The final blow-out

So - that's it?  Over?  Well - not quite.

The final hurrah of University life was a trip to Edinburgh for the festival.  Those final few terms were spent in the company of budding theatricals, as we know.  This was the greatest of opportunities to not say goodbye.  We cajoled the Union into giving us some underwriting and a minibus and I cajoled a foundation into giving us some money and rehearsals commenced for 'Cuckoo'.



Casting was controversial.  Previous favourites were overlooked and newbies ended up in leading roles as Indians and Nurses (work it out).

I moved digs, continued a relentless programme of garlic cooking, smoking, drinking and rehearsing and we were off.  I was the first driver....

The extent of C's resistance to roadtravel was not fully apparent to me.  She had been in a serious car crash on her gap year and has remained a nervous traveller since.  She sat in the seat behind the driver's steadily drinking.  And singing.  I, in the meantime, couldn't find the fullbeam of the headlights and the night was closing in.

It's extraordinary to me that a bunch of students can work out how to book venues, marketing and accomodation in another city, let alone pack a roofrack on a minibus.  But we made it in one piece, driving through the night, and arriving for a tech rehearsal at a converted leisure centre, early in the morning.

The show itself was a triumph - uncharacteristically sold out for a student show in Edinburgh.  As memorable as all that was, the trip was memorable for so many other reasons.

Scampi and Chips after every show, with a lot of drinking.  Starting at about 230pm.

Everyone coming up to see the show from home.   Sleeping in the corridor, in cupboards and, of course, in other people's beds.

Nurse Ratched's endless shagging of her boyfriend.  Endless.

The teriffic reviews that decided to single out our Billy for sole criticism - resulting in a meltdown (and a pickup) that last through until 5 minutes before the next performance.

My brother and his girlfriend even came.  Cue a very nice dinner (and the discovery of warm brie salad) and a very raucous evening at the Fringe Club (lots of shouting down free mike standups - to the extent that we got told off by another patron).

Lots and lots of inhaling.

A trip to Roslyn Chapel long before Da Vinci Code.

Stubbing a cigarette out in C's eye.  A trip to hospital and a lifetime of recrimination ensued.

Getting slagged off by the show that was after us - for our pretentious warmups and our postshow rounds of self-congratulation.  Their criticism was justified.

The stars in the Gilded Balloon Bar.  Bill went one step too far and got lambasted by Mark Lamarr.

The ceiling falling in on our digs.

The constant harranging of the cast to 'do some flyering'.  They must have done because we sold out!

The discovery of Fecund Theatre, Ertha Kitt doing James Joyce and, more important than anything, "The Night that Larry Kramer Kissed Me".

And the long drive home.  Dropping people off as we went.  Overshooting my own home for a final night or two in my now ex University Town.  A final drink or two at the pub where I'd developed the most shocking of habits (pints, cockles and drunkenly telling the barmaid all my problems).  A round of words-lite goodbyes.  A taxi arrival.  And gone.

Over already?

It's strange to be writing about the 'final furlong' of University so quickly.  For what was, undoubtedly, a transformative time in my time, to not have laden the pages to which it pertains with more significance and drama seems wrong.  But, as you know, you don't know that these are times of significance and change at the time.   You just live it.

The final furlong, prior to a trip to Edinburgh, was significant for a number of reasons.  Firstly, was my forays into theatre.  Secondly, was the fact that I stayed, for the majority of the time, in my house in Southampton, under the guise of studying for finals.



I, in fact, spent the majority of the time watching movies (I was particularly keen on mid afternoon sessions with "Stand by Me", a bottle of red and a packet of fags, on the sofa), jerking off, and hosting three-day long parties.

The parties were mainly lunches that turned into so much more.  Only once were particularly strong substances used to aid staying power.  You could do three dayers in those days with little assistance.  For some reason the smell of garlic always reminds me of this time.  All the cooking that I did, in that period, involved garlic - a new discovery for me, after years of suburban, 70s, overcooked, unseasoned teatimes.

 

My studies, of course, suffered.  One particular essay was turned out in under a day and the read-through and checking process involved pressing 'spellcheck', printing and submitting.  On reflection, a 'pass' for that particular essay was generous.  It makes me cringe now though.  A prior engagement in the pub with Ch seemed more pressing at the time.

The final night with U was one of particular carnage.  Vodka shots at the top of the evening.  Sitting in the bath, crying and saying 'what will I do now?' ended it.  That's not before I summonded up the energy, however, to shimmy along the neighbours wall, in search of a nearby party, only to end up in the pond.  I was meeting my parents the next morning - something I somehow managed to do after waking up on U's floor, fully clothed.

 

My substandard degree was, of course, a disappointment and my closing interview with my tutor was a non-event, softened by the pint(s) I'd had prior.  It was further softened by the fact that all my friends, whose essays I'd diligently proof-read for them, got 2.1s, but that my brother got a 2.2 too.  I'm sure he didn't have half as much fun as I did. 

It wasn't over yet.  Four weeks of rehearsing for and performing in Edinburgh awaited.  And, after that India.  The three years were kind of over but they provided a trajectory into the next five years without much of a pause for breath.....

Glee?

I knew, even when joining the University Orchestra (which involved lots of sitting at the back, falling asleep), the Film Club (which involved a bizarre ritual of throwing balled-up newspaper across the auditorium before 'curtain up'), Parachuting Club (multiple trips to goodness-knows-where, to get shouted at by an ex-military type, only to not jump out of a plan) and Light Opera Society (one evening of Gondoliers choruses, an excrutiating night at the bar and never again), I knew that what I really wanted to do was the Theatre Group. 

I'd unsuccessfully auditioned in the First Year (for some Ionesco-esque studenty nonsense) only to get knocked back, never to return.  The Theatre Group were inevitably, from thereon, a group of snooty, tie-dyed, purple hair-streaked morons, who's productions were not going to have their doors darkened by me.  My own theatre-going had already advanced from the early days of Starlight Express to Lettuce and Lovage in a relatively short amount of time.  My poor father remains scarred, to this day, by the memory of a trip to London, with me, to go and look at the fronts of West End Theatres, one-by-one.

But it was the part of Howard in 'Death of a Saleman' that was my breakthrough moment.  The PostGrad Willy Loman's views on interpretation often wildly diverted from that of the clueless Director (who's Happy was cast on his jock-like looks, only to be replaced a short distance down to the line) and the asethetic and technical vision was non-existent.  My only scene involved my playing recordings of my children to the soon to be fired Loman, the 'tape' being inconsistently shouted from the wings by an occasionally-present friend of the Directors.

But it was what I needed to break the clique. 

I'd already told a disgusted flatmate that my ambition was to direct 'Bent'.  He declared that 'he didn't agree with plays like that' and said that he was deeply unlikely to attend as a result.

I was single-minded in my focus.  Although casting was something of a catastrophe (all three of my leads had to be recast thanks to the competing production of 'Troilus and Cressida' that was being delivered, by the aforementioned Willy Loman, in the Main House) I managed to pull together a group who were as passionate about the piece, in the end, as I was.

I had a view on everything.  The poster, the set, the stripes in the concentration camp uniforms, the programme, the lighting, the music, the sound, the party.  I dived into some misery-making research and had numerous sleepless nights thanks to the oft-absence of my leading man (Ch... - still grieving from the death of his mother and flaky beyond belief - at one point falling asleep in the loo between scenes).  It was the third year of my degree but this was the important undertaking in my life.

It was 1993.  Gay plays were, indeed, being produced at the National Theatre these days.  Ian McKellen was long 'out' but not everyone was.  The pink-starred posters, around campus, caused something of a rumpus in some areas.  And ticket sales in the first instance were slow.

And on the first night, in the first scene, the three-quarters full audience laughed.  Granted there were jokes in the first scene.  I can't say I realised - it took me quite by surprise.  Some girls in the front row sighed at R's death as Wolf.  And at the end, with Ch's death.  There was silence.  Then applause.  Then total crazines.  People loved it.  I was utterly shell-shocked and shrugged off the plaudits in the Union Bar.  The second night saw one of the original Theatre Clique in tears.  And the third and last night was packed.  To the rafters.  I'd held the curtain so my family could come and I could only find a place to sit on the steps.

My brother shoved a massive bottle of Southern Comfort in my hand at the end. My mother said something awkward about it being OK as long as the boys weren't doing it for real.  And my flatmate was saying that it was the best thing that he'd seen in his life.  He was collecting autographs from the cast.  And from me.

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.