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.