I walked into my wardrobe today. I should have opened the doors first. And once inside I discovered a different world. It seemed so alien, yet so familiar. Smell of student.
I found this world of treasures within a diary I began writing in earnest back in 1993. It began fairly positively, charting the first couple of weeks of the year before returning from home to La Sainte Union College in Southampton.
My bird at the time was at Newcastle Poly. You can’t beat long-distance relationships. You can’t beat them because there’s nothing to hit with a bloody big stick. Long distance relationships suck like a Dyson.
So I was obviously going through the whole heartstring-tuggedness of the imminently parted. With the magnanimous fortitude of hindsight I don’t know why I was remotely arsed by this enforced segregation. They say you never forget your first girlfriend: I certainly don’t. On one occasion she cleared out Sayers of iced buns. And it was only 9.05am.
Anyway vitriol cast aside, I was also plagued by the thorny issue of returning to a college where I had masochistically placed myself on a course which bore no connection whatsoever to the skillset I had practiced and mastered over the years. Namely, playing computer games and buying too many Madonna CDs. I think universities really missed out on this opportunity: actually listening to their academic progeny to discover what they actually wanted to study rather than dishing out the most inane syllabuses/i/um like Market Gardening and Physics.
Anyway mine was French and European Studies. What hadn’t been revealed to me on being accepted to study at LSU (or more importantly to the top brass, creaming my fees off the government irrespective of whether I was capable enough to tackle the subjects) is that I needed an A Level in Politics, History or Economics.
Clearly this fact had eluded me on the prospectus. In any case I’d totally flunked Economics. If Economics was a plane on the chart of an air traffic controller, it would have been the Cessna flying into a 747. Total wipeout. I got a U. So technically I don’t have to tell you I can’t add up, because there’s no trace anywhere of me even having taken the course. But then you would have considered me somewhat of a tard if I’d told you I only took three subjects including General Studies. And you would have been quite right.
Anyway so against the backdrop of teenage angst I had this almighty scholastic question mark drooping over my centre parting. I was torn like a Rich Tea dunked too long. I had some bonanza friends in Southampton (it was just around the time of the first Legionnaire’s Disease outbreak round at the Institute so all the girls at LSU would only have sex with lads from the same college. It was like the summer of love but without the love; and it rained all the time.
Yeah so I had all these groovy mates; we’d hang out at the Southampton superclubs. Southampton superclubs are a little different to the superclubs you’d find in, say, Manchester or Mallorca. You could badge yourself a superclub in Hampshire if your roof didn’t leak, and you didn’t water down the Smirnoff. The theory behind diluting spirits in the non-superclubs was that it was caused by the leaking roofs.
So it was the (un)summer of (not)love and mateship was at its most cute. I was elected hostel master by the other guys and gals, which apparently accorded me the opportunity to sleep with any of the women. The only condition being that they had to want to sleep with me. It was a fallow few months at the baronial hall of Count Thackeray…
I got a puncture, bought a jumper, saw the dean of faculty and wrote a letter to Trinity and No Sanity College in Leeds. Nine letters later and after the courts overruled the establishment’s restraining order arrowed in my direction, I was in. £62 a week in an en suite room, all meals included. You couldn’t even get that kind of value if you lived in an Aldi in Blackpool.
In the reckless months between February 25 1993 – when my bags and I sailed out of Southampton for the last time, by car – and September 30 1993, when the gateway to frivolity in Leeds beckoned, I worked as a croupier. Tossing dice and dealing cards, spinning balls and waving off suggestions the roulette table was “rigged with mirrors, magnets and pit bosses”, I was at my most euphoric between the hours of 6am and 12noon – closed doors at the casino.
Man alive, skull-crushing doesn’t come close to cashing up at 4am after a 10-hour shift on the tables. Though you only worked 40 mins on, 20 mins break, 40 mins on, to eternity, the stress levels were unaccountably high. Legion were the times a one-eyed gangster lost anywhere upwards of £15,000 on one of my watches. £75k was the biggest loss at my table in a 40-minute slot. Tips, it must be said, weren’t often forthcoming and with no pockets and a slim-fitting thong opportunities of gain were negligible.
I must write a diary again. I’d love to look back on this eventful chapter of my life, when I’m 50 (jesus) and realise that in fact youth is bollocks and wisdom does only come to those who wait.
I’ve waited long enough: now is the new black.
In other news… We’re getting there in preparedness for the 630-mile South West Coast Path trek for Cancer Research UK. To read more about this incredible feat for my incredible feet (see?) then hop along to http://www.630bigones.co.uk.
