing watching well, no, exactly. You can't play it. There's nobody to play with. You know, it's it's like no cricket clubs around here? There have occasionally been people trying to get things going. But but nothing real.

SPEAKER_04 28:34

Nothing real sus really sustained, huh?

SPEAKER_02 28:36

Not that I've uh managed to find contact with. But I I am an absolute constant um checker of of Crick Info. Okay. Which is an on on online uh source. So you can follow how Papua New Guinea are doing against Malaysia. What's your team? Uh well, England mainly. But anybody who's not Australia or India will basically do.

SPEAKER_03 28:57

I see.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Oh, we we we do have various uh kiddie kits of of cricket, yeah. And uh I uh actually I'm gonna call out Anton Vandercy here, who who reigned on my parade, because uh I I need to do a course next term uh for for uh the English department. I said, Oh, I've been dreaming of doing a course on cricket culture and colonialism. Can I do that? And he said, Well I don't think too many people are gonna be interested in that. And he's he's probably unfortunately right. But um I I I would I don't know, it's an intriguing title.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Pair it up with baseball, too. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I'd be interested.

SPEAKER_04 29:38

I'd be interested in that class, but I'm an old guy.

SPEAKER_03 29:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:41

Yeah. Also academics, and we're like, oh that would be interesting. That's true. A little bit different perspective. Is there an activity that you haven't managed to tackle that you like to pursue?

SPEAKER_02 29:53

So I did mention earlier that one of the games I'd picked up in Oxford was uh real tennis. And real tennis is the game that you play inside, right? With these extraordinary courts with the weird sloping roofs and the various galleries and all the rest of it. And um I would love to actually be able to play that again. It was a it was that was a fabulous game. It's like it's like tennis but with with chess kind of overlaid in it because you have to figure out where the ball is going to bounce for the second time. If you you you can't just win a point. You have to think strategically about how you're going to win the point. So it's it's a it's a wonderful game.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Can you play it off the walls?

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Oh, you can play it off the walls, you can play it, you can't play it off the roof. Um, but you can play it off any wall, and uh on one side there's a wall, and on the other side there are galleries, so it's netting, so the ga the the the the ball goes dead, but it goes dead in different ways. Um and then it it's it's it's very, very complicated. And did you play this at Oxford? I uh did play it once um as an undergrad because a a friend um played it, and then strangely enough, when I was teaching at this place called Radley, which is about five or six miles outside Oxford, uh there was a guy there who was the the tennis and rackets coach who was actually a former world champion in real tennis. Um and so they we used to take um kids down into Oxford once a week uh to play real tennis. And and I I got to do that. I used to get uh these three burly 17, 18-year-olds in the back of my little mini, and that was when minis were really small cars. They're not they're not small any longer, right? But this was a tiny little car. You can drive it down, park it in Merton Street, and go and play real tennis once a week. It was the high point of my week, obviously.

SPEAKER_03 31:48

I'm gonna check it out on YouTube. See what that looks like. So if you weren't a faculty member here at the College of Charleston, what would you be?

SPEAKER_02 31:55

Oh goodness, I I really don't know. Um you know there's a bunch there's Simon Lewis's all over the place, right? There's a ton of Simon Lewis's. If you actually do um sort of Google search of of Simon Lewis, you'll see there's all sorts of them all over the place. And uh there's quite a few of them. I'm thinking, oh, that could actually be me. Because there's a guy who was um uh a a travel novelist. And I'm thinking, hmm, I don't I I I could have written that book. That would be I I could plausibly probably even tell somebody, oh, have you read my book? And they wouldn't see it, you know. And then there was another guy who was um actually an exact contemporary of mine uh at Oxford who was um a PR guy. Uh he ended up being the PR person for the the the Queen Mother, and then he ended up being a PR person for uh I think the Labour Party government and uh anything. I was thinking, oh I could probably have done that too. So yeah, I think there's uh probably it would have to be something to do with um with writing. But I always kind of fantasized actually about being a real tennis pro. There you go. Because um the the the nice thing about real tennis and also about rackets, which is the the game from which squash is derived, and the same lawn tennis is actually derived from real tennis, is that there's a whole sort of cottage industry aspect of it that you as a real tennis pro, you wouldn't just be coaching people at real tennis, but you would actually be making um and taking the the the fur off the ball and and making the ball um and and reattaching the the the the um you know the the felt to the ball and you'd probably be sort of stringing the rackets and and getting the tension right on on the rackets. There's that whole sort of um like I say arts and crafts element to it. It's not it's not mass produced. Um I I think I would have quite enjoyed that.

SPEAKER_03 33:50

It feels like we could open up a a court here and you have a little side shop that you can do. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Yeah, yeah. It's I mean it's it's the most ludicrous game there is because you know Sounds like a good one. Yeah you can get about three people into the the gallery watching it at any time. I mean it's uh it's you know it it's it doesn't make any kind of commercial sense. If you're not stream anything now. Yeah, this is true. Oh no, they do. I mean they do now film it, obviously, but um you know, in terms of actually getting that whole sort of stadium feel, uh it doesn't lend itself to that at all.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Well, Dr. Lewis, to conclude uh this interview, uh we have our lightning round. Uh this is for all our faculty off the clock installments where we ask each guest some important standard questions again about your life off the clock. We also want to clarify that we do know the difference between thunder and lightning, but since this is an audio podcast, we had to settle on thunder sound effect to cue this portion of the interview. So, Dr. Lewis, what's your favorite meal?

SPEAKER_02 34:53

My favorite meal is probably uh a full English breakfast.

SPEAKER_04 34:59

A full English breakfast. And per Dr. Lewis, what would that be?

SPEAKER_02 35:04

So that would be eggs and bacon and a couple of sausages and uh some toast slathered with butter. Sounds good to me.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

When I get it, you mean then they do like sliced tomatoes or baked beans. It's like a whole thing. Yeah, uh and I never understood the sliced tomatoes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

I'm even open to black pudding. Oh, which which I did treat my son to last time the two of us went to England and we we had a couple of full Englishers in in places like Nottingham and so on, and that was uh very good to get the the black pudding in there as well. Did you like it? Yeah, it's fine, you know. Yeah, okay. So do you have a favorite dessert? Do I have a favorite dessert? Um I'm not sure that I do. I mean, I I dessert is is pretty much a favorite. Overall. So you start with it? If I could, I probably would.

SPEAKER_04 35:59

So you're very embracing, you're not very discriminatory. I mean, you like it all.

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Exactly. Okay. I mean, I always feel a bit embarrassed, actually, to be living in Charleston, which is such a foody town. It is. And I'm really a very primitive person. If you give me something sweet, I will eat it. Okay. I'll go with that. All right.

SPEAKER_04 36:15

Well, speaking of sweet, you talked about breakfast. Pancakes or waffles?

SPEAKER_02 36:20

Pancakes.

SPEAKER_04 36:21

Pancakes. How do you like your pancakes? Do you like anything on them?

SPEAKER_02 36:25

Uh I like them with syrup on them. Yeah. No butter? Uh no. My wife's a butter person and I am a syrup person. Just syrup. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 36:33

Yeah. Uh I mean, I'm interested here, coffee or tea, but since you know you're English.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

Yes, coffee or tea. Both. Yes, indeed. With tea, both with milk or only. Oh yeah, yeah. Always with milk with both. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:46

Okay. Yeah. What's your favorite snack food?

SPEAKER_02 36:48

Favorite snack food. Oh Lord. Uh maybe uh nuts and raisins. Nuts and raisins. A trail mix.

SPEAKER_04 36:57

Yes. Pre-made or made at home and brought to work?

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Uh brought to work generally. So you know, just get those little um packets. Packets of raisins and chuck a few peanuts in them. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:12

If you liked uh if you like a submarine sandwich, do you have a preferred topping? Like a preferred kind of sandwich? Not really. No.

unknown 37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

I I really am. Yeah. Sorry. Food is not my Okay.

SPEAKER_04 37:33

How about the soft drinks? Do you have a favorite soft drink?

unknown 37:36

Not really.

SPEAKER_04 37:37

No. Is there an English soft drink? Yeah. That's a good question. Is there an English soft drink? I mean, uh no. There isn't a.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

I mean, I think all of the photos and things no. They're kind of I I have kind of I I will drink sweet tea. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Uh you know, last time we said that didn't count, but this time. I think sweet tea counts. Uh do you do so? Do you have a favorite activity you do off the clock that you like to do by yourself rather than with other people?

SPEAKER_02 38:07

Um well, I am I play the piano particularly poorly. Um, so it really isn't a good idea for anybody else to be there when I'm doing it. I think so. So you do it alone. I I do it alone, out of respect to other people's ears.

SPEAKER_04 38:20

Aaron Powell What's your current favorite music group?

SPEAKER_02 38:23

Current favorite music group. You know, this is uh I have one favorite music group from all time, I think, which is Sweet Honey in the Rock.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

Have you ever heard of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Doc? You know, I feel like I have. So Sweet Honey in the Rock.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Is this a British group? No, it's an American group. It's African American, all African women. African-American women, Bernice uh Johnson Reagan, um, and a cappella, and they sing these extraordinary uh political protest songs, uh feminist songs, okay. Um you know, uh African American freedom songs, African songs, um, and they are absolutely brilliant. Wow. And I was just blown out of the water when I arrived in Charleston in 1996, and the very first Moja festival that was going on in that fall, they had Sweet Honey in the Rock at the Gilead. Oh wow. And I I thought, oh my god, this is fantastic. So uh Jan and I both went to that thing, and we don't normally we didn't usually arrange um babysitters and things, but we certainly made sure to arrange babysitters for that one. Um and they were fantastic. But I remember being uh really uh incredibly disappointed um and struck by the fact that the audience for that show was almost entirely African American. And I thought, oh my god, how can you not just appreciate these women's extraordinary musicianship? So if you haven't heard Sweet Honey and the Rock, uh Google them.

SPEAKER_04 40:02

I will get on my Spotify uh playlist. Check it out. How about from your youth? You have a s favorite music group from your youth?

SPEAKER_02 40:10

I I got into Leonard Cohen actually as a kid. Okay. Um I remember going to see McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the uh Robert Altman movie late 70s, that actually uses a uh Leonard Cohen soundtrack. And I remember being captivated by that film. It had a a really unusual sort of slow pace to it. Um I'm not sure that I understood what it was about. Okay. Um but but I just remember being really captivated by the the the um cinematography, and it had this um amazing Leonard Cohen soundtrack whom I'd not come across before, and I I just got into him.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

Cool. Right on. Uh so you went to the University of Florida, American football or English football?

SPEAKER_02 40:58

There is only one football.

SPEAKER_03 41:00

Nah, we knew that answer was coming. So do you have a favorite team, uh you know, Premier League? No, I I don't.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

Honestly, I'm I'm I'm seriously, I'm not particularly interested in football or soccer. Um I'm I'm much more interested in cricket or tennis or something like that. But uh yeah, I don't I don't really follow the soccer leagues.

SPEAKER_04 41:22

Well, of course, you know, in the U.S. Um we have a thing called barbecue, but there's a distinction. There is a Texas barbecue and there's a Southern barbecue. And we'd like to know what your preference is.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

I would have to defer to my son on that. Oh he and a bunch of his um classmates are uh big uh barbecue aficionados, and they basically have been around every single barbecue uh restaurant in in Charleston.

SPEAKER_04 41:47

Do you like pulled pork?

SPEAKER_02 41:48

I do like pulled pork.

SPEAKER_04 41:50

You like beef brisket? Yes. Which one do you like better? No. No, the same.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

Absolutely. I mean, I am completely undiscriminating. Oh, I mean, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_04 41:58

Yeah, you're coming to know. It's very considerable. We're trying to trip you up here.

SPEAKER_03 42:02

I mean, our next question, I mean, I don't know here. Most memorable restaurant of your lifetime might be none. Little chef.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Well, actually, strange that you mentioned that I I I did mourn the passing of the IHOP on Sam Rittenberg. Yeah, it was that was really disappointing. That used to be close to us when we lived on um, when did that close? Uh oh god, it's years ago now. Yeah, I didn't pay attention, obviously. No, well, it's it's just it's things are going in and out of the way. Yeah, this is true. Um but yeah, we used to go there quite frequently as a family. It was a wonderful thing for a family.

SPEAKER_04 42:40

Is there still an IHOP in the Charleston area?

SPEAKER_02 42:41

You could cheap. There was there was a really lousy one, which I think is still going, which is amazing to me on James Island. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:48

Oh yes, there is that one. But we don't go to it. No, that was terrible.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

But the one on the one on um on Sam Ritt there by the the fire station was was absolutely terrific. And uh we used to enjoy that a lot.

SPEAKER_04 43:01

So uh so far as movement is concerned, what do you prefer? Walk, bike, or drive?

SPEAKER_02 43:07

Uh probably walking. Yeah, yeah. I when I started here at the college, I had a bike and I used to park it up outside the um my office there on the balcony.

SPEAKER_04 43:20

A little less dangerous to bike then because people weren't so obsessed with their exact cell phones.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Right, and their cars were probably not quite so enormous. But that um that bike just basically rusted. Uh I mean in in the humid air, and uh so I haven't really done that as a while. No, and I d I I keep thinking I I see George pottering and people hopping on the the the line bikes and MUSC moves and all that sort of thing. Oh well that would be a great idea 'cause we live down um near the citadel these days.

SPEAKER_04 43:50

Bob Mignon's another regular biker downtown.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

Yeah, I should do that. But then you know, you you hear people getting knocked off. Oh yeah, sure, and I've seen it. Yeah, yeah. It's a little dangerous downtown. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:02

Alright. If you're um gonna dispense a toothpaste from a tube, how do you like to do it?

SPEAKER_04 44:07

This is one of our more important lightning round questions.

SPEAKER_03 44:09

That's really the last and final very important question.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

I do kind of squeeze from the bottom. Kind of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:17

Again, it's a little wishy-washy.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Well, actually, don't you think they've made tubes a little different these days? That actually they um it used to be that you could sort of leave all the all the stuff in the bottom end and that was possible any longer. They they seem to be made of the phone.

SPEAKER_03 44:38

Maybe you have the more expensive kind.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

I'm sure I have superior toothpaste to Don Mask. Oh, absolutely. I have no doubt.

SPEAKER_04 44:46

Do you like popcorn?

SPEAKER_02 44:48

No, not much.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

Really? You are the first person, yes. Now tell us. Should we end the interview right now, Dr. Cory? Wow. So can we ask why you don't like I mean, this is this is so contradictory to what we've been experiencing with your answer so far, where you just are so inviting to all foods. And now popcorn, no. Definitely not. I would have never expected that answer.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

What is there to popcorn?

SPEAKER_04 45:11

Oh. What is there not to popcorn? I mean, from what you can put on top of it. Oh, it's just uh it's uh it's a lovely snack delight.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

So you go to the movies, what do you get? Uh the uh I I try and get a Boddington's beer, actually, if we go to Terrace. But no popcorn. No popcorn, no, no, some junior. My wife is my wife's a big fan. My wife's a big popcorn fan, but not me. Not you. Okay. Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 45:41

Uh so our our last question. Uh we have uh an event for you, and it's all you're coming out uh up on the stage. It's your celebrity event. Uh your entrance. You're the man, you're coming in. What's your entrance song? Uh the event featuring you.

SPEAKER_04 45:55

There it is, Dr. Simon Lewis. The music plays. What is it?

SPEAKER_02 46:00

I you I sorry, you're gonna have to suggest a couple of things. Oh no, no, no. No. I mean, you can't get out of the music sense. Yeah, you can't.

SPEAKER_04 46:12

I mean you want the crowd pumped up, but that that signature Dr. Lewis right now.

SPEAKER_02 46:16

Maybe it would be how about this? I'm just gonna be completely perverse here, right? Okay, yeah, no, it's fine. Maybe make it the Adagia from Marla's fifth. Oh.

SPEAKER_03 46:26

Not that I even know what that one is, but we'll find it.

SPEAKER_04 46:28

We'll find it, yeah, okay. And maybe And maybe we'll get goosebumps when we hear it.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

And the audience would go, but you'd be pumped.

SPEAKER_04 46:40

I mean, that's important. It's your engine. You would fire them up. All right.

SPEAKER_03 46:44

Well, Professor Lewis, thanks so much for sharing today about your time off the clock and for giving listeners an alternate glimpse into your life outside the classroom. We really appreciate it. And as a personalized marketing tool that we asked you to display in your office, um, we will be giving you your own bobblehead to represent your letter side as revealed to us today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Thank you both very much. This has been great fun. I look forward to getting the bubble head. It's gonna be good.

SPEAKER_03 47:07

Absolutely. I will treasure that. Yeah, well, we're delighted. So stay tuned for next month's installment when we learn more about life off the clock of another College of Charleston professor.