Glasto

I definitely enjoyed Glatonbury.  The one small chink in this assertion's armour is a memory of a friend of a friend who was in the same 'camping circle' as us, dominating proceedings and rather than iritating me (as he would today), making me feel inferior and awkward.
 
But the rest was awesome.  No doubts there.  U and I would plough our way to the front (she was particularly short and would have spent the whole weekend seeing nothing) to see Lemonheads, Lenny Kravitz, Porno for Pyros and the resurrection of the Velvet Underground.  We thought we also saw a particularly cool acid jazz outfit at the very end of the weekend and instead found out, after the event, that we'd seen Wynton Marsalis.

There was, as you can tell from that last comment, a great deal of smoking going on.  Less drinking.  Even less eating for some reason (we kept forgetting - apart from the newfound joy of cinnamon donuts).  But alot of smoking.



Amusingly this fact was particularly scrutinised by D - an old friend from school who we'd bumped into (the Thursday afternoon ritual of bumping into unexpected people remarkably included me) - she was also there with friends but had found the whole experience to be in direct contravention of and contradiction to her evangelical beliefs - she'd decided to spend the rest of the weekend 'witnessing' and my rollup was not what she'd hoped to, indeed, witness.

The weather was amazing - nonstop sun - and the atmosphere was relaxed - it was, in many respects the final fling of Glasto's hippy origins, before it started its journey towards today's supercool/expensive status.

It was exhausting - I spent the entirety of the Orbital gig sitting on the floor, amongst thousands and thousands of standing, swaying gig-goers.

I came back - to Uni - very dirty, very happy and dying for the loo - there was no way that I was using one of those 'long drops'.  No way.

Tuba

My tuba playing days began at school when my music teacher, surprise surprise, needed a tuba player.  I resisted for short while and had a reasonable stab at the trombone.  But there was no doubt in my teacher's mind - I was the next school tuba player.

She threw me in at the deep end from a very early stage, getting me playing in various school orchestras before I'd even learnt all the 'fingerings' for the various notes.  The instrument that I, at that stage, borrowed from the school, was a very nasty piece of plumbing indeed.  It smelt of dust.  It tasted of mould.  I carried it all the way home, only for it to lay unplayed until I had to carry it all the way back again.

Until I inherited the school's premier instrument and I seemed to accelerate through the echelons of tuba-playing achievement with some pace.  I had two notable teachers - both of whom seemed to be on the borders of a variety of personal issues the majority of the time.  One was the daughter of an eminent, deceased (tragically - car crash) woodwind player.  The other was a young, handsome friend of hers who ultimately got edged out for getting too familiar to some of his pupils - just hanging out and drinking, to my knowledge - resulting in some teenage tantrums from both him and pupils alike - so unseemly. He lived in the local YMCA.

I played highly technical studies and topend concerti (with a then-friend's father playing some geriatric accompaniment).  But I was a terrible sight-reader and not a natural, ear-led musician.  So I had to practice.  And I did so in the old garage - half converted into a 'store' and smelling of dead stick insects.

I played in school band trips (the aforementioned - a lot of drinking) and nearly dropped in the tuba into the Rhine.  And I bought my own tuba with an inheritance and took it to University.  More carrying up and down the road and auditioning to a biased University Orchestra audition panel (the chair was known to me from school (she died, as I might have said, from a brain tumour, far too young) who politely ignored my attempts at sight-reading.  I batted away the come-ons of a neighbouring trombonist and an over-enthusiastic clarinettist.  The Uni Orchestra conductor was hilarious - all hair and loud breathing.

And then it was all over.  Running back to digs from a Teenage FanClub gig at the Student's Union, I fell over in the street and broke my collarbone.  I didn't feel the full impact of that break until late in the night - such was the numbing power of everything I'd imbibed that evening.  No more tuba-carrying for me.  A shame, as I'd worked hard at learning the solo for Pictures at an Exhibition after a mortifying attempt at sight-reading it some weeks earlier.

And the tuba stayed, discarded and collecting dust until I sold it.  And bought a sofa instead.

Ch....

Now, he was the sort of boy people write books and plays about - or more notably poems.

His mother died in mysterious circumstances a few months after we all got to know him.  He was effortlessly posh, floppy-haired, scruffy and lived above the pub at the bottom of the road rather than in student halls or digs.  And an orphan too.  Swoon.

Everyone adored him.  He could therefore do whatever he wanted.  He was unreliable and loving.  He was dismissive and ruthlessly commited to your friendship.  He was the love of all our lives and and an utter unloveable cad.

He was a talented actor and featured in the majority of plays that I was involved with.  He really was very good indeed.  There's no flipside to that - apart from his apparent disregard for the need to turn up to rehearsals.

 

He used to organise (by telepathy and osmosis - people just used to gravitate to these occasions) alldayers and lock-ins at the pub.  Trying to get into one of these lock-ins almost got me arrested for feverishly jumping up and down outside the building in the hope to be admitted.  The only attention I attracted was that of a passing police car.

He was obsessed with Withnail & I - we were, as a result, early adopters of that particular student cult.  And people would never forget (and talked about endlessly if it happened to them) the night that they spent talking to him - all night until the sun rose.  Myself included.

 

He was, of course, damaged goods.  He was, of course, no different to the rest of us - he just had added aura!

We tried to continue the story after Uni when he ended up, surprise suprise, living above a pub in London.   But it just ended.  Suddenly.  Until around 10 years later when C bumped into him in the supermarket and arranged a get-together.  On the way home from that get-together, she and I spoke on the phone.  "Well - that's never going to happen again, is it?" we both said, relieved.

C..

I've forgotten C.  How rude. 

We were aware of each other in the early days of our respective involvements in Theatre Group (more on that another day).  But it was a little further down the line that we came into closer contact with each other. 

I was giving a really bad performance of Howard (the upstart boss) in Death of a Salesman and she was 'producer' of the 'Premier League' production of Troilus and Cressida.  It was Premier League in that it was being performed in the 'proper' theatre whereas I was appearing in a mere lecture theatre.   It was amusing to discover, again further down the line, that she was also performing in it - coming in during the course of Act I, in a rather unflattering smock, telling all assembled that they were well and truly doomed.  Thanks Cassandra.





But it was an early Summer weekend when both productions were rehearsing and we all ended up at the pub for lunch.  Burgers and Castlemaine XXXX's were assembled and the majority of the company drifted away after lunch, making rough plans to reconvene in the evening.


But me and C were deep in conversation.  A mutual and passionate interest in the theatre, gay plays particularly and, most importantly, Vietnam films, was the source of meandering and excited discussion.  The morbidity of this interest was a particular source of fascination as was the fact that although the genre was more-or-less pertinent to our age-group, the subject matter was, of course, not.

 

It wasn't until the previously-disassembled group started reconvening that we realised that we'd been talking (and, indeed, drinking) all afternoon.  Non stop. 

We've remained friends ever since.  She's not necessarily part of the same 'circle' as those mentioned before.  But we see each other reasonably regularly.  Drinking, and rarely eating, but always talking.  Non stop.

Inhale

I inhaled.  I inhaled a lot.

I'd gotten myself into smoking weed with the reprobate son of my music teacher (who I adored, spent a great deal of time with (I'll come onto India) and am still in touch with).  There was many an evening spent, laughing gut-wrenchingly, in his enormous, hammock-hung, bedroom, with just a detachable doorhandle for security.  Blowing dope smoke into the plastic ball that his hamster was playing in was a particular delight.

I continued and developed the habit at University and needed little encouragement to smoke through coke cans, bongs and very poorly rolled up joints.  We can fairly assume that a very large proportion of students were doing it in those days (I'm sure they're doing considerably worse these days) and it wasn't something that particularly worried me, with respect to longer term affects or, indeed, incarceration.

There were some who abstained rigorously (L, for example, thought the whole thing ridiculous and risible) and some who experimented unexpectedly.  There were times when U was trying to give up smoking when she decided that smoking weeed was the best way to get herself off of tobacco.  There were times when we ate brownies.  And there was a time when I ate it neat.  I threw up.  I threw up all over the downstairs toilet and passed out in amongst it all, only to wake up and gather the wherewithall to write a note to my housemates that I'd clean the mess up in the morning - something that impressed them disproportionately.

And there was a time when I tried something a little bit stronger.  I was with C and J (I'll come back to them another time too).  We started out at this enormous student pub, half way into town, and spent the rest of the evening aimlessly wandering the streets.  Children's playareas.  Other people's houses.  Parks.  Back at J's house, in his attic room.  It was rubbish.  It did affect me - absolutely.  It kept me awake all blinking night.  My abiding memory of the evening was J finding out that it was my first time.  The disdain in his voice that prevailed from thereon was not the substance talking - no paranoid delusions there.  Just disdain.  Thanks for that.

I never reached the point with any of these escapades, where I did the whole 'you're amazing', 'I love you', 'what's the point of money man....' thing.  My detachment, my rationality, my cynicism, seemed to stay intact throughout.

I just enjoyed the laughing.  The laughing was great.

Me and God are good

I did a great deal of experimenting that first year - most of it not very dramatic.  There was everything from playing a recital in the local(ish) vegetarian restaurant with a rather reluctant ex-school friend(ish) through to 'light opera society' (one rehearsal of The Gondoliers was enough to put me off), parachuting (numerous trips to goodness knows where to be shouted at by an ex-army officer, only to find that this particular activity involved extreme fear and not insignificant pain - but a rather natty outfit for the jump itself - I had a flared jumpsuit!), bungy jumping (as before on the fear front - I kept my eyes closed for the majority of the experience - the weekend was most notable for the journey to France), the aforementioned three-legged pub crawl dressed as an egyptian mummy (loo roll - lots of it) and church.

Now - many people have church-y phases and experiences and mine, I'm sure, was nothing special.  But, for a time, I really looked forward to going to church.

The University Christian Union was, for some reason, something of a turn-off.  That wasn't for me.  The local "Community Church" (church-speak for Evangelical) was for me.  R introduced me (it was, of course, his duty and responsibility as a son of a Minster to do so) and came with me the majority of the times.

R also introduced me to the University Chaplain who I had a brief conversation with - most notably about the church's attitude to homosexuality.  He said, quite accurately, that I clearly was experiencing some sort of calling.  He asked, at the end of our conversation, if I'd like us to pray together.  I said "sure".  He said a few words of prayer.  I wasn't sure if I was supposed to say something out loud too.

The big schtick of the Community Church was this theatrical 'journey' that each service went on.  The music started quietly - it had started before you came in.  And it gradually built and built over the course of an hour - to this climax of clapping, hand waving and, in some quarters, speaking in tongues.  And then we went through this lengthy decrescendo as things like the sermon and, of course, the collection came into play.  But it's that first hour of music that I remember the most.  "You did not wait for me to draw near to you.....And I'm forever grateful to you....I'm forever grateful for the cross" is a particular song that I still remember quite clearly. 

The other thing that I remember particularly clearly is the extreme discomfort I felt, at the end of each service, when those who were ready to do so, went down to the front to be personally prayed for and to receive Christ into their lives.  I watched in awe as people fell to the ground, hands were laid on and the singing softly continued.  "Do you want to go down?"  said R.  "No - not today" I said.

We'd go to the pub afterwards.  We'd often go, grossly hungover.  I was perfectly honest with friends, family and housemates about going.  Some heated discussions with U about who was going to heaven and who wasn't occasionally ensued but, in general, as ever, I just got on with it.

And then, much further down the line, I just stopped.  I don't particularly remember a moment of enlightenment or insult.  I didn't fall particularly 'in' or 'out' with the whole thing.  I just stopped.

A friend, the other day, intimated that she assumed that I was an atheist.  "Me and God are good" I said.

pasts coming together

I guess I've always been super-proud of not, necessarily, turning my back on my past or my past friends.  I keep up with everyone that I want to, regardless of geography or others' opinions. Note - everyone I WANT to!

But that means, of course, that the past collides with the present sometimes. 

The begining of the end of the intense period of friendship that E and I experienced began during university.  We're still friends now but this was the moment when we enterted the 'new phase' that we are now, arguably, in.  She came to visit me at Uni for a ball.  She didn't have the best of times.  Neither, frankly, did I.  She wasn't having the best of times at her college.  I wasn't sure what I was having.  It was awkward.  I don't think she came back.  We still wrote alot.  She told me about this guy that was making a play for her - she was finding it excrutiating - he was a Cornish organist with a pasty in a plastic bag.  She ended up marrying him.  It was a happy ending in every respect. The pain that she was experiencing - the loneliness - the uncertainty (both at college and when at home too) - caused me pain too.  But life moves so quickly, in so many different directions, when you're that age.

The 'boys' came a great deal.  They'd sleep, five or six of them, on my bedroom floor. They'd drink a great great deal.  The 20p pints in the Students Union were very exciting for those of them who had gone straight out to work.  Some of my newer friends found them interesting.  Some of them found them baffling.  Especially the incident around the time of a birthday that involved a blowup doll.  The increasingly incessant socialising covered off a number of different cities.  We visited each other - went to others' parties and Uni Events. Sometimes as a 'pack'.  Other times as individuals.  Lives crossed over and sometimes complicated social and sexual tensions would arise.  Old politics would meet new people who didn't care about the past.  They didn't know about it.  Did I mention that there was lots of drinking involved.

I guess the culmination was a plethora of 21st birthday parties - in a multitude of towns and cities.  Mine was at Uni but shared with S, who was at college elsewhere, and with R.  Old and New colliding.  People came from all around.  There was a suburban lads' drinking party in one room.  There were hippies in another, dancing and experimenting with Thai Chi moves. The next door neighbours' husband had died the day before.  We checked with her whether it was OK to carry on.  And we did.  We partied on.  You could say things like that then.....

E...

Only one more friend from Uni really warrants an individual entry.  A saxaphone-playing Dane who took forthrightness to a whole new level.

Oh the Danes and their directness.  As we shall see, I have extensive experience in this area.  And she, I think, was the first.  An ability to say what she thinks and to cause unbelievable degrees of upset and offense and to not be able to take, in the moment, responsibility for one's actions.  All because there's nothing wrong with "getting it out there" and saying what you think.  Oh the Danes.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  She introduced herself to me in the Music class that I was taking as a 'subsid'.  She said that we were doing the same class combinations.  I hadn't noticed.  And guys noticed E.  The scandinavian blond with, I am told, perfect breasts.

We fell asleep in that class, together, alot.  We studied for it, together.   Well, I did.  She wanted to chat, gossip and tell me the latest news of her and her lank-haired boyfriend (the announcement of who's existence put paid to my asking her out - a pre-planned strategy that fell on its face for a variety of reasons, at all stages, including that one).  We got told off in that class for all of the above.  That was embarrassing.

She became one of the 'gang' but kept a discrete distance - she notably didn't fancy R and he didn't fancy her.  She had terrible teeth.  But I don't think that was anything to do with it.  She became very close friends with U - something that continues to this day.

She was very into jazz - something that I resurrected my own interest in thanks to her - she didn't cause it, per se. She played a mean "Starsky and Hutch" - something she did to great roars of approval in the 'ballroom' of the Student Union for a 'Ball' - the inverted commas are due to the fact that those definitions are somewhat exaggeratations.

And towards the end of the first year she turned to me, in a class, and said that she'd heard me say that I was planning on travelling to Indonesia after University, to hear gamalan music played first hand.  I was planning on going with J - emulating his free, grass-smoking spirit in a way that I wasn't quite sure I could fulfil.  She said that she would like to come too.  Would that be OK?   My first instinct was surprise at the presumption, the directness and, even, the imposition.  I, of course, said "yes".  She, of course, held me to that promise, two years later.

U...

U was, perhaps the cause of my lengthy forray into hippy-dom.  She was already sporting what we tended to call "guatamalan tops" as well as beads, indian pants and the smell of rollups before she arrived at University.

She lived at the Halls of Residence across the road from mine.  Hers were self-catering and, somehow, she'd been given rooms adjacent to some kindred spirits.  On reflection, the suburban dorks that I was quartered next to were probably good matches, on paper, for me too!

She was also on the same course as myself, L and R and, as a result, we would find ourselves walking back to our Halls together.  As a result we became friends.

And what drama. She had, as a British, second-generation, Pakistani, lapsed Muslim... issues.  She certainly had issues with her mother.  And she had issues around every guy that she dated.  An abiding memory of those early days - that first year - was of standing in the rain, watching tears run down her face, as she silently mourned the betrayal of a man called Tim.  I hated Tim for a variety of reasons of my own - principally, because he was a member of the 'JCR committee', a bunch of second years who 'ran' the halls of residence - they were self-consciously cool, creative and slightly aggressive.

And what drama.  Her experimentation with drugs.  He inability to hold her drink and her determination to drink more and more and more.  Her experimentation with other religions.  Her total inability to eat.  She got thinner and thinner.  She ate the occasional slice of toast.  And smoked an inordinate number of rollups.   When she wasn't introducing me to the wonders of Superkings.  The cigarettes of suburban slappers.  Suburban slappers, me and U.

She loved dancing, poetry and occasionally swifting from chaos-ridden hoarder, to stripped down minimalism (to the point where, on occasions, we thought that she was either preparing to leave or preparing to die). 

She, of course, had occasional issues around self-harm and an inability to contemplate a future - a future back living with her mother, a life where all the freedom she was now experiencing would be taken away in a trice.

Complex barely covers it.  The coolest person I'd ever met. 

We're still friends.  She's gay now too.

L...

Oh L - you're still one of my dearest friends.  Twenty Two years later....

We met in the queue to register for my course.  Everyone's got a 'met in the queue' story from University.  L is my most notable one.  She didn't seem the chattiest of types.  Maybe it was my ghastly brown leather jacket from Wembley Market that put her off.  She has always been immaculately turned out to a degree well beyond her means - always.  Students are not known to have an in-depth appreciation for £300 shirts.  L did.  L does.



I knew where she was from rather well.  There was at least a connection there.  She didn't seem particularly happy.  She seemed, perhaps, a little sceptical of me. Perhaps it was the leather jacket.   She was going back home that weekend rather than the plethora of balls and parties that were being laid on to extract ££s from Freshers.  I'd see her again at the first lecture.

She, of course, quickly became a major feature of my University Life and my life in general.  In some respects it was a deeply imperfect match.  She liked designer clothes.  I liked baggy jumpers and yellow t-shirts.  She liked Lloyd Cole.  I liked musical theatre.  She liked that lecturer that gave me the Saussure assignment.  I hated him.

 

She was and is incredibly loyal.  Once you were friends you were friends.  She would call, daily.  She would call round, daily.  No complaints there.  She did and does like it when you see things her way!  Admittedly, so do I.

Our first major breakdown was, with hindsight, based upon whether or not we were going to get together.  I'm sure I sent out signals.  My version of them, at least.  She most certainly did too.  Her version.  It was clear, after a short amount of time, that it wasn't going to happen.  She decided, from thereon, that I was utterly hateful.  Something that she lovingly informed everyone who surrounded us of.  But she still called daily.  She still came round daily.

I went round one night, late at night, to tell her that enough was enough.  We'd had a disasterous evening.  She'd insisted that I walked her home.  We did so in fuming silence.  Enough was enough.  She went straight home for the rest of the week.  Things slowly improved from thereon.  They improved, also thanks to the fact that she moved into with R and a couple of other people.   She settled down.  She did, and does, take her time to settle down.

Still friends after 22 years.  We're going away together next week.

A fierce and determined intelligence.  A sad insecurity.  An impatiently high standard.  Procrastination dressed up as consultation.  A plethora of pointless regret.  A sense of style.  A sense of fun.  A sense of fun that's still there.  After twenty two years.

R...

 

I think, in honesty, R was going through a similar process of unacknowledged self-discovery as I was.  He was the slightly podgy, very speccy, adopted (as we later found out), son of a clergyman who'd had a variety of bases over the years.  Now the extra weight was off, the contact lenses were in and he was ready to GO!


And good for him.  He was undoubtedly, one of the best looking men in our year at university and he, unlike me, was going to make the most of it!

I met him through L - they lived in the same halls - and we all did the same course.  We soon - me, L, R and U became a 'mini gang' - and it was great fun - there's no denying it.

R would often put his foot in his mouth to great acclaim - the 'you're not bad looking yourself' line that he'd inadvertently come up with was often repeated in an attempt to bring him down a peg or two but his charm won out every single time.





I, occasionally, for some reason, seemed to take it upon myself to act as his moral guide and guardian.  Quite uninvited, it must be said.  I'd berate him for treading on other men's sexual territory (including my own) only to be ignored time and again.

His self-exloratory was as untempered as my own.  He has the 'rubbish hippy' phase too.  And one involving a leather jacket with Lenny Kravitz painted on the back.  And one where he was going to be a writer.  And another when he was going (at my invitation) going to be my guide into christianity.

 

The girlfriends came and went.  And came and went.  And a small smattering of men fell for him too.  I remember, one night, when he'd been out on the prowl, he came knocking on my window (I was on the ground floor) for a drink, a smoke and some sympathy for his unfruitful prowling.  I was in bed and answered the 'door/window' wrapped in just my duvet.  "Are you naked under there?" he said.   "Yes" I said.  "Give us a look then" he said.  Maybe I should have done.

He said, from the outset, that our friendships were going to be shortlived.  He saw this as pragmatism.  We saw it as desparately uncommitted and sad.  People move on.  They drift apart.  They remain friends for ever.  They lose touch.  I thought about him alot.  I probably fantasised about him too.  He came to visit me at home - he slept with two of my female friends.  Maybe more.  He told me, on the first visit, that my friends were more fun than I was.

He's married now and has three children.

We're still in touch.

Happy?

I find it difficult to evaluate whether I was happy in that first year.  I know that there were times when I wasn't - most notably when lying, cold in my bedroom on a Wednesday afternoon, smelling the cabbage-like emanations from the cafeteria below, listening to yet another godawful rehearsal by the Hall houseband, having nothing better to do and nowhere better to go.  I know I wasn't during the third 'getting to know you Ball' of the first week when the music was too loud to get to know anyone whatsoever and  the people I'd decided to get to know better left one by one.  I know I wasn't when wondering how on earth I was going to get out of living with the people on my corridor in the second year.  I know I wasn't when I was letting L down for not being as into her as she was into me.  I know I was most certainly not happy when a lecturer gave me the much-dreaded first presentation of the year as an assignment - he'd taken an immediate dislike to me - it was on Saussure.  I know I wasn't happy with the morons who 'ran' the JCR of my halls of residence - with their aloofness and fratboy humour and behaviour.  And I know I wasn't happy on the occasions when I arrived back at my ugly, souless building, and looked up and sighed.
I don't measure my happiness or lack thereof by the intellectual stimulation that I was receiving - as we will discover, the intellectual stimulation that was being transmitted from the English faculty was the least most important aspect of my university life - either in terms of happiness or any other deciding factor.

And I know I wasn't happy when during a break between terms, E turned up to the local pub and 'caught' me smoking - she fled back to her car saying that I should go back to my 'proper' friends and my cigarette and that she'd never felt more lonely in her life.

But I know that I treated my unhappiness with a large dose of detachment.  There wasn't any penchant, any more, for sitting in bathrooms with handfulls of pills.  And I know that there was a large amount of happiness (and booze) to contend with too.

 
I know I was happy being the 'life and soul' of my 'gang' on my floor.  I know I was happy meeting new people - people who surprised my old friends that they were my friends now too.  I know I was happy being the first in line for the bar of an evening, with the bonkers Welshman from my corridor in tow.  I know I was happy doing the 'usual' student things of fancydress three-legged pubcrawls and having friends to stay in their droves (sleeping on the floor in their masses and marvelling at the 'animal house'  nature of proceedings in some quarters).  I know I was happy playing music, going to gigs, eating at Fatty Arbuckles and staying out until dawn.  I know I was happy on RagRaids - being one of those ghastly tin-rattling students in white coats and getting plastered afterwards.  I jogged, I went to aerobics (I went to hospital after one particular session!).  I know I was happy, going to the movies in the debating chamber, making new discoveries and never forgetting "Thelma and Louise".  I know I loved singing in the choir, on occasions, and falling asleep in my music appreciation classes.  I know I was happy, cycling (on the occasions I cycled and didn't leave my bike to rest in the shed) down the hill from campus to the halls, sometimes with someone sitting on the parcelrack.   Sometimes, in the middle of the night after a midnight showing of "The Exorcist".

I'm sure, on reflection, that I was happy.