[BA English Studies: Summer 2004]
My time at The University in The City of Crushed Dreams would loom large in my mind for many years after I’d left. Less because of my Achievements while I was there, and more because of how little I felt I had to show for the passage of three years, or one seventh of my total life to date: the first three irretrievable years of my adulthood. I felt I’d Existed more than Lived at The University: I barely joined any Societies; I attended no university balls, and precious few student events at all; I spent the vast majority of my Time, when I wasn’t Working or Studying, in my room—invariably the smallest, and cheapest room, in whichever house I was sharing—writing mostly terrible song lyrics I would never put to music, composing poems that rarely pleased me, and beginning novels I’d no hope of ever finishing.
I made a few friends in that city, but no Contacts of the sort that might help me secure Gainful Employment in later life. In truth, Prospective Employer, I regret to admit that I felt at once too good for the place, and somehow simultaneously not good enough. There were hundreds of people on my course, and most of them seemed to care little for literature, poetry, or ideas. And I cared for these things, or at least I certainly tried to. I was Awkward and Nervous in my classes. My grades averaged well; but it often felt, if anything, too easy to achieve what was required. I never got over the Rejection I’d suffered at the cruel hands of The City of Arcades; so however much fun I had with my new friends—and there was fun to be had, even for a wet blanket like me—I was always lamenting the Opportunities that I’d been denied because of my poor performance at A-level. The University in The City of Crushed Dreams was officially no worse than the one in The City of Arcades; in fact, it frequently appeared above it in league tables—both generally, and specifically for my chosen course: English. But this Knowledge offered no Consolation to me, Prospective Employer. This cruel kink in my Curriculum Vitæ was established in my troubled mind by the time I arrived to begin my studies as something akin to a Second Rupture: perhaps equal with that which had exiled me from my North Wales home in that it had denied me re-entry to my adopted homeland, and ensured I had to remain in England, living as an exile, for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps you think, Prospective Employer, that I should have grown up and got over it. And yes, I might now agree. But I wasn’t ready to grow up then; I didn’t have the necessary tools. And I’d no idea what would greet me at the end of all this, so I constantly dreaded Graduation, even though I’d never quite learned to love Student Life.
One morning, just days before I first set off for The City of Crushed Dreams, I was sitting on the sofa in The Suburban Culdesac with my mother—who was embroidering a section of a cross-stitch tapestry—listening to a Radio 4 dramatic adaptation of the folk song “Barbara Allen”. I’d finally had my offer confirmed. I knew where I was going, and was resigned—even relieved, by then, and looking forward. Those days were easy, peaceful, undemanding: I mercifully had no notion what was coming. I was thinking of putting the kettle on, when—for the first time I could remember in my life—the radio broadcast was interrupted to bring us Breaking News: a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Centre towers in New York. What could that mean? we wondered. I had no idea what a World Trade Centre tower was. Uncharacteristically, my mother switched on the TV news. And we watched for the next few hours in awe and horror, like millions of others, as the spectacle unfolded before our eyes—like a film.
By the time my studies were coming to an end, just a few years later, the world seemed a very different place to the one I'd left behind on that sofa. But I’d be lying if I said I really noticed all of this happening, Prospective Employer. We had newspapers around, from time to time. And the internet was there if we walked up to campus. But most of the time I’d be more concerned with trying to read a dense 18th-century novel, or meeting an essay deadline, or making sure I had enough Money for bread and butter, flour and milk, and roasted vegetables—and that I’d made Time enough in my day to catch the second showing of “Neighbours” at 5:25pm.
The Turtle Garden: Summer or Easter 2002 or 2003 (a couple of weeks)
The first winter holiday back from university, I doubt I worked at all. I might have had some of my £1,000 overdraft left. Or I begged or borrowed enough from friends or family to make it to the pub in The Cathedral City on Christmas Eve. I’d yet to begin my regular term-time Job in Halls Catering, and there was no question of staying in The Cell Block outside term-time because the rooms were rented out for conferences on campus. At the end of every term we had to take our Blu Tacked pictures down and empty our wardrobes, strip our beds.
The first or second mid-university Job—we’ll say for the sake of argument it was the first—was a couple of weeks of gardening for a Colleague of my father’s. She was a middle-aged hippy working in Academia or Admin—I probably never asked which one. She had a pretty house on the outskirts of The English Cathedral City with a garden she’d not had time to tend in recent years. I would have been paid an hourly rate—whatever rate she suggested; I wasn’t the type to negotiate with Superiors back then, Prospective Employer; and I never have been since, because I Know My Place. The Work was hard, and I was Lazy. I never loved gardening much; but I did my best to be Productive, and Laboured in the sun for days on end, with my headphones in. She’d come out and offer me cold drinks, when she was in, and tell me my presence in her garden was Soothing—which wasn’t how it felt to me.
She had a tortoise, which looked like a turtle—because of the way it “swam” in an anticlockwise course against the low wire boundary designed to confine it to one of the garden’s three rectangular beds. Every morning when I arrived, and came to feed it lettuce and leftover salads, the buggering reptile had inexplicably managed to escape; and would invariably have used its newfound freedom to deposit a fried-egg-shaped shit at the centre of whichever bit of flowerbed I’d most recently dug and turned. It would stand there next to its shit, waiting for me to arrive, as if to show me what it thought of my Work.
I learnt very little from that Job, Prospective Employer, except—which I already thought—that no creature likes to know it is confined; even where Freedom itself might look little different.
College/University Catering: 2002 and 2003 Easter and Summer (Part-time)
I spent a couple of holiday seasons working shifts that were similar to my Halls Catering Job. The earliest few of these took place in the catering department of my father’s college (soon to be rebranded as a university) in The Cathedral City. Maybe I did my first such shift even before I left for university; but I kept no records. I remember little about these Jobs, as if I was hardly mentally there. I know I had to wear a daft red-and-white striped shirt, like a tablecloth, and a clip-on maroon bow-tie—but I only remember this because when I met friends after Work in the Cathedral grounds, a boy from the year below, still at The Sixth Form College, thought I was “dressed like that” because I was “into ska”. (I wasn’t. And I wasn’t.)
Conference work agreed less with me than catering work in general. Middle-aged Customers invariably had more to complain about than students—the food, the cutlery, a dearth of condiments, whatever. And I hated having to take cups of coffee and tea, already full, to tables—because my Nerves—or maybe my nervous system generally—had always caused my hands to shake at times like these. And this was both visible and audible. And sometimes they’d whisper, not even very quietly, “look at his shaking hands”. One or two Customers asked me to replace a saucer onto which I’d spilled too much of their drink. Operating tongs to shift dinosaur-shaped hunks of breadcrumb-coated reconstituted turkey was one thing, Prospective Employer; and ladling baked-beans, though similar, was another. But table service—which I had to do at least a couple of times in the holiday catering Jobs—did not agree with me. I’ve consequently never applied for a Job as a waiter, and hopefully I never will.
On one such Job I had to stand behind urns of hot water and coffee in a stuffy conference room and offer hot drinks and biscuits to elderly delegates to some-or-other conference as they began to flock in. An old American asked me for a cup of Earl Grey, and I had to say: “I’m afraid I don’t think we’ve got any.”
“You Brits always say that!” he declared. “Why do you always say that? You’re not ‘afraid’.”
But more fool him, Prospective Employer: because I was afraid.
I made sort-of friends with a Second Year Student working similar shifts to me. He had a ponytail and what I thought was a northern accent. He said he was from a place I’d never have heard of; and though it was less than fifty miles from where most of my family came from, he was right. He said there was nothing much there but coal-mines. “And then Maggie Thatcher came along and shut them down; so now there’s nothing at all!” This kind of talk—reminding me of my parents, and growing up in North Wales, and some of the better Billy Bragg songs—was inclined to make me warm to anyone; and such talk was rarely heard among students in The City of Crushed Dreams. Even my friends, mostly common disappointments like me, spoke little about politics and less about socialism. Most were left-wing, or so I inferred. A few were liberal democrats—which seemed to me deliberately obscure. If any were Tories, they kept it quiet, as I was told that Tories often did. But times were changing. Times had changed; the left didn’t feel as subversive as it felt in some of those songs from the 1980s. We had a Labour Government. We’d had one for a while. But even—perhaps especially—those who I knew had waited years for this exact scenario were now more than likely if pressed on the subject to shrug and say: “Politicians? They’re all the same.”
The sole season in which I worked conference weeks in The City of Crushed Dreams must surely have been Easter in my Second Year. That term I’d received an email from my father, addressed to the older three of his four sons, saying that he and our mother were getting divorced. The email had a Latin title, by which I knew it was meant to be serious; but once I’d opened it, I found it short and blunt. No reason as such was given. So I was left to deduce the reasons over the following years from the often-conflicting accounts of my parents (mostly my father; my mother didn’t seem to like to speak about it at all, so I didn’t like to press her on it) and the testimonies of my brothers; mostly my younger brother, the only one of us who was still living with them at the time.
The divorce did not affect my work—Academic or Menial—as far as I can tell. It was presented as something which wouldn’t affect us at all (“we both still love you very much”) and while of course that bit before the parentheses couldn’t possibly remain true in the long run, I was an adult; and—although I’d return to live with my mother, and separately with my father, for short spells later in life—I might not have known it then, but I’d already “flown the coop”. Ever since The Rupture when I was 14, when my father took a Job in England and we’d hardly seen him for months, my oldest brother had whispered that divorce was on the cards; that it was only a matter of time. But I’d come to think that he’d been wrong: an Unreliable Narrator. His being proven right, even six years after the fact, reordered things. I didn’t take it personally. I didn’t know how to take it. Next time I spoke to my mother on the phone, I made no reference to it, and neither did she. Did I even ask her how she was? Possibly not. If I did, I didn’t ask much more. And that holiday season I stayed (for most of it, if not all) in The Haunted House in The City of Crushed Dreams; and by afternoons and evenings I served canteen food to the delegates of a chess tournament. Little different to The Halls Catering Job, Prospective Employer; except that one of the chess-players would hardly eat anything we served at all, and had contacted the kitchens in advance to request a bowl of boiled mushrooms with every meal. I’d never understood that phrase “you are what you eat”; but he, at least, bore more than a passing resemblance to a boiled mushroom.
And we all agreed, Prospective Employer, that he must have been a fun guy!
The Jam Band: 2001–2003 (leading up to Charles's birthday)
From the first week I arrived at university—indeed, from the first night I stayed at The Clearing Conference Centre and a group of us improvised a tasteless song about a particularly harrowing recent plotline in Eastenders on a bench until midnight—I knew that Music would be a big part of my University Life. Many of my new friends had guitars, and some even knew how to play them. By then even I had a guitar, which my father had bought for me when he bought the first of many guitars he’d own but never learn to play. Like father, like son, I never progressed beyond the first few chords of “Wonderwall”. My hands seemed to be too small, my fingers too short and soft, and the strings too hard. No doubt I spent too little time attempting to grasp the basics; but I seemed, I could only conclude, to be a completely unmusical person—despite my having been an avid and an active consumer of pop music since my teenage years. Certainly I had no rhythm, and I had never known how to dance. I’ve often felt that the true blame for my failure at Music—one of my favourite artforms, but never a school subject at which I learnt anything—lies in my Biology: because even the coursing of blood through my body when I check my pulse never sounds regular enough to me that I would call it a “beat”.
Nevertheless, some of my friends, notably Shandy and Gilbert, had a modicum of musical ability between them. And while they never formed an actual band with a name, or—as far as I know—frequented any open-mic nights in the city, we did—more by accident than design—annually record a cassette full of humorous songs in celebration of Charles’s birthday. I mention this here, Prospective Employer, partly to pad out this otherwise unimpressive “Extracurricular” section of my university-era Curriculum Vitæ, and partly to prove that our Time at university was not quite solely squandered in the pursuit of vices like drinking, smoking, body-piercing, computer-games, etc. For the avoidance of Doubt, I certainly don’t suggest you try to track down these rightfully rare and obscure recordings. My own contributions, anyway, were largely limited to lyrical suggestions and out-of-time backing vocals; because no matter how hard one tries—and I hardly did—you can’t write songs, however perfunctory, without first learning either to play an instrument or to sing.
Besides, we rarely wrote detailed credits for any given track; so if anything on those tapes which we recorded in good faith for private consumption might one day accidentally resurface and enter the public domain, and be considered, by now, to have fallen foul of the ever-changing winds of taste—and thus to be more readily recognized as some kind of minor hate crime than outsider “art for art’s sake”—I can only say in my defence that Charles’s birthday tapes were mostly their idea: Shandy’s and Gilbert’s. Thus, the legal and moral responsibility for any offensive content therein must ultimately lie with them, not me. Good? I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.
TROFU: 2003 (irregular hours leading up to summer)
The best of my few bad ideas about what I might do next, or “Post-Graduation”, was to teach. Many in my family taught. And what else could I possibly hope to do with my by-now well-honed Skill of explaining what’s happening in a Shakespeare play to someone else who already knows—other than adapt that skill to suit a group of people who don’t or didn’t?
A couple of friends and I had noticed an advert for a thing called TROFU: Teaching-Related Opportunities For Undergraduates. Little evidence remains in the public domain of this scheme; but it definitely existed, because I did it. I probably got a Certificate; but if I did, I’ve lost it. And of my few friends who initially opted in, largely because of my Obedience, I’d be the only one that actually completed the course.
The first phase involved attending six hour-long lectures—one per week toward the end of the Second Year of my course—on the subject of Teaching. These were given by pedagogical experts in various fields. We had to write a short essay toward the end to explain what, if anything, we’d learnt. All I remember learning was that the acquisition of musical knowledge as a child—specifically, gaining the ability to play an instrument—apparently opened up whole areas of the brain that would otherwise remain dormant long into adulthood; which felt a bit like I was being bullied.
Todd and I were the only people I knew (if indeed I truly knew myself—or Todd) to make it to the end of the lecture series. We went to the event that marked the completion of that part of our course; a room full of pamphlets and literature about teaching opportunities (PGCE courses etc.—some of which were still fully funded at that time) and a large array of white plastic cups filled with cheap red or white wine. Nobody else seemed interested in the free wine. In fact, hardly anyone else came at all; and it seemed like a very small fraction of those who’d initially signed up had made it to the end of the first part of the programme. (Which probably explains why little evidence remains of this “scheme” in the public domain.) So Todd and I did what any right-thinking people in our position would do, and tried our best to make a significant dent in the complimentary wine—before staggering down the hill and into the house he then shared with Shandy and three others, and both being sick in their bath at the same time.
Todd couldn’t be bothered to do the teaching placements; having presumably only signed up for the free wine at the end of the lecture series. So only I among my group went home that summer holiday to volunteer for three weeks’ unpaid Work Experience in local schools: one in The Little School nearest The Suburban Culdesac, which I’d never known was there; and two in The Posh School in The Cathedral City, where I’d studied for my GCSEs.
I did not warm to teaching, Prospective Employer. The Little School was okay, and the little kids were nice; but there was lots of snot and mess around at any given time, and little about the experience made me feel like repeating it could help me cope with my mounting Existential Dread. One of the teachers—a young and unpleasant northern man—would talk loudly and awkwardly in the staff-room about hilarious new swear-words he’d learnt; I specifically remember him relating to everyone present—most of whom were older women, and none of whom were willing participants in what you couldn’t really call the conversation—the etymology of the word “gunt”. A word I’d never heard before, and I don’t think I’ve heard once since. (“Don’t worry,” he reassured his silent audience, in what he probably thought was his cool voice, “there’s no ‘gunt’ going on in this room…”)
The Posh School was even worse than this. I’d forgotten quite how unhappy I’d been back then, as an immigrant from outer-Britain; but walking those cruel halls again, at the age of twenty, I didn’t feel much at all like an adult; I felt more like a child being forced to confront his abuser in court. I recalled exactly how small and helpless and lost I’d felt there as a teenager. And unfortunately I couldn’t shake that feeling as the fortnight progressed. A lot of the older kids were bigger than me; and one at least had a beard far beyond what I could yet manage to grow. My younger brother must have been there somewhere (because of maths) but if he was, they made sure I wasn’t sitting in on any of his classes. Probably best for us both, I thought. Living in The Shadow of One’s Brothers does no one any good. Mostly I had to shadow English teachers while I was there; and sit in on English classes, and walk around and talk to pupils, and help them—if they wanted help—with their English work. The younger teachers were nice to me, and seemed sympathetic to my probably obvious Unease. But the head of department—who I dimly recalled from my years as a pupil, though she never taught me—seemed to view me as A Significant Inconvenience. She made me take one of her GCSE classes, and observed me from a seat in the corner. But I was nowhere near old enough or confident enough to command respect from children that age. Despite my best efforts, my Nerves would soon engulf me, and I couldn’t conceal the trembling in my voice and hands. Of course I had to go on, pretending I was unaware of both. And the kids were mildly amused by my Ineptitude. And the Bosswoman was mildly annoyed.
My own shortcomings aside, Prospective Employer, I was shocked by quite how horrible some of the teenage kids were to their teachers. Many—not just a few—were Rude and Arrogant as a matter of course. The school was only mostly posh; but the trouble-makers weren’t all—or even mostly—to be found among the least posh kids. Most of the offenders seemed likely to have had—forgive my Presumption, Prospective Employer—very little by way of disadvantage in life. But that didn’t stop some from being total little shits. And even though I (hapless corner-dwelling creature that I was) did not suffer personally from their misbehaviour, they did their best between them to convince me that teaching in a secondary school was not to be a Career for me any time soon.
Thus I completed my Teaching-Related Opportunities placements with a no clearer notion of my Professional future than I’d had before. Even if PGCEs were fully funded (which was by then out, or perhaps on its way out) I couldn’t possibly think of signing up for one, for fear that I might pass it and subsequently feel obliged to teach.
The Green Society: 2003 – 2004 (Term-time, spare time)
In Second Year a friend from our group who (for no good reason) I’ll call Boots decided to establish a new University Society. Boots was a Liberal Democrat, but had decided not to join the university “Lib-Dem Soc”—presumably after much soul-searching, and definitely after having met one or two of its members. I might have joined the Labour Society, had Labour still been in opposition; but as we had a Labour Government, and politicians were now “all the same”, I didn’t see the point in making my assumed affiliation official. I was dimly aware of The Green Party, and probably approved on principle with what I imagined they stood for. But The University had no Green Party Society—which probably tells you something about its students.
Boots had noticed the lack of a Green Party Society, and wanting to address the absence of a voice for the environmentalist cause, he—along with a Third Year woman called Beth who’d had more-or-less the same idea—decided to establish the university’s first Green Society; but as a non-party-political entity, so as to try to attract support from all parts of the political spectrum. It followed that several of us would have to join the society, to ensure that there were enough members enrolled in order for it to exist. I volunteered to be secretary. Gilbert (who I’d always thought was probably a secret Tory) was to be the treasurer. Charles was something too; but I forget what, as he didn’t really say much about it. And so was our northern friend Olaf, who worked in the kitchen of the student pub with Shane—even though Olaf could only be said, at best, to be ambivalent on the subject of environmentalism.
I don’t really know why I agreed to be involved either; I knew little about the issues we ostensibly existed to help address. Of course if given the choice between environmentalism and whatever its opposite might have been, I trust I’d have leant toward the former. But I should make it absolutely clear, Prospective Employer, that my role in this new Society had more to do with the fact that Boots had pleaded with us to do it than anything else. I made notes at meetings, and emailed them round afterwards. I once interviewed the head of Halls Catering (technically probably my Bosswoman’s Bossman’s Bosswoman’s Bosswoman) to grill her about how much of the food they served in halls was locally sourced. Quite a lot, she said; certainly as much as was practical at that time and with the budget available to her. Great, I said. Thanks. Keep up the good work. That exchange remains the sum total of my contribution to the environmentalist cause to date, Prospective Employer; and I only did it because Boots said I had to do something other than take notes at meetings, and then—months later—told me specifically what he thought that something ought to be.
At the start of Third Year we secured a stall at the Freshers Squash—an event at the start of term where First Years walk around crowded halls and second- and third-year Society reps vie for their attention, and subscription fees. We bedecked our stall with anything green we could find. And I made us matching Green Society T-shirts with hilarious nicknames on the backs. Boots’s said “BOOZER”, at his request; because, he said, he was fond of the occasional drink. Charles’s said “SEX BOMB”; but I don’t remember whether he requested that or I just came up with it. Alas, I don’t remember anybody else’s T-shirt nickname, but mine said “PIRATE GUY”—because I’d recently seen the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and had thereafter taken to dressing like a pirate whenever not at work: a guise like many of my others, past or future, which might have suited someone with more Charisma; but which I suspect made me seem Weird and Desperate for attention—which attention I invariably found uncomfortable once secured. Overall, our efforts (including the sickly-looking green eye-shadow Charles and I applied) did in fact attract some attention. Maybe even as much attention as they repulsed. But I didn’t know what to say to any First Years who came to our stall, and neither did Charles; because, both being undergraduate English students who mostly listened to ’80s music and drank cheap booze in Shane’s bedroom when not attending lectures or watching Neighbours, we knew relatively little about “Green” issues. I made some green vodka jelly to give away, but was told by The University that morning that we weren’t allowed to give out free alcohol. So Charles and I just sat there behind the stall and ate the jelly ourselves, getting progressively drunker and watching Boots explain to a succession of intrigued-but-confused First Years that we were not, in fact, The Green Party Society; simply The Green Society, unaffiliated with any similarly named national or international party.
Beth, the co-founder, joined us for the latter half of the event. She excitedly pointed out the local Labour MP for The City of Crushed Dreams (incredibly, still the MP at the time of writing) who was walking awkwardly around among the teeming hordes—presumably having made a guest appearance at the Labour Society’s Fresher’s Squash stall. Beth didn’t like him. This was a few months after the Invasion of Iraq, Prospective Employer; so most vaguely left-wing students who weren’t Labour Society (or Party) members were by then pretty disillusioned with Tony Blair & co. for that reason, if no other. So Beth thought it a good idea to throw a handful of green sweets at the MP. (We were allowed to hand out green sweets, you see; but not green vodka jelly.) The handful of green sweets hit the sleeve of our MP's blazer. He turned and saw us, and our stall. Beth quickly tossed another handful of sweets at him, but it fell short. And he gave us a weary look, and walked away.
Stop The War March: November 2003
Probably the highlight of my Green Society stint—and a highlight of University Life generally, given how uneventful most of it was—was the Stop The War march we attended as a group in The Great Wen in November 2003. I’d been listening to “The War on Errorism” by NOFX, and though it was lyrically weak and musically dull, and significantly inferior to their 1999 EP “The Decline”, it was still pretty catchy. There was widespread consensus among my peers that the UK shouldn’t have joined the USA in invading Iraq in March that year. The American President George W Bush was A Bad Influence on our Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and thus he ought not to be allowed to make his third state visit to the UK that autumn without being made aware that we all thought he was A Massive Dick.
I’d thought about protesting before, but had always either been too busy, or not sure how to do it. This time was different though, for two reasons. One: the Stop The War Coalition was hiring a minibus to transport us from The City of Crushed Dreams to The Great Wen, free of charge. And Two: there was a possibility I might be able to meet up with Girlfriend # 2, with whom I’d recently got together in a vague capacity after a protracted courtship based almost entirely on long-distance letter-writing. (A much more comfortable means of seduction for me than any in-person equivalent.)
We got a coach from The City of Crushed Dreams early in the morning. Shandy was so excited about the opportunity to exercize his democratic rights to free protest that he performed a naked dance that involved beating his penis against the door-handle of the bathroom. (That was and remains the only time I’ve witnessed Shandy in the midst of what could be at least tangentially described as A Political Act.) Once we were on the coach it became apparent that the Stop The War Coalition—previously known only to me by the badges worn by a nice (if rather intense) young woman on my course—was mostly made up of Socialist Worker types. Now, I considered myself a socialist back then—and I… sometimes still do; although I’m generally less inclined to commit to absolute ideological positions nowadays, having finally come to understand some of them. Similarly, I’d become progressively more suspicious of Socialist Worker types over the course of my University Life on account of having met some of them. Although theoretically ideological compatriots of mine, I found they were frequently Rude, usually Intransigent, and quite often smelled bad. By way of a comparison, although the people I’d met from the university Conservative Society were posh and always wrong about things, they were usually Polite, sometimes Friendly, and mostly smelled average. There was one man in particular who worked in the student union pub who’d coloured my view of the SWP. He’d begun working there during his undergraduate degree and had liked the Job so much that he never finished the degree, but was still working in the pub even though he looked about 40. (Perhaps he still works there now?) He was one of the loudest, rudest, and most unpleasant people I met during my three years at university. I forget whether he was on the bus that day or not (I’m guessing not, because I never remember seeing him not in that pub); but a number of middle-aged and older men from the local branch of the Socialist Workers Party were on the bus, and they had a similar vibe—and smell—to him.
We were encouraged by one of these Superiors—who regaled us with tales of the many things he’d protested about over the years—to learn some chants while we were all together on the coach; so that we’d be well-prepared to tell George W Bush exactly what we thought of him. The first of these was:
“Blair, Bush, CIA, / How many kids did you kill today?”
I didn’t like it. I thought that accusing people of personally killing children, which they obviously hadn’t, would make us look Infantile. But I didn’t tell him that, so I just repeated the chant along with everyone else. Then he taught us some chants about Palestine; which I found somewhat confusing. I mean, I knew what Palestine was because we’d studied the Arab–Isræli Conflict for A-Level history. And I was broadly supportive of its right to exist. (Although not in any actual way.) But I didn’t see what Palestine specifically had to do with George W Bush’s state visit to the UK or the invasion of Iraq. (Perhaps this failure to make a connection was indicative of why I got a C in A-level history?) Boots helpfully explained, after the Socialist Worker Party Superior had gone back to the front of the bus, that for Socialist Worker types, everything is about Palestine. Why? I asked. Because they’re dicks, he said.
I hope you won’t consider me Bigoted, Prospective Employer, merely for recounting the facts of this matter as I witnessed them. Suffice to say that after spending many hours on a coach with Socialist Worker types going to and from the Stop The War march in The Great Wen on that day in November 2003, it would come as no great surprise to me when the reabsorption of the disaffected Labour left following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in 2015 eventually led to a situation where Labour was being accused of having “an antisemitism problem”. Because I’d come to suspect before we’d even reached the M25 that certain corners of that coach had an antisemitism problem. And not the corner containing members of the university Green Society. I hope I need not qualify here, Prospective Employer, that I believe it is possible to criticise Israeli government policy without being antisemitic. Just as it’s possible to promote the Palestinian cause without hating Jews. And I’ve no way of knowing whether the several people we shared that coach with, who kept banging on about the New World Order and Zionists, were members of any political party at all. But I know they went unchallenged (yes, including by me) and I subsequently drew my own conclusions.
The march was good. Basically like a long walk, but busier. We chanted a load of stupid chants and then made up some better ones of our own—the better to stick it to George “Dubya”—as the density of the crowd began to thin on our approach to Trafalgar Square. I sang some Billy Bragg songs and tried, with limited success, to get Shandy and his friend Waldo to sing along. We went to Pret—which was exciting, because there was no Pret in The City of Crushed Dreams—and we got some cheap red wine from a corner shop, and sat on the floor in Trafalgar Square and drank it together, probably while Alex Salmond or George Galloway was giving a self-important speech on the back of a lion somewhere nearby. I briefly met Girlfriend # 2, and we all revelled at the spectacle of being in a time and place that felt historically significant. (Even though obviously with hindsight we weren’t because it wasn’t.)
On the coach on the way back to The City of Crushed Dreams, the Socialist Worker Bossman tried to get us all to sign a petition calling for the arrest of Tony Blair for war crimes. I was the only one of our group not to sign it. Not because I didn’t think Tony Blair was guilty of war crimes—I had no idea about that; I didn’t sign the petition because I didn’t like the cut of that guy’s jib, and I didn’t want to do anything that he wanted me to do. Obedience notwithstanding, and Solidarity notwithstanding, I firmly believed, Prospective Employer, that he was an Unreliable Narrator.
Girlfriend # 2
As to Girlfriend # 2, Prospective Employer, I need not dwell on her for long—since we only dwelled together for six months, and only then on the rare occasions when we were visiting one another. It was a long-distance relationship, that somehow also ended up feeling like a sprint, with one or two false starts... A friend of a friend, and an ex-girlfriend of a friend, Girlfriend # 2 was by then living many miles away in The City By The Sea. I’d save up money from The Halls Catering Job for train tickets to visit her. Maybe I visited four or five times that year? Maybe she visited me... twice? There was one ill-fated meeting on New Year’s Eve, back home (or what passed for it), when we dropped in unexpectedly on my father in his bachelor pad. But I’d rather not talk about that actually, if you don’t mind.
Once, she visited The City of Crushed Dreams while my oldest brother’s comedy hip-hop crew were playing a gig in town. So I had to stand on a chair and film their entire gig on a shonky camera while she dutifully held my legs, so we barely even got to talk. The “crew” “crashed” on our living room floor that night. I made my trademark vegetable lasagna, to ensure that they never came to visit again. (Female vocalist: “Got any salt, babe?”)
Despite the difficult distance, and our sympathetic but apparently incompatible personalities, I convinced myself for a time that Girlfriend # 2 was the answer to some of the difficult questions about myself that I wasn't even sure how to ask. And that she must thus be part of my future. But even in our few fond moments, it was dawning on me that I was soon going to be part of an ever-more distant past for her. Too many obstacles lay between us for it to work: the extra two years of life I had over her, the many more years’ worth of living she had over me; the fact that we were both skint all of the time, and had to Work instead of seeing one another; the differing directions in which our destinies were already threatening to take us; and, also, my aforementioned mortal fear of sex—that couldn’t have helped matters much. But our brief demi-dalliance temporarily allayed my Existential Dread at what was otherwise quite a difficult time, Prospective Employer. I know because when I have nightmares about The University in The City of Crushed Dreams—which happens less these days, but used to happen a lot—the time at which The Crisis starts is always before the time when I began to take the train to The City By The Sea; it tends to be around the end of Second Year, not the start of Third. And The Crisis is usually something psychological: something I’ve done—like a psychotic episode, a drug addiction, a breakdown... Something that never actually happened, I hasten to add, Prospective Employer; but something plausible, not fantastical. Something that meant I never finished my Third Year at The University—but something that went unmentioned at home and was never talked of again; to the point where, in the dream, I eventually ceased to believe that The Crisis had occurred, even though I still felt its effects and thus, deep down, knew it had. But certificates, not dreams, testify to the truth, Prospective Employer. And I still have my certificate from the English Degree if you’d like to see it.
Excuse me, Prospective Employer, I digress…
Girlfriend # 2 broke up with me one morning on the beach, after a dreadful party. It would be a relief for both of us, in time. But in the short-term I used it as a reason to mope and curse my Enigmatic Nature, to write a few poor poems, and more immediately to ask a field full of…—I want to say wheat?—in Castle Cary, later that day while changing trains on the way back to The City of Crushed Dreams: what was I actually even for?
The wheat, if indeed that’s what it was, said nothing.
The Hardship Grant Summer 2004
Since I no longer needed money to visit Girlfriend # 2 on the train, and because I had a dissertation to write on James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, I quit The Halls Catering Job as spring gave way to summer. And then I had no Money. As in, minus one thousand pounds’ worth of Money; which was the new “no money” that began in first year, and is still by this point in my life, even though I’m nearly forty, “no money”.
I must have mentioned this to my mother on the phone, and she said I should look at hardship grants. Hardship what, I said? Grants she said. So I discussed this with the others, and it turned out Shane was applying for one too. He’d had to quit both of his Jobs. Apparently if you applied for one near the end of the year, when they had grant funding left that they had to use up, they’d give it to pretty much anyone. Great, I thought: I’m pretty much anyone. So I applied for The Hardship Grant, citing how I’d worked to support myself throughout my degree, but had recently had to give up my Job to focus on my dissertation on James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. This much was true, Prospective Employer: and I admit that by the third term of Third Year of an English Degree at The University in The City of Crushed Dreams circa 2004 we only had about an hour a week’s contact time, and frankly barely sod-all to do; but if I was to reliably avoid a full-blown bout of Existential Dread, in light of having split up with Girlfriend # 2, I was going to need Money for food, and booze, and weed. Mercifully, the angels in charge of The Hardship Grant took pity on me, and I was able to play computer games with Gilbert on his console, watch all 52 episodes of late 1970s Japanese TV show “Monkey”, turn up really stoned—but on time—for my final exam, and just about manage a few coherent answers, and to finally complete my academic magnum opus “James Joyce And The Politics Of Style”—without even reading very much of “Ulysses”, except for the first two chapters, one in the middle, and the last.
Grade
BA Hons English Studies Class I
I stayed away from The University after my mother and her new partner helped me move out of The House of Shit and back in with them in The Suburban Culdesac in The Hog County. The House of Shit had really gone downhill by then. Shane and Todd were sick of the rest of us doing no washing up. (I still maintain I always washed up—either before or after I used the crockery; but never, as a matter of principle, before and after.) So Shane and Todd had taken to coming home drunk and destroying the furniture, then falling asleep in the lounge and soiling themselves. Plus Shandy had a new girlfriend. And Gilbert had run out of weed. The whole situation was Cursed, and it was a huge relief for me to leave it and never go back. There was no way I was going to turn up in person in The City of Crushed Dreams for Graduation just to magically transform my “2:1, but probably a first actually” into a “2:2”, just like I’d gone and done with my History A-level.
I don’t think I was stoned, or in a field. And this time it was not my mother, but Virgil that I spoke with on the phone. (Have I mentioned Virgil before? Probably not. He was there too, as were others. But I never worked with him, and thus he wasn’t relevant to you, Prospective Employer, before now.) “You’ve got a first,” said Virgil. “And there’s a note on your dissertation that says it’s been nominated for a prize.” I never found out what prize, so I definitely didn’t win it. I once noticed a dissertation prize nomination mentioned on the LinkedIn page of another guy who’d graduated from my English course, so I just copied what he said, and had that on my CV for a bit—until I worked out that nobody cares what you were nominated for but didn’t win. Sorry, Prospective Employer: I’m not complaining. This was and still is my greatest Academic Achievement. I mean, everyone I knew who’d studied English also got a first. But no big deal; that didn’t ruin it for me. Plenty of other people presumably didn’t get a first. It’s been on all my CVs since, and nobody has ever questioned the authenticity of the claim, to my knowledge. My mother was happy about it. And my father was too, I suppose, a bit. I’d no clue whatsoever what I was going to do with my future. But I’d got a fuck of a lot of debt. So the incentives to find a Job were as strong as they’d ever been.
Maybe even stronger!
[Next chapter next year]
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