Thinking about girlfriends

What WAS I thinking?  I wouldn't say that the answer to that was 'nothing'.  And I wouldn't say that I was trying to shut my true sexual self into a box (or indeed a closet).  In many respects the hard work of the previous years (coupled with the social awkwardness and ostracising that goes with that) had resulted in me being somewhat asexual.  But I do clearly remember waking up towards the end of my first term thinking - 'I really should do something about this - I really should do something about this this year'.

 

I had had, as we know, some forrays in the world of girlfriend-dom.  Many with E (soft kisses, fumblings in cinemas and theatres) and some minor ones here and there in between.   I was convinced, at one point, that I was in love with A - something that notably resulted in a late night stroll in the neighbouring village, dressed as the Phantom of the Opera.  But now I was a grownup.   Now I was at university.  It was time for business.

The two notables were L and A.

In the meantime there was a strange non-starter with a couple of girls from the neighbouring halls of residence - we'd spend a lot of time drinking together until G told me that there was more than drinking on their minds and it all came to a rather argumentative halt.  My brother thought that it was all about C - the girl upstairs, who remains a friend.  No.  Just No.  There were some strange arguments with R, now and then, when he moved in (systematically, time after time) on women I expressed only the vaguest of interest in.



L was an experience.  A friend of a friend.  Very blond.  Very good looking.  From Essex.  She was into me, I heard.  I thought I was into her.   Much excitment amongst the plain friends ensued.  A one night half-stand that involved no more than half naked fumbling and grinding ensued.  In the morning I said I wasn't so sure.  She said 'it's too late now'.  I started keeping my distance.  Big Time. I tried to gallantly improve things a week or so later.   She sensibly had seen the light and kept her distance in return.



A was a bigger experience.  A friend of a friend.  An unconvincing hippy (as I had become at the time).  Candles.  Tie-Die.  Dust.  Nose piercing.  She was into me, I heard.  I thought I was into her.  Much excitment from the mutual friend.  A lot of kissing.  A lot of pretending.  A one night half-stand that involved a lot of half naked fumbling and grinding.  A little more action this time.  But no more than a bit of over-enthuisastic mutual that ended quickly and stickily.  Yuck.  It really wasn't working for me.  A few days later, surprise suprise, she said that she wasn't 'feeling it'.  No Shit.  We stayed friends.  She ended up marrying a banker. 

I even came back to University after the Christmas break deciding that I was going to 'go for' either E or L (another one).  I went round to see E and she started telling me about a boy she was into - it wasn't me.  I went round to see L - see was fed up and going home that weekend.

The plain chums were very disappointed indeed.  And disappointment shifted into suspicion when I said that I wanted to direct a play.  A play called 'Bent'.

And I was still a virgin.

Finding Myself

In the first few weeks of University, I did enough 'finding myself' to last a lifetime.

Some of the time, I was in home territory - hanging out with the 'inbetweeners' and, dare I say it, leading the pack somewhat.  In that crowd I was, I guess, the most socially able and the better looking (the competition wasn't up to much) one.  And they were nice people - we were of a 'type' and I was neither excited nor bored by them.

 

Some of the time, I was learning how to sweatily mosh at Balls and social nights - pushing other sweary moshers around to the Wonderstuff and drinking enormous amounts of snakebite and black.

Some of the time, I was wide-eyededly learning a new language of intellectual cool - new bands, new poets, new writers, new film-makers - none of which was coming from my tutors.

Some of the time, I was back in my room, wondering what I was doing here, listening to the awful student indy band practicing in the bar underneath my window.

In the first few months, I did enough 'finding myself' to last a second lifetime.

The brown leather jacket from Wembley Market was unceremoniously ditched in favour of a trenchcoat from the A&N store.  Converse shoes and baggy jumpers were adopted, as were beads and a canvas bag. 

And I, of course, started smoking.  With a passion.  I'd always, long before this time, imagined myself as a smoker.  My constant running backwards and forwards to the bar ('does anyone want another drink - i do!') was indicative of a certain nervous energy.  But I can remember, the morning after having tried smoking for the first time, putting the packet in my bag and R saying "are you going to do it again?".  Hell Yes.  I'm a smoker now.

In that first year, I did enough 'finding myself' to last a hundred lifetimes and I got nowhere near finding myself.

I had a girlfriend.  I parachuted.  I bungy-jumped.  I went to Balls (E came to one) and Parties.  I queued for the phone.  I queued for the post.  I drank everything with 'black'.  I drank in a bar where people pee'd in the bin.  I never ate breakfast.  I made passionate friendships.  And equally passionate enemies.

They were great times.  They sucked.

Where to start?

The final farewell tour

The ensuing Summer was the longest 'farewell tour' on record.  As I said - send off after send off.  There must have been some part time jobs thrown in there but the send-offs were the focus of all available attention (my friends and I were the doyens of the Little Chef and Asda, on-and-off throughout our late teens - apart from S who found cleaning the milkshake machine so nauseating he didn't last the evening shift).

I'd also, of course, completed two major music exams, an "S" Level and achieved relative greatness in my "A" Levels.  The landmarks were coming along thick and fast.  I took my first overseas holiday that involved flying rather than a long ferry journey - Ibiza with E and her family.  I have two abiding memories of that trip.  Firstly - the fact that I was, in fact, quite subdued.   I was criticised quite heavily by E for being quiet - she'd had me invited as company - not as a mute.  Secondly - when I did finally break my silence it was to have an all-out row about the merits, or not, of musical improvisation over mastering the masters!  And thirdly - yes, thirdly - my first taste of sunstroke.  What fun.  It really was one of the best Summer holidays I'd ever had.

There was also, of course, a lot of drinking.  And curry-eating it seemed.  Everyone, all of a sudden, was into curry.  Eating at the High Street Curry House through to making one's own during the day with ingredients bought afresh (my parents kitchen was far from equipped for such things).

Everything was done as a group.  No evening or event could be conducted without an enormous round of decision-making phone calls followed by an assemblage of twenty or so.  And we weren't even the cool kids - goodness knows what organisational feats were required for the popular ones.  A notable excursion was a Rocky Horror escapade to London - notable for the lasagne I made before departing, followed by bumping into my piano teacher at the train station in full drag, followed by, somehow, being accompanied by someone from work who arrived fantastically drunk and who heckled in a variety of un-prescribed ways throughout.  He wasn't the individual from those holiday jobs who I remember best - I remember a slightly older, reddiesh-haired chap who I spent the afternoon cleaning a walk-in fridge with, signing tunes from "Blues in the Night" as we did so.  He leant me a video of the making of Les Miz.   Hhhmmm.

The dramas seemed to be over.  We were too old for the 'who's friends with who' debates.  There was no time left for brooding over which parties you were invited to and which you weren't.  There was too much water under the bridge for all these people of such an advanced age to begrudge perceived or actual slights.  It was all over.  This was just the rapturous, albeit brief, encore.

Before you knew it you were being dumped in a Halls of Residence on the south coast by a father who was quick to say that your room wasn't as nice as your brothers' and that he'd be off now.

You're not leaving me here!!

Interlude

When I began writing this (which I've maintained, I'll admit, only intermittently, from thereon) it was, in many respects, with the sole intent of 'putting to bed' some demons.  I felt, then, that the best way to dispell some rather mundane and seemingly insignificant aspects of my past that had continued to pop back up and haunt me at inopportune moments, was to write them down.  And it's worked.  That's not to say that life hasn't thrown a fresh set of rather mundane and seemingly insignficant moments to haunt me in the meantime but, for the time being, mission has indeed been accomplished.

I don't want writing this to become a chore and I certainly never intended (or intend) for it to become a public platform for my views on today or, indeed, yesterday.  But I've kind of enjoyed it and appreciated it being there.  I think I'll keep it up.

So much to come. So soon.

My final couple of years at school were, in many respects, the most formative.  It bemuses me to hear, from friends, how their own kids' experience of school is so similar to their own - how the early years were the best - how it was all about looking forward to going to school to see one's friends.  Not for me.

My final couple of years were where I started to find myself and find my place.  I knew that I wasn't going to get invited to the 'right' parties and I was perfectly comfortable with that.  I went to my friend's parties and they might not have been the 'right' ones but they were right for me - right for us.  We went to the pub - we drank too much for our age - we enjoyed the things we enjoyed and we enjoyed each other for who we were. 

I also found my academic niche.  I took a combination of A-Levels that I wanted to take and not a combination that my parents thought would get me a job (i.e. the combination my brother took) and I worked really really hard.   My memories of studying at that time involved the sheer terror of economics tests through to being the last one to bed, night after night, whilst I memorised everything from the latest maths formula, to a line of poetry, to a factor affecting Demand.  It was the hardest I'd ever worked academically (and ever would) and it was combined with two music grade 8's and a sense of willing myself to work harder and to test myself further - something that I still have (or indeed suffer from) today.

I also had a taste of Public School life - I had a significant birthday on a week's exchange to a leading private school - an unforgettable week of dishy posh boys, their preconceptions of us and their holidays in Kenya jet ski-ing.  The ones who exchanged in the opposite direction enjoyed themselves even more - apart from the one who went into self-imposed exile after a night out on the tiles that ended with him puking over my bedroom wall.

The final band-tour was carnage.  Tears and Tantrums in Denmark.  Youthful protestations of never losing touch, lives having been changed and never wanting it to end.

The final day of school was similarly strewn.  I was voted "most likely to become a member of the royal family".  An extended pub lunch was followed by a bladder-busting economics lesson.  And the final Summer was upon us.

How could it all be over so quickly?  How could we, all of a suddden, be in a place where we were having farewell party after farewell party?  How extraordinary to be given the most wonderful of send-offs by friend's parents.  How amazing to think that some of the most desparate of moments could have seemed so significant when compared to the terror and anticipation that awaited.

So much to come.  Thanks, in whole, to what had passed.

Go on.  Have a good cry.

Languishing at the back

OK - back to the s**t at sports issue....

I've already mentioned that there were, luckily, one or two teacher's at our school who weren't the architypal gym teacher nazis.  There was one or two (striding around in their very short shorts, whatever the weather, their office fun of fawning girls) but they weren't the entirety.

Mr R took pains to encourage and praise effort as well as success and I'll always remember him for that (as well as his terrible history classes - but never mind).

Football was a joke for me.  I was 'encouraged' onto the junior school team as well as the cubscout (and scout) team.  And I was terrible!  No co-ordination.  No skill and risk-taking bravery.  Truly terrible.  I was much more keen to be the sub than be on the team.  My Dad always used to come and support me.  Poor Man.  Must have been so embarassed.  I particularly remember by brother pasting mud onto me at half time to make it look as if I'd seen some action.

And, of course, our school majored on football.  When you've got three games slots a week you're going, therefore, to end up doing a lot of football.

And cross-country running (languishing at the back).  And cricket (cowering in the nets).  And rounders (surprisingly good).  And long jump (ditto - occasionally).  And trampolining (OK once - the second time, disasterous).  And gymnastics (can't touch my toes - still can't).

And golf was my Dad's game.  God I tried.  Lessons.  Going around the nine hole course on my own whilst my Dad did his 18.  Caddying.  The pitch and putt at weekeneds with S.  The occasionally surprising, soaring shot on a golfing holiday in Scotland.

As we got older we were allowed more choices as to what sports we could 'specialise' in. I, with all the other "C Team"ers, chose Hockey - out of sight at the other end of the school's site.  G and I later chose squash (the court without the viewing gallery).  I thought I got rather good at that.  Until I played someone who wasn't G.

It just wasn't for me.  Didn't bring out a competitive spirit or a passion or a sense of potential collective achievement.  I appreciate, of course, the importance of good health and letting off steam.  I recognise the fact that presenting kids with the opportunities with which to make future, informed, choices is important.

I was getting on the tube the other day after having gone to the theatre, on my own.  I was blissfully happy after having had a life-enriching experience that connected with me on so many levels.  The tube was irritatingly packed.  With football fans on their way back from a match.  I wanted to ask one of them - "why?"  "what is it about the way that you've spent your evening?"  "how could it possibly be better than the way i've spent mine?"

I didn't of course.  I respect their passions and their choices.  I guess.

The Last Waltz

Ok - so the last band tour.  I'm sure I've skipt a whole bunch of angst that I should have covered off in great detail - but let's just say that I'll return to it.

Holidays before I was fourteen were, of course, family affairs.  The Lake District, Scotland, Wales, The Norfolk Broads.  None of them were terrible and, indeed, I have many fond memories from many of them.  Bizarrely, one particular memory pertains to spending the majority of the week in the back seat of the car, reading the novelisation of the TV Series "V".  It was brilliant.  Another one  is about my brother being very sick from a stomach flu, half way up a mountain.  And another is ENTIRELY about my brother hitting me very hard in the face because I splashed him with water when we were out in a rowing boat.  There was something in me that felt his reaction was somewhat disproportionate.

My brother and I always bought my Mum and Dad a present to say thank you for a lovely holiday....

And then it was all about school trips.  The first one was bizarre - run by the biology teacher, the deputy head and a few others - basically because they fancied a trip to the south of france.  I have some good memories of that trip but it was a very eclectic mix of students - including, thankfully, the few friends that I'd accumulated by that point.  The pictures are....spotty.

And then there were band trips.  And they were ALL about drinking.  The 'gigs' ranged from the side of a municipal swimming pool, through to a local music festival.  From a local church that made us, acoustically, sound AMAZING, through to legoland (OK - we didn't play there - but we went there).

There's a TV series, I can't remember which, that warns parents that 'the band kids' are the randiest of the lot.  In many respects this was true.   But the drinking.....

A wonderful memory of the born again Christian horn player playing drunked peekaboo behind a curtain in the hotel's bowling alley.  Disappearing down the back alley to a bar where they had no hesitation of serving us, out of sight of the teachers.  Holding hands with E.  Falling out with E when the trumpet player professed his attraction to her and she didn't want to desert me (I was fine).  He turned out to be a stalker of the highest order.  A professing her attraction to me and E not forgiving her for the duration of the Summer.  G, we've now discovered, coming out to Mr K, in the dead of night, sitting on bench, looking out at the lake.  Me and G taking it in turns to jerk off in our shared bathroom - very drunkenly.  Me and G secretly having a crush on the little trumpet player, L (not the stalker).  Carrying my musical instrument along the side of a boat whilst under the influence - I still have flashbacks (inaccurate) of it falling in.  The terrible terrible food.   Becoming friends with the music teacher's younger son (bit of a crush there too - turned into a great friendship).

And the last trip.  It was all over.  The music teacher let a few non-musical friends come along too.  One as a singer (she is, in fact, a great singer - but hers and my rendition of 'it's a quiet thing' on the boat on the way home was catastrophic).  One as a roadie (hahaha) who lived up to roady-isms of boozing and shagging.  And it was carnage.  Final flings were had.  The beach was strewn with bottles and weeping, drunken teenagers.  The concerts were inconsequential.  The boat journey home saw us staying up pretty much all night, savouring the last night of nights.  It was awesome.

And then the coach had pulled up on the school playing fields which were parched from a long, hot summer.  We unloaded our bags and instruments and said our goodbyes.  I really wanted to say something grateful and meaningful to the music teacher.  But I fluffed it - something about her having taught me so much more than music.

I like to think that she didn't say much because she was choked.  She might have just thought I was an idiot.

I think, on reflection, that it was the former.

Gregarious Lonerism

I've already mentioned how my 'default position' would be one of 'loner-ism' but that didn't stop me having a number of great friends, many of whom I still value today, many years later.  It also didn't stop me being a 'lonely loner' at times.

My satisfaction with my own company was often read by others as aloofness.  In some respects I'm sure that it, in fact, was.  Did I think that I was better than them?  In honesty, I'm sure I did.  Did I yearn for their company and what they did?  Rarely.  Although the parties and nightclubbing were a source of fascination and, at times, jealousy, when I did get invited I'd more often than not start wanting to go home at around the 9 o'clock mark, having exhausted whatever real or feigned interest I might have had in those present.  And when a party did pass muster in my view it was usually one with four or five people present rather than forty or fifty ('that's not a party' I heard cry - I disagreed).

I was often described as gregarious and, indeed, a flirt.  When circumstances required it I was the life and the soul of the party, caring more about the enjoyment, satisfaction and entertainment of others than for myself.  That doesn't mean that  I didn't, in fact, crave solitude and my own company simultaneously.  That doesn't mean that I didn't find the effort exhausting.  And that doesn't mean that I didn't (and don't) find the lack of other people caring about my happiness or satisfaction irritating.

To my friends, my bouts of lonerism and, indeed, aloofness was equally baffling.  At the time of various school trips, when a group of friends was well established by then, my propensity to (rather dangerously, perhaps) go on excursions entirely alone must have been strange.  And 'Don't complain that no-one cares about you when you don't tell us when something's wrong' was an occasional complaint as well.
 
Drinking helped.  Indeed I started early.  Mum and Dad were enlightened in that respect - working on the basis, I'm sure, of preferring to have youthful inebriation conducted in the safety of one's home rather than at the bustop at the end of the road.  I'd always, however, be the first to return to the bar (needing more to drink and/or having had a conversation reach its natural conclusion).  I'd always find myself exhausted after a particularly gregarious night - a combination of 'putting out' and being, of course, hung over.

What a sight we must have been though - an enormous gaggle of 17 year-olds, lying in the garden of the local pub - all as p***ed as each other.  One thinks that it's only today that large social gatherings are successfully conducted - thanks to social media.  In those days we spent hours on the phone assembling the necessary masses.  Highly successfully.

Years and years later, an esteemed professional psychologist on meeting me for the first time said,

"You need to be constantly 'on' - charming, gregarious and cheerful - for your job"

"I bet you'd rather be enjoying your own company wouldn't you?"

How did he know?

William Hartnell. Patrick Troughton. Jon Pertwee. Tom Baker. Peter Davison. Colin Baker. Sylvester McCoy. Paul McGann. Christopher Eccleston. David Tennant. Matt Smith.

I have, of course, got a variety of other unhealthy obsessions in my back catalogue.

Saturday lunchtime wrestling was a staple of most kids' lives in the 70s.  It was an absolute, un-negotiable feature in our household.  Dad would get home from golf with sticky buns and the TV would go on (the cleaning will have been done by this point....).  No-one didn't know who Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks were in those days.  ('easy...easy...easy').

Later in life, wrestling re-reared its head in the form of WWF.  Now - I blame L entirely for this - his house had cable and, all of a sudden, Wrestlemania and Royal Rumble were late teens (and beyond!) obsessions.  I did profess to prefer The Undertaker.  But, let's face it, any muscle-y man in pants was going to get my attention.  Including twice (or, indeed, three times) live.  Whilst at University.

Star Wars.  Still is.  I can still remember seeing the film for the first time.  Down on the South Coast, co-inciding with a visit to the grandparents.  I can remember my Mum (or perhaps it was, in fact, my Dad) saying, as they fastened my seatbelt in the back of the car afterwards saying "you've still got stars in your eyes, haven't you?".  I would have been no older than five.  I can definitely remember.

Figurines.  AT-ATs. X-Wings.  Snowmobiles.  Land Cruisers.  Canteenas.  Ewoks (whatever).  Lightsabers.  Millenium Falcolns.  Christ - it must have cost a fortune.  You wouldn't see me for HOURS.  Setting up scene after scene in my bedroom (my TINY bedroom) for reinacting all the way through or for just looking at, day after day.  Videos (I kept count of the times I watched the first film recorded from the TV - well over fifty in the first instance).  Directors Cut.  Wide Screen Version.  DVDs.  I'll still watch it, happily, today.  It will be no surprise to the reader that I, too, consider the three prequels to be pointless disappointments.  Star Wars is film and story-telling perfection.  Good vs Evil - OK it's been done before - but never better.

And Doctor Who.  It was "Queer as Folk" that revealed to me that Doctor Who is, for some reason, a particularly gay obsession.  I most definitely teared up when Vince asked Stuart whether he knew all the names of the Doctors in order.

William Hartnell.  Patrick Troughton.  Jon Pertwee.  Tom Baker.  Peter Davison.  Colin Baker.  Sylvester McCoy.  Paul McGann. Christopher Eccleston.  David Tennant.  Matt Smith.

Doctor Who is also story-telling perfection.  No matter what people have said in more recent times about things getting too complicated, it's successful because it's not - The Doctor, The Tardis, The Sonic Screwdriver, The Companion(s) and, of course, the Daleks.  You don't need to know anything else.

Yes - i know - I'm nearly 40.

i wanna live for ever.....

I've aleady mentioned that "Fame" was my film of choice and, as ever, it was a wildly inappropriate choice for a ten year old - swearing, nudity, grainy 80s arthouse-y-ness!

But the TV show was a different story entirely.  And the records.  And the multiple viewings of the Albert Hall concert on video.  And attending the "Dance into Spring" Tour at Earl's Court.  With Mum and Dad.

There are a variety of obvious reasons why a kid of my disposition will have found something to love in "Fame".  The wish-fulfillment of going to a school where loving music wasn't an unusual activity or a sign of weakness.  The dancing and singing in the cafeteria.  The dancing and the singing in general.

But the music was great.  It really was.  I wore the LP all the way through, wildly conducting to "We've got the Power" and "Desdemona".   I watched the "High Fidelity" sequence a hundred times.  I sang and cried to "Starmaker" even more times.

I, of course, wanted to be Bruno - the keyboard playing composer with the wild, shaggy hair.  But I wanted to be with Danny.  The wisecracking italian comedian and actor.

I still love it.  Its energy, passion and its message has been, in part, replicated in 'Glee'.  But it was the original and the best.

Lee Curreri is still a musian.  Debbie Allen directs.  Gene Anthony Ray is gone.  And Carlo Imperato is, I think, a hot tub salesman.  *sigh*

Oh Captain My Captain!

I had a variety of utterly inspiring teachers at school and, indeed, some slightly less inspiring ones too. 

Mr K introduced me to opera - something I will be eternally grateful for.   He let younger students join the Sixth Form Theatre Club for when the trips were to ENO and not to the West End.  My first experience was therefore Jonathan Miller's Rigoletto and the rest is history (he says, listening to Tristan right now).

Mr W was an extraordinary character.  He claimed to have been a judge on Come Dancing before his teaching days and, indeed, his choreographic abilities were brought into play for a school production or too.  For some reason he was profoundly unpopular with other members of my class - something that I found particularly baffling.  I was even told by a member of IR (she knows who she is) to stop smiling (and most certainly laughing) in his classes.  For goodness sake.  He had an extraordinary way of  encouraging a particularly writerly style in his students (you were guaranteed a higher mark if you addressed your essays to "My Dear Reader").  He did make a gaff or two though.  One was an extraordinary outburst at the class at the evils of sharing and copying work.  He didn't realise that a student had, by mistake, submitted their essay twice and that's why there was a certain familiarity around the content he was reading, the second time around.  The other one was slightly less forgivable.  He came in one morning extolling the evils of his trip to the theatre the night before - he'd never been more upset or offended - he'd been to see La Cage aux Folles.  Oh Dear.

He'd always promised a school trip to Petticote Lane to sample the best salt beef sandwiches in London.  It never happened.

Miss C was ALL about Anthony & Cleo - her 'friends, romans, countrymen' was awesome - as was her advice on how to handle the difficulties I was having with conducting the junior girls choir!  Miss L made maths achievable.  Mrs W was an inspiration to my music-making and, indeed, to my life in general.  Mr B got EVERYONE an "A" in Economics thanks to his particular techniques of fear and learning the factors for demand by rote.  Miss J took an extraordinary dislike to me and made it abundantly clear after a school play rehearsal once - not entirely fair I felt (and still feel now).  Mrs F put me on stage and made me dance - she wrote me the nicest card before opening night, commending (no doubt, inaccurately) my comedic skills.  She also was the only teacher to give me a detention (for bunking off games to rehearse a scene from Pygmalion) which she later retracted (when the rendition of said scene was so AWESOME no doubt!).  Mr R put me off History for ever (until most recently) but took pains to develop and commend even the most untalented of sportsmen (now - how often do you hear that about games teachers!).  Although Miss J wasn't necessarily an inspiration she most certainly provided the comedic moment of the year when she locked S in the stationary cupboard for bad behaviour - something that still gets mentioned every now and then these days!

Mr B - Headmaster.  An extraordinary man who made a suburban comprehensive school into a centre of excellence and achievement.  His standards were incredibly high and he took personal pains to encourage and enforce them.  From standing up when a teacher enters the room, to school uniform standards, to a sense of faith, to discipline, to a love for Geography, through to knowing exactly what was expected of you.  The best.  Soon after I left, he fulfilled his dream (I imagine it was his dream) to become Headmaster of an eminent school in London.  He also fulfilled his dream of marrying his Deputy Headmistress, Mrs P (later, of course, Mrs B).  He died tragically soon afterwards from leukemia.   Terrrible.  Tragic.  I'll always remember him.  Rest in peace.

Gone.

There are, very sadly, a variety of people from school life who are now no longer with us.  Such is the statistical inevitability of getting older.  The first was L who died suddenly soon after having left junior school.  I remember her as being one of the girls who 'acted' a scene to Joplin's Entertainer as I played it in the school hall.  Another was A who died of cystic fybrosis.  I remember him from being in the 'support team' on a scouts bike ride to Belgium.  Another was K who died in the Hillsborough Disaster.  We weren't friends and I have a variety of regrets about the way I felt about him before it happened.  I remember him - the day after it happened there was a band practice at school and there were many many tears.  We only just got through 'you'll never walk alone' at the memorial.  Another was R.  A fellow Star Wars nerd and a lumbering but jovial presence.  He died of cancer quite recently.  Another was C.  She played the bassoon and was a leading, friendly figure from school musical life.  She and I went to the same Uni.  I remember how pleasantly surprised I was when she came running over and hugged me on my first day.  We went to a James Brown concert together.  Another was K.  She was a crushes' best friend, intelligent, well liked and bafflingly dating J - the most datable guy in the year - they ended up marrying and having children.  She died suddenly and was remembered fondly at a school reunion a few years ago.  The crush can't go and see the children - they remind her too much. 

So sad.   Such is life.  Good to remember.  Right to do so. 

A friend, S, dated two of the girls on this list.  In a lighter moment he was wondering whether he was the 'black widow' of the year!

Dib f***ing Dib

I'm on the fence with my experience in Scouting.  My view changes depending on the time of day.  On one hand it something that I was entirely unsuited for.  I hated change and trying new things.  It was a place of conformity, noise, shouting and emerging testosterone and machismo.  I got put, at one point, in a "patrol" that was full of school bullies.  I assume the scoutmasters thought that it would be character-building for me.  My first camp was filled with dread at the impending "camp christening" that never, in fact, came to pass.  I still think about my first experience on a climbing wall and being frozen, a few inches from the ground, and receiving no help from the venture scout holding the safety rope below.  I still remember sharing a tent with a bunch of kids who would discuss, when they thought I wasn't there, but was in fact hiding in the dark, how much they didn't like me.  I remember having another tent all on my own because I had ringworm.  I still, as you know, count the gang show being on my long list of early stage failures!

But on the other hand it was a place where I could be a different person to who I was at school.  I could, at last, let off some steam.  There was an old man in the stores at the back - the quartermaster - who'd sort you out with tent pegs and suchlike.  There was a kid called R who told me all I needed to know about jerking off.  I was put, on other occasions, in sixes and patrols that were slightly more suited to a kid of my sensitivities and was properly looked after.  I developed an early crush on a curly-haired kid called N.  He was crazy - seriously so.  I finally cracked canoing and still remember the surprise on the scoutmaster's face when I was the first back from the other side of the lake.  Camp fires and the occasional cooking triumphs.  Lightweight camp wins and bike rides across Belgium.  Running wild and wide games.  Being given a lift from Roald Dahl when we were lost.  Catching the gits out in rounders in high summer - three times.  The nice sisters from ventures who'd just been to the Queen, a Kind of Magic concert at Wembley.  Getting drunk at the scoutmasters house and dipping someone's tie in his coffee and going crazy in the minigym upstairs. 

If I had kids I'd probably send them to cubs and scouts.  I'd want them to have the good times and the things that it did, in fact, teach me.  I'd desparately try to protect them from the bad and be devastated if I failed to do so. 

I still have a dream now and then about returning to scouts because I missed my last "parade".  I feel nervous, again, about the prospect (which I want to avoid) of "going up" into Ventures.  I feel that it would be easier and more sensible if I wasn't there. 

And my shirt's way too small. 

Performance Angst

I guess I got my musical inclinations from my grandfather.  It was his piano I used to bash away on as a kid, swapping one book of music for another and making, no doubt, the same interminable racket, come what may!

The first piano arrived at around the age of six or seven and left a still-remaining gash in the garage to kitchen doorframe.  A great deal, up to a certain point where lack of real or meaningful talent really came into play, came easily to me (moreso than my brother as I've already mentioned).  And I, perhaps ahead of my time, was soon ready for public performance.

The first forrays were pretty disasterous - a piano solo that stopped twice in its tracks (even after back-to-back practice during the first half of the concert) and some accompaniment to the junior choir that barely got started.

This was all around the time of the dying-days of my time in Scouts which involved a crashingly awful performance from my "patrol" in the Christmas Gang Show that left me more-or-less weeping in the leaf-strewn car park, outside the scout hut, crying "why again?" to the moon!  What a drama queen.

I don't think I showed the "classic" signs of stress when it came to performance.  As ever, such things are internalised and hidden.    My Mum and Dad were baffled by my distress at what I saw as crushing failure - although they might have been trying to make a small deal of it for my (or even their own) sake!

But I got better - before too long (in the grand scheme of things) I was the repetiteur of choice and, towards the end of my sixth form, performed the first movement of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 with some scraping from the school orchestra behind me (although D's oboe playing is still a pleasurable memory).

It was E's Mum who was the first to congratulate me that evening - my own parent's led with the "well - are you pleased?" line again - although they would be devastated, I'm sure, if they knew that I'd ever doubted their pride in that moment.

There is a large part of me that's tremendously pleased that I was encouraged to "keep it as a hobby" although I thought it was awfully defeatist at the time.  It gave me great pleasure and focus - although I resisted, at times, being stretched too far - and it gave me goals which I managed, in the majority to fulfil.  And at times it gave me a way to express myself where other forms of expression would have failed.

After a particularly violent ding-dong with my mother I sat down to do some piano practice and chose only slow, mediative and, I thought, calming pieces.  I even played the fast pieces at a deliberately slow tempo, to maintain the mood that I thought I was creating.  When my Dad got home, he asked my Mum what she'd been doing that afternoon.

"Listening to your son play the piano for me".

A handful of pills

I think my parents were quietly worried about me - especially in these early days.  If I discovered that my son had (happily, blythely) spent the majority of a day trip to Bologne on his own I, too, would have been worried for a variety of reasons.  They called my form teacher with concerns (as ever, handled clumsily by all concerned) and expressed sentiments of confidence when they spotted me happily dancing with someone at a school event (let's be clear - it was pensioners day - at which my parents were on St John's duty - wrong on so many levels). I once, too, overheard them asking each other what they thought was wrong with me (I sneaked off after hearing this - I was indeed in quite a funk at the time - but it was because I'd been musing, generally, at the time, on the theme of death as well as on my, as I saw it, future inability to afford a house of my own on my current savings position, even including future interest!).

I guess, on reflection, they did have cause for concern.  I was clearly not over-run with friends and my run-ins with school bullies had been noted and documented.  Indeed, I'd suffered a black eye in return for fraternising with the "wrong" girl in the class, I'd been pushed over a variety of times and I clearly enjoyed (if that's the right word) the company of some girls a few years my senior who would hang out by the music block prior to band practice rather than kids my own age.  And even though, on the surface, I was handling it all with my usual aloof stoicism, I'd spent a number of evenings wanting it all to end, by whatever means necessary, and had even spent one particular evening sitting on the bathroom floor with a handful of pills in my hand  wondering whether taking them all was a solution of some shape or form.

I guess the advantage that I had was that I knew, deep down, that it does, indeed, get better.  Even though I would say that I was lost and that things would never be the same again, I guess I knew that things always change, you always end up finding your way and that optimism is always better than the alternative.

Deep down, I guess that's what I knew.

Girlfriends

My first (not, in fact, only) girlfriend was around the age of 13-14.  I'd had someone who I'd held hands with momentarily, prior to that (prompting a great deal of soul-searching with my brother as to whether I should tell our parents or not), but E was most definitely a girl friend and we are best described as "on and off" for a number of years.  Indeed, the first time that we were "off", I didn't realise in the slightest until a number of members of our year came up to me and told me that they'd heard that we'd broken up and that I'd treated her terribly.  Indeed, the Number One School Bully in our year (there were numbers 2-9, all of whom were accolytes of his, some of whom are in prison, hospital or working in timber yards now) took it upon himself to give me a good menacing on the subject (he's also memorable in that he "offered me out" once on the basis that he was the "hardest of the hards" and I was the "hard of the stiffs" in my view, or so he thought - more on that, perhaps, another day).


And I really did try!  Our first kiss (with E not Number One Bully)(and I'm starting to think that it was our only one) was by the side of a dual carriageway, walking back to her house with a couple of other friends, from the railway station.  My overriding memory is of an overly soft wetness that I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

The ups and downs of my relationship with E, either as friends or as boy/girlfriends, was the catalyst, some times, to whether I had any friends at all.  Indeed, she held such sway over the small group of acquaintances that I had that people would, indeed, decide whether they would or could talk to me on the strength of her say-so.

It was with E that I sat in the back row of the cinema (Freddy Krueger movies during the daytime) furtively fumbling.  It was E who famously touched me up in the front row of the balcony of Les Miz.  It was E who gave me a very fruity pair of briefs with hearts all over them.  We're still friends today - we've not talked about our past for some time.

Chase Me!

So - it turns out that 1R wasn't, in fact, the bottom class - it was one of the two that were second from the top. The form teacher was a kindly woodwork teacher, close to retirement, with very exacting standards when it comes to the conduct that he expects in that first twenty minutes of the day. He kept someone behind once for answering "Oui" to the register, rather than "Yes".

I had, on reflection, quite a schizophrenic first couple of years. I was incredibly studious in class and, in the break times, I went to the strangest lengths to blow off steam. I'd taunt kids who were significantly older than me (some of whom were contemporaries of my brother - which can't have helped his case at all) and, for want of a better phrase, get them to "chase me". There's an irony here in that it made me a friend in TB - someone who wouldn't have been seen dead sitting next to me in class but who would approach me in break times and ask if I wanted to "get a chase".

I was top of the class in everything. Apart from PE and Home Economics/Technical Studies (we were the first year where boys and girls both had to do both - the boys would burn their scrambled egg on toast and the girls would get their fathers to produce intricate drawings of ballpoint pens). Further down the line it transpired that there was some debate about whether to move me into the top class in the year but the idea was ruled out in that I was "making friends" in 1R.... Kids don't exactly warm to other kids who are top of the class in everything. Indeed, the crazy Czech chemistry teacher ("are we having a smashing time?") berated the class mercilessly for groaning at the announcement of another high-scoring test result - "why you GROAN! you should RESPECT!".

I took my school report home once and showed it to my Mum who was having her hair cut in a neighbour's kitchen (the neighbour had the same name as my Mum and a similar taste in swirly carpets - their similarities ended when it came to smoking and divorce). "Look at all those Ones" my Mum said (referring to my position in the class). The hairdressing neighbour just rolled her eyes and groaned.

CB was a girl who I fought endlessly for my top slot with. She left, unfortunately, after the first year. My father was quite keen on her - I remember him laughing when she referred to me as her "number one rival".

I also remember a game of Kiss Chase (did we really play that at that age?) at Hatfield House where I was chasing her - a caught her and lived up to the name of the game - something that ellicited the response from CB - "blimey - I didn't think you had it in you!".

First Day in the Rain

The Americans attach so much significance to one's passage through High School. People who've attending private schools in the UK appear to do the same. But we don't tend to give similar weight to "senior school" if you're in the comprehensive system. Now that we're getting older and a tendency for nostalgia and reminisence has started to kick in, a "favourite memory from your school days" trend is starting to emerge - perhaps aided, uniquely, by facebook. Perhaps it wouldn't have emerged without facebook and school days nostalgia would be confined to the small niche who've taken the time to join a old boys/girls society. Who knows in this facebook-dominated world.

Anyhow - my first day at senior school. It was raining.

My mum was insistent that I would walk to school - start as you mean to go on. However, S's mother had other plans - especially as it was p**sing it down. She had a green Triumph Acclaim - as did we (it was inherited after my grandfather died and was our first car with electric windows - a real sign that we had finally arrived - I was later to put a rather large dent in the back passenger door as well as burn the seat upholstery with a carelessly-discarded cigarette).

I was already "different" from the other kids in that my school blazer was from the original school outfitters in North London rather than being from the new one in the local department store - the identifying feature being a "properly" embroidered badge rather than an iron-on one.

And we walked, S and I, into school and headed straight for an undercover walkway, of which there were many linking the various school buildings together. This particular area was packed full of children waiting, in the dry, for the day to begin. And the first person that I bump into is my brother. My brother and a couple of his friends.

They were laughing at me.

I ignored them and took a left into the school building and the assembly hall.

I have little memory of the headmaster's welcoming address. All I can remember is hoping upon hope that when the class allocations were read out that I wouldn't be in 1R. We had already received word, via S's sister, that 1R would be the bottom stream - the thickos. I was a little nervous in this respect because I didn't feel that the entry exam had gone particularly well for me - it was on the same day, incidentally, as the one and only time that our home football team made it to the FA cup final . We lost. The maths had been terribly easy. The "english" exam was a fill in the gaps affair. S felt that it had gone well (and this was later proved through his being selected for the Top Class (from which he was later demoted)). The fact that for one of his answers, he'd said "Washington" where I'd said the answer was "marvelous" gave me particular cause for concern. Given the fact that I was a certified "swot", the impending sense of forthcoming injustice was becoming too much to bear.

And which class was I summoned to join?

1R.