Time Alone Will Tell..
***Advanced warning: if you've ever been under the hilarious misapprehension that I’m in any way cool, this’ll be the post which shatters that illusion. But hey, I’m game for a bit of short term humiliation. I don’t mind if you don’t?***
It was all a lie.
Well, no: a ‘selective disclosure of the available details.’
“What did you get up to this week.. how many pints?” Dad would enquire with a ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’, as I shuffled to the kitchen on a Saturday morning.
I’d go back home from university every weekend and in the three years I attended, I never had the heart to burst his bubble. He seemed so proud of his son, the go-getter and chip-off-the-old-block, that I played along.
“I didn’t count them, but yeah, whew… it was good fun!” I’d try, unconvincingly. The hangovers were real. The implied context? Less so.
~~~~~~~~~~
1999. Boyzone, Slipknot and the Vengaboys blotted the airwaves, American Pie was the breakout movie, and the global computer networks were set to (not) be paralysed by the Millenium Bug. Even the most creative revisionism can’t make any of that seem unlame!
In any case, this was also the year I travelled to Ifor Evans Hall in Camden for the first time in a haze of uncertainty, to begin my first term at University College London.
I’d shorted my academic circuits out long before, but spluttered through my A Levels to secure a place at my preferred university.
I’d love to claim that UCL was my top choice because of its research excellence, facilities and quality of teaching.
It wasn’t.
Instead, I assumed that being in London, even an emotionally-wobbly kid like me would absorb its giddy debauchery by osmosis. Top reasoning.
Surely all I had to do was be there and before long, I’d be sporting an aloof confidence, with arms full of swooning girlfriends and mixing with all sorts of fascinating, urbane people?
As Mum dropped me and my rucksack off and headed back up north, those notions felt a million miles away as reality started to bite.
I sat motionless in my new surroundings: a bed, a sink, old wardrobe, desk, view of the sketchy student bar.
And I cried. For an unfeasibly long time: incredible the stamina your tear ducts have when pushed.
It wasn’t that I felt overwhelmed, or nervous.. I just knew in my heart of hearts that I shouldn’t have been there. I’d ceded meekly to the standard template/timeline of an academically gifted, responsible citizen:
degree
|
stable 9 - 5
|
marriage
|
kids
|
unseemly midlife crisis
|
intricate attempt at ‘styling it out’ or sheepish atonement
|
slow, dignified descent into oblivion.
This “step one” was non-negotiable.
Daft as it seems, not once did I truly consider if this made sense to me! After all, wide-ranging ambition and individuality are among the first casualties when you’re dealing with as much unresolved trauma as I was. This was the safe route: the “correct” one.
~~~~~~~~~~
Fate had a hand in getting my uni career off to a shaky start. A day or two into Freshers’ Week, and I’d succumbed to a nasty bout of ‘flu. In bed with a 39° fever while my neighbours got to know each other. Indeed, one of the chief d**kheads a couple of doors down decided that I needed to be forced to join in, illness or not, and cheerily attempted to kick my door down.
Surprisingly it held firm but unsurprisingly, this didn’t endear my peers to me all that much. Chance had placed me in a corridor full of Special Brew-toting rugby bores, identikit girls who fawned over them, and a lesser-spotted hermit who even routed me in the no-show stakes, leaving a month in.
I tried to make the best of it. One of the perks of living on my own was that I could listen to my music unselfconsciously and, heartened, I pushed the boat out and joined the ‘Rock Society’, frisbeeing my application towards their intray at pace before I could talk myself out of it.
Sickness behind me (and with the Vicks recklessly spurned), I soon found myself in a dimly-lit union bar area with about twenty fellow rockers, overcompensating firebrands and bashful hyper-geeks alike, standing enigmatically in a circle.
The induction event wasn’t terribly auspicious, but I’m still immensely proud of younger-me for going at all. After a couple of thoroughly awkward RockSoc meetups at Euston’s Head of Steam pub, including an astonishing feat of projectile barfing on my shoes by a novice drinker, I was soon done with it.
I’d really tried. I felt myself edging away again, more of an outsider than ever.
No matter. I doubled-down: growing my hair out, going to rock and metal gigs with a friend from school, and revelling in a new found freedom. Parts of my personality were seeping out, even if they weren’t being shared with others.
With rampant hedonism firmly off the table, and with time to kill, I did a whole lot of walking to pass the time. As you do. Hours and hours, trudging all around Camden and Holloway aimlessly, exploring until my feet ached. New sights and sounds expanding my inner world, pushing me onwards.
I’d also belatedly discovered alcohol for the first time, graduating swiftly from giggly sips of Heineken in my room, to Diamond White cider and Somerfields’ Vodka, routinely and inexplicably chased with a six-pack of Mr Kipling Apple Pies. Only the best for a fancy London gent like me!
With my waistline experiencing the kind of growth my social life could only dream of, the undoubted highlight of the week swiftly became the Wednesday ‘Rock Night’ at the student union bar, and the enticing possibility I’d actually get to speak to someone!
I’d convince myself I could go (solo, natch) as long as a I went in marginally half-cut. My routine would go something like this:
Rushing out of my last lecture in the afternoon, I’d walk or take the 168 bus up to a supermarket near Chalk Farm. Feeling slightly smug and even a bit grown up (but why?!), I’d buy myself dinner: cheap sandwich, giant cookie, cans of cider and two bottles of Tango. I had a plan.
A quick change at HQ and, à la mode in my finest oil-slick purple shirt and ‘Mr Byrite’ khaki chinos, I looked... well, naturally I looked a total c**t. Thank goodness there’s no photographic evidence... perk of having no friends; WINS ALL AROUND!
As the frosts crept in and weary commuters trudged through the streets, I’d amble over to the park in Primrose Hill, find a vacant bench and sit in silence. Exhale of contemplation over, entirely coolly and with nary a hint of awkwardness, I’d down my Tangos, and covertly decant the alcohol into the empty bottles, cunningly using the carrier bag as a privacy screen. All that remained was to hastily discard the empties in the nearest bin.
See, the bottles were opaque! No one would know (chortle) that I was getting plastered! Nothing to see here…. genius.
Kids: you can have that for free. Don’t tell those pesky grown ups… keep it on the down-low.
I’m no halfwit… as anyone would, I’d work out exactly how many millilitres of alcohol I’d be drinking and what would be safe in one evening, taking into account my weight, age and established government guidelines. Y’know, just your common-or-garden rebel behaviour brazenly in plain sight…
Oddly for an introvert, I’m not a fan of total silence, so I’d cheerily listen to my accompaniment of choice on my CD/radio Walkman whilst munching away on my triple sandwich. Sometimes it’d be Spectrum 558 A.M radio, and the Arabic language program presented by an Iraqi, Falah Hashim. Other times it was my one of my favourite metal CDs. I still can’t listen to “Call of Ktulu” or “Welcome Home” without a mischievous grin taking over my face and a hash of recollections flooding back.
Either way, as the food and booze vanished and a hazy twilight sunk into the trees, I’d start feeling genuinely happy. More connected to myself. Brave and fortified. Keeping an eye on my watch, I’d endeavour to scramble to the union bar and pogo to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘The Beautiful People’ or ‘Blind’. The majority of the time, I confess I actually just stayed put. The emerging warmth and feeling of being me was wonderful.
A couple of hours in, and I’d take a wobbly-legged patrol round the perimeter of the park under cover of darkness, singing along at full volume to my music. Shouting, dancing, gurning, running. I don’t remember seeing a soul around me most of the time, but even if there was anyone there, they wisely just gave me a wide berth. It didn’t matter. I just didn’t give a sh*t for the first time ever. I felt alive; years’ worth of (self-imposed) tame, constrained sterility obliterated.
Fortunately, it was easy enough to stop drinking after university, but it handed me my confidence back temporarily. It facilitated those weekly exorcisms and got me through. I used that time to dream of the life I really did want: family, writing music and earning a living making people happy. What seemed far-fetched and tainted by my experience in the daytime felt entirely possible and substantial by night. It opened my eyes to the truth I’d intuited as a child: life was boundless; limitless. This was a tantalising gateway.
A gateway which, without judiciously pausing to digest, sowed the seeds for real dysfunction. Life and the rigid constructs that seemed to support it were incompatible with who I was and got in my way. The fluidity of thought, emotion and intellect I experienced internally was electrifying, but seemingly didn’t translate to reality. Why would I engage with a world where every fear, every nascent thought of those around me felt tangible and claustrophobic?
Twenty years later, and I’m still in the process of figuring out how my internal dreamscapes and external reality can coexist happily.
~~~~~~~~~~
When all’s said and done, I hold onto that feeling of freedom and remember those days with surprising fondness. Not the no mates/abysmal dress sense/prelude to a breakdown bit, but the fact I got the chance to embrace irregularity and stir things up, briefly.
Without that, I’ve no idea where I’d be. Perhaps cruising towards the unedifying bit of the ‘responsible citizen timeline’? I doubt I’d ever have glimpsed the brighter alternatives hidden within me.
Through all the trying moments I’ve negotiated since, those experiences… those feelings have remained my warped benchmark and collectively, an improbable beacon of hope.
~~~~~~~~~~
There’s a lesson somewhere in all of this!
PLEASE don’t do what I did, but know that despite those questionable choices, incredibly, I did achieve part of my dream. I eventually met someone special and had that family. To her, implausibly, I’m a catch! And there’s time yet for the other parts to come true.
Whatever stage you’re at in life, if you feel stuck or trapped; diligently following a path which doesn’t help you shine, STOP.
Breathe and connect. Stripped of responsibilities, rules, expectations and pressure: are you there?
While life continues, as it inevitably does, work at coaxing your unique spirit out, step by step. Encouraging it and supporting its growth day to day.
But what if even that’s too far-fetched? Too big?
Start absurdly simply: make yourself smile.
Then do it again……
and keep doing it.
Let it gather momentum. You never know where this incremental rousing of elemental happiness may take you.
Here’s to you Primrose Hill! Maybe I’ll make it back one day for old times’ sake. I’ll bring the cocktails, you bring the patchwork of memories.