Tuesday January 8th

Back in Watermouth, & another term to face. Lee & I arrived at 9 yesterday evening expecting deep snow but when we got back we found it similar to Easterby. After dropping our bags at Maynard Gardens we went across to Mo’s & saw Pete, who’s in England until the end of January. He hasn’t changed at all. We went for a drink at the Quiet Lady & later shivered in the sub zero temperatures in Mo’s flat. We stayed until 2 a.m. & then walked back to Lee’s. It was absolutely freezing.

Today I finally went back to Westdorgan Road, half-expecting a letter from the constabulary to be waiting—I was glad to be disappointed on this score. Gareth, Lindsey & Stu were all back. Pete called in on us in the afternoon & we had a cheerful evening in the Jervis Arms & the Three Tuns. Lee began the day in an oddly detached frame of mind, “woolly-headed” as he put it, & he seemed ill at ease & uncomfortable with Watermouth; this he attributed it to an impending cold. He’s cheered up a bit now.

Sunday January 6th

It is difficult to pick up the pieces of shattered continuity. There’s always the “I’ll do it tomorrow, I’ll do it tomorrow” & never the actual process of sitting still & writing. It’ll be difficult to attain past levels. I’ve noticed an element of self-consciousness & fear creeping into my thoughts when I direct them towards these pages, as if I’m unsure of how to start again & scared of speaking ‘unnaturally’ & ‘falsely’. I’ve led myself into the trap of allowing bookish pretensions to dominate the content of what is written.

I’m going back to Watermouth tomorrow. I rang Stu today to tell him to open the Letter (if it’s arrived) & to ‘phone back with the verdict. Just now the telephone rang & I went to answer it with jangling nerves & a thudding heart . . . but it was only Andrew ringing to talk about the match.

Saturday January 5th

Robert & I paid £4 & traveled down to Textile Sunday League Owscroft Colliery on the Travel club coach for the Yorkshire Challenge Cup tie with Athletic. The coach left Cardigan Park at 11 & reached Owscroft two hours later. On the outskirts of the town we were escorted by a police motorcycle; even two hours before K.O. the ground was surrounded by crowds of people, which seemed laughable given that all this local interest was being generated over the visit of Easterby Athletic, so long the underdogs, now the ‘giants’ to be ‘killed’ in turn. The police, no doubt new at this, wouldn’t even let us go into town for a drink before the game so we had to stand for two hours on the terraces at the covered Church Bank end of the ground as the crowds grew. It was bitterly cold. By K.O. about 300 Athletic supporters were packed into our end of the ground, exchanging the occasional chant with a group of fifty or so of the Owscroft hardcore, whose average age looked to be about 16. The Athletic fans condescendingly applauded their token efforts. The game began well for us—three decent scoring chances in the first 15 minutes, a Hughes header against the cross bar & two efforts by Highmore over the top from point blank range. Owscroft looked overawed & their defenders unsure . . .

We were all confident, but in their first real attack Owscroft scored & we stood in stunned disbelief as 3/5ths of the crowd went berserk & their players celebrated. The rest of the half Athletic had most of the play but never looked like scoring & kept falling & slipping on the icy pitch.

After half-time it was more of the same from Athletic but now Owscroft were playing well & looking the better side. Athletic still looked unsettled & couldn’t string two passes together. Owscroft ran them off the ball, pressing all the time. Two minutes from the end, the crowd erupted again – Owscroft had scored! We couldn’t believe it. Despair from some, anger from others, desultory chants of “Athletic, Athletic” that sounded half-hearted. The whistle went & that was it; we were grim. There was some fighting between Easterby fans & police & there was a skirmish on the field as a dozen or so broke the police cordon & ran the length of the pitch to the attack in response to the Owscroft taunts.

The long journey back was grim & silent, Robert listening to the radio while I tried to sleep off my gloom. We got back into a frozen Easterby at seven & caught a taxi home. Dad was in a bitter mood when we got in, railing against the inclusion of Sunday-league teams in the Challenge Cup, saying they have a Cup competition of their own & “why should they be allowed to enter ours.” He vindictively hopes Owscroft get thrashed in the next round. Robert & I tried to laugh it off but the result cast a long shadow over the rest of the evening.

Friday January 4th

Tonight I went to a get-together at Mrs. Blakeborough’s house on Booth Road in Moxthorpe. Ms. Hirst, Jeremy, Gillian Wade & Lee were there, plus Mr. Blakeborough (a Steven Bates sound-alike) &, later on, two of his former students. Mrs. B. has just had a baby: “You think it stupid & absurd until you have one of your own. You get so wrapped up in their little worlds—It’s marvelous.” She’d laid on food—mince pies, crisps, nuts etc. – plus plenty of wine, but for the first half an hour or so we sat in awkward silence, staring at the lurid paintings on the walls & acting very wooden. Hirst was the same as ever, but this time I saw her more as a person & could see how life has made her cynical & has caused her (& Mrs. Blakeborough too) to drop the brave statements & postures of youth & retreat into teaching. To students at school, teachers are not people but things, objects almost. It’s strange to think on—two-&-a-bit years & now we’re coming up to their level while they’ve stayed as they are & as they will be (full stop - - -). Hirst said it was “sad” that none of us write anything for its own sake anymore—I didn’t mention this journal—& I said that I sometimes get the urge to write but that “it always passes.”

Lee came across as negative & he explained his College work in a monotone, embarrassed voice: “They always want a logical reason for everything you do . . . I do things to take the piss.” His work is turning more & more towards the illogical & unreasonable, & he’s warming to the idea of change as the single most important determining factor behind all of life & existence. I think he, Jeremy & I all appeared fairly cynical & prepared to mock anything—anything for a laugh, as Del Caraway might say—& we left after midnight, Lee riding home on an undersized bicycle & dressed in his long rubberized police coat & black IRA-style balaclava. He was a grim sight at one a.m. on a dark winter’s night.

Thursday January 3rd

Today I went to Whincliffe with Lee. Dad is back at work this week & so he gave me a lift into town at one, & I met Lee in Holdsworth Square station. It was enjoyable enough walking the streets of Headache City, which was dismal & grey as usual, but we were both in good spirits so it was OK.

I don’t know whether to look forward to going away again or not. I know that the Letter on which so much rests will be waiting when I do return to Watermouth. I can’t reconcile that side of my life with the one that surrounds me know. This seems like another life completely, like I’m a different person almost, & so from a 300+ mile perspective I’m able to be reasonably blasé & philosophical; false, but it feels safe & natural. I’m tired. My eyes are heavy & my mind isn’t feeling up to much. The effort required to put thoughts into words is too great at this late hour. I find myself rereading things I wrote a year ago & looking back regretfully at the ease with which I seem to have lost a whole way of thought/writing. It’s slipped away.

Wednesday January 2nd 1985

The new year passed in familiar fashion, out ‘celebrating’ in town with Jeremy (if celebrate is the right word) at The Volunteer Inn, The Old Bell Tavern & The Three Kings, & then on to Dengates & The Barge. The Moment itself came & went while we were in the latter with Jeremy’s family. Jeremy & I were pissed well before midnight & I woke up on Jeremy’s sofa the following morning with a throbbing head & birdcage mouth.

Colin, Jeremy’s step-brother, gave me a lift on to Cardigan Park where I paid my £2.50 & boarded a supporter’s coach for the trip to Dardray. The coach journey was uneventful. We were stopped in the outskirts of Dardray by the police & given an escort of police Land Rover & motorcycles to the ground where the coaches drew up in a concrete enclosure ankle-deep in mud & water & surrounded by walls topped with shards of broken glass. The walk to the ground was along a concrete passageway amid scrap yards. The Athletic fans were congregating at the Factory End of the ground, & as I stood in the bitter cold waiting for Rob & Carol more & more Easterby supporters streamed onto the terracing. R & C eventually arrived with a quarter-of-an-hour to go. The whole scenario—the appearance of the ground from where we stood & the blindly faithful optimism of the massed Athletic fans—reminded me of that fateful day at Ingleborough in 1978 when Athletic needed a draw in order to stay up (they lost). I was half-expecting a similar result, & when the game began with Dardray forcing corners & running all over us it looked as if my fears were to be realized. HT 0-0. The second period was more evenly matched, with end-to-end attacking & break-aways. But with their first real attack Athletic scored & we went wild. Athletic were getting deep inside the Dardray penalty box & when Newlands mishit a shot Highmore fired in a volley which the ‘keeper saved, only for another effort to come powering in—saved—then another—hits a post—& another—& another—the ‘keeper sprawling full-length this time to push the ball away with his right hand . . . Then there was Ken Tidemore running in & firing the ball over the prostrate goalkeeper & the despairing defenders & into the net! A tremendous atmosphere, our end in full cry now, the Dardray fans distant & sullen. Dardray got a goal back & the last 10 minutes were agony but Athletic held out to the whistle.

I went back to Saxton with Robert & Carol & stayed the night, but came back today after wandering round Dearnelow. The bus journey gave me a headache & made me feel queasy. This has stayed with me all evening.

Pete rang today, back in the UK for a few weeks. He didn’t sound to have changed at all. I am £80 overdrawn, with £50 in Building Soc. & another £70 on my limit at the bank available. Here I am, 20½, time flying by. Two years is such a long time at 16 but now, it goes before I’m even ready to savour the moment.

Saturday December 29th

Another football day; Rob & Carol arriving as usual around dinnertime, Football Focus & On the Ball on TV, food, then the match . . . The pressure was on Athletic as Breightfold had won their five previous away matches. We drew 1-1 but only after Breightfold had put us on the rack throughout the second half. The Trinity fans kept up a constant chant as though to fortify themselves against the cold, doing congas across their half of the Easterby End & putting us all in a good mood. Athletic still fifteenth.

Friday December 28th

I went out again tonight, this time with Lee, Jeremy & Jonas Venckus. Lee laced the latter’s lemonade & blackcurrants with vodkas & Jonas kept wondering why he “felt tired.” With the exception of Jonas, we all got fairly drunk, dominating the The Red Grouse with loud, laughter filled conversations about grave robbing etc., etc . . .

It was very foggy on the way back, a real pea-souper. We saw Louise Taylor & Jill Davey as we tiptoed through the mist, & pretended we were going to do a smash & grab at an off licence; Louise: “Damn students.” We behaved ourselves after this. Jonas went home & so Lee & Jeremy came home with me. They found the Christmas decorations amusing.

Thursday December 27th

At 11 I met Jeremy & Lee at WH Smith’s in town. Lee was eager to buy a Walkman cassette player with the £70 he’d received from his Mum & Dad, so we trailed round all the hi-fi shops & were just on our way for a curry at the Bahawal when we came across Grant, striding balefully along the pavement by Howard’s. He stopped & stared, bewildered & taken aback for a moment, a deep scowl on his brow beneath the tattered red yachting cap perched atop lank hair. It was good to see him! He came for a curry with us, then we went for a lunchtime drink at the Three Kings & walked aimlessly across town, ending up at the Arcade Café for coffee & tuna-fish sandwiches before Jeremy & Grant left for home. Lee bought a Walkman identical to mine, the sky full of starlings din as they settled down to roost; Easterby & Watermouth are very similar to one another in this respect.

Tonight I went for a drink with Grant; we met Nik Gordon & his girlfriend in the Albion in Ashburn, & then on to the Magpie. We went back to 44 where Grant’s sister Amanda was having a careers chat with the police—Grant says that he’ll “never speak to her again” (part-serious) if she joins the force. Another frozen walk home through fogbound streets.

Wednesday December 26th

Boxing Day: Leaving Mum & Carol at home, we went to see Athletic play Moorwood Town in front of a big crowd but saw them lose 2-1 to an injury-time free-kick winner. Athletic had 2 men sent off five minutes from the end as they pressed for the winner too. Town were pretty lucky.

Despondency over tea until Jeremy rang, so I walked down to Gladden Road to meet him at Lee’s. It was icy, brittle & cold—frost on the ground. We did nothing except sit around in L.’s room, same as ever. Jeremy & I walked back.

Tuesday December 25th – Christmas Day

Four LPs (Prince Jammy’s “Uhuru in Dub” & “Osbourne Dub,” Max Roach’s “Freedom Now Suite” & Albert Ayler “Vibrations”), two books (“Cultural History of Ghosts” & “A-Z of British Football Records”), a jumper, scarf, Sony Walkman & assorted chocolates etc & my fifth recorded Christmas day has passed in exactly the manner of the previous four—gluttony, TV & family. Rob & Carol called round at six & are staying the night. An all-male outing to Cardigan Park—“The Park of Dreams” as the Echo called it yesterday—beckons tomorrow for the traditional Boxing Day game against Moorwood Town & a win for Athletic hopefully.

Everything’s rushed at this time of year. I had a hectic afternoon in town yesterday buying last minute gifts for Nanna P., Nanna B. & Carol after going for a curry at the Bahawal with Andrew. I went out with Jeremy last night—Lee wouldn’t come, saying it was “too much effort” & preferring to stay in watching “Jim Davidson’s Falklands Special” instead. I haven’t seen him since last Thursday. As I sat on the bus into town, the revelries were in full spate, Darren Busfield & ex-Egley GS company attaching themselves to two loud-mouthed girls with tinsel in their hair, laughing & shouting in the aisle of the bus, fondling them, sitting in their laps while DB put his hand up the mouthiest girl’s skirt, making her shout “Gerroff will yer, leave me alone!” while her friend cackled & received similar treatment. My heart sank as the journey progressed, & by the time I met Jeremy I was unenthusiastic.

We tried to get a drink at one Wine Bar nr. Dyson Street but it was crowded five deep at the bar so we gave up & with hearts of lead caught a taxi into Farnshaw & “The Red Grouse,” then on to Chubby’s, finding all the familiar faces in all the familiar embraces. Tinsel, loud sing-alongs to “Feed the World,” “Nellie the Elephant” etc., the dry taste of cider in my mouth. Everything as expected—shit. Jeremy & I stood out like sore thumbs. The only highlight was giving two ugly tarts a mouthful of abuse & the two fingers every time I saw them. They’d overheard Jeremy’s “we must be the oldest people here” in the queue outside & had responded with, “Who d’yer think you are, yer lanky creep?” etc., etc., which was repeated every 20 minutes or so inside. Everyone slobbering over everybody else—tongues down throats, drunk . . . Christmas. I walked home pissed & sociable with Andrew Boyd & David (“Booky”) Boocock, playing it out. Got in at 3. It’s such a racket it’s too obvious to even mention, but occasionally I boil over & feel desperate, trapped. Why I delude myself over this annual piss-up/piss-off I don’t know.

Sunday December 23rd

Mum & Dad stayed in Saxton overnight & returned mid-afternoon today. I was housebound with Andrew, who I haven’t seen since last June when he took me to Bracknell Jazz Festival—yet the in-jokes still mean something. How quick it is old habits & relationships pick up from where they left off . . .

I sometimes fear the passage into mid maturity & the rounding off of edges that many seem to undergo in their mid thirties. I detect this in Robert, & already I detect a change in myself too. The fire is turning down & the sharpness, the vivid choices & the dramatic moments seem to ebb away. This tendency is revealing itself with alarming regularity among people in Watermouth, the attitude of “well, students will be students but now it’s time to move on, now it’s time for stern faces & responsibility & learning to accept doing what you don’t want to do . . .” Not that I hold the average Watermouth student lifestyle up as some paragon of human social development, but it does entail certain freedoms & opportunities that many throw away, as though these all just disappear into the sideboard drawer along with the degree certificate. And this is the goal: no mellow maturity, but trauma & struggle, a crisis of responsibilities every day—to the self, not the crisis of circumstance I’ve drifted into since September (Westdorgan Rd., LSD etc.), for this just obscures my mindfulness of self & chokes all perspective.

Sometimes the simple articulation of thoughts in words & sentences seems like Herculean labour!

Saturday December 22nd

Last night I went into Farnshaw & Easterby with Jeremy & he stayed the night. I met him at the Albert Hotel. We were both depressed by the Christmas glitter & at finding ourselves once again in the claustrophobic confines of Farnshaw, as though nothing has changed or moved on . . . On my right, a middle-aged lady in fur coat & jewelry spooned pie & mushy peas from a bowl. We contrived to laugh with a sort of gloomy anticipation at the experiences we have in store, another Easterby Christmas on the cards. We had to get out, so we caught a bus into Easterby city centre & wended our aimless way amid the shouting crowds to the Three Kings on Felgate Road. Even there was a certain excitement in the presence of hundreds of other people. Human company generates interest. We fought our way to the bar, taking care not to catch anyone’s glance & not holding it for too long if we did. The only diversion was the routine appearance of the stripper who proceeded to disrobe in a painfully drawn out manner & pour baby oil over her body while the 90% male taproom audience feigned disinterest (although rooted to the spot) & the girls in the crowd came & went & chatted unconcerned. It was entertaining in a way . . . Jeremy & I promised ourselves an early start on the 24th . . .

This morning we had to be up early because Mum & Dad wanted to leave by eight at the latest, & so we gave Jeremy a lift to Moxthorpe while it was still dark. The journey through Ferscliffe was brightened by the sun firing the eastern sky. As we reached Stonewood a steady drizzle had started & the trees were dark & bare; South Yorkshire looked cold & grey. Rob & Carol were OK, & we set off to Purswell within an hour or so of reaching Saxton, leaving Mum & Carol putting up Christmas decorations.

The journey through Lanethorpe was interesting, past the colliery & the boarded up windows of the picket-hit NCB offices, & on into the hinterland of S. Yorkshire’s mining areas, through Ashworth, a dull struggling miserable place, men & women huddled against the rain, shops closed down, resignation on the faces. The strike is in its 10th month & neither side looks like breaking. Some see it lasting for years. Robert told us that 40% of the children at his school come from strike-hit families. As I gazed out on the rows of houses we passed it felt almost like a civil war out on the estates & in the high streets, with miners on one side, police on the other. We were soon out into the countryside, into the flat expanses of Nottinghamshire & soon after that Purswell Abbey loomed up ahead in the gloom. We parked in the city centre & wandered round the mediaeval streets, once full of filth & dirt, now full of tourists & litter. The Abbey was nearly empty & awesomely quiet. I was interested in the human marks in the stone, the centuries-old graffiti, the stone faces, some hideous, others delicate. I tried to imagine it as it must have been centuries ago, how the simple contrast between the vaulted silence of the gloomy Abbey & the squalid bustle & impermanence of the streets outside revealed the power of God; the sheer physical presence of this monstrous being in their midst, its timelessness in a world of flux, must have counted for much in the superstitious minds of mediaeval men & women.

We didn’t have time to look around as thoroughly as we’d wished & as we walked to the ground the rain came down. We arrived sodden to find a handful of Easterby fans sheltering behind a wall. The main body of Athletic fans didn’t arrive until a few minutes later & announced their arrival by distant chanting, like an approaching horde. The forty or so of us already at the ground rushed to the back of our pen to watch their arrival (the relief of Mafeking).

The game was a tough one for Easterby & they played badly, slipping in the mud & looking slower & less enthusiastic than Purswell, so the jubilation of a draw after the apparent certainty of defeat made it all the more enjoyable. After the match, Robert dropped me in the centre of Dearnelow & I took a bus back to Easterby & home. Andrew was in when I arrived; he seemed different somehow, & I felt uneasy & awkward. His plan to buy a flat in London & what seems a now irreversible tendency toward a settled suburban lifestyle is alien to me—I hope it will always be so. He told me he was annoyed that a couple of his friends from College acted like “wallys” at a party the other week, taking the piss out of fellow partygoers & acting cliquey: "I know I was a bit daft too when I was at College, but I've moved on" . . .

Friday December 21st

Three months gone since the flow of words was interrupted. Over the summer I was growing frustrated with the form & content of this “diary” & I suppose my infrequent attempts at continuing as I had been was a reflection of that frustration. I’ve rushed blindly through the term & the pages spanning Sept-Dec accurately reflect that sense. I’ve lost control of the outward essentials of my life, lost order, calm & my much vaunted seclusion, & instead I’ve immersed myself in the stream of things & have drifted this way & that with the currents. Although I’ve not been conscious of it, it’s easy to slip into forgetfulness of the past or the future, & since September I’ve lived in the mindless present, as though life has lost an extra dimension & become flat & superficial, lacking any depth. I’ve been lurching forward, sightless & with no memory, & it’s only been at night or in the mornings as I lie in bed that guilt catches me & I feel a prickling irritation & disappointment at myself, that I have let things go. Living at Westdorgan Road hasn’t helped. My room there is so small that I only use it to sleep & I’ve really had nowhere to call my own, a space to think & write. So, aided by my congenital laziness, I’ve given up, promising myself that “Tomorrow I’ll start . . .” But now the tomorrows have all gone & the term’s all over & all I’m left with is bad memories, with nothing achieved & just seventeen pages to say any of it ever happened. And all the time I’ve felt that something was gone, a vital element missing from each day & week that passed. Do most people live their lives like this? I can’t imagine any satisfaction in living a wordless life, because apart from memory what else is there to say the day just done (lost for always) has ever been?

In retrospect, all this chaos & blindness is focused on Oct 20th-Oct 21st & the night of the Big A. On LSD the mind is an organ that vividly records prevailing sense impressions with great intensity. I’ve never had great revelations on acid (although that last time came close, before things turned rotten). Instead the acid experience has always revealed itself in mundane ways; in the ‘fun’ of seeing perspectives distorted & disturbed; in people transformed into grotesques; faces into masks by turns ugly, amusing, or disgusting; a kaleidoscope of dolls & scuttling, rapacious insect-people; TV images fluidly melting from one frozen mind’s eye-instant to the next . . . . . .

It’s all so unreal here. It’s as if Christmas has been foisted on an unsuspecting public. The TV churns out seasonal platitudes, the streets are bedecked with lights, Christmas trees & plastic snowmen & people rush around bewildered, spending money & overindulging. It’s such a racket. Even St. Cuthbert’s was chiming ponderous Christmas carols last night as I travelled along Lockley Lane on the bus.

It occurs to me that I’m more familiar with Watermouth than I am with Easterby. I feel easier there. Every time I come back here there are changes—old familiar sights torn down, new buildings in their place, or an ugly gap where something was, a jolting momentary unfamiliarity. It’s like returning to a dream, a dream of the past, an unreal world that lives on only in my memory the greater part of the time. Everything I see has a pre-October 1982 association—& the me of October 1982 is gone. Now I have no attachments to Easterby, save for memories & the old ties of family & school—hence, I suppose, the unreality. I can’t reconcile this timeless place of home with all the trouble I am in down there. If the 2 worlds should ever come together!

Thursday December 20th

Yesterday morning PC Essex, the arresting officer from Oct 21st called at Maynard Gardens to tell Lee that all charges against him had been dropped & that Stu & I’s files were on the Superintendent’s desk; he was now deciding what to do with us. So this morning I called at the police station on Michael Street & saw PC Essex who told me that, in his opinion, I’ll be lucky to get off with a caution & will probably go to court on the charge of possession. He thinks the charge of supply will be dropped because “you’re obviously not a pusher.” He never mentioned Stu, so perhaps he’ll escape punishment. As I stood listening with nodding head & a fixed expression of gloom I was told not to let it ruin my Christmas, & I got the impression that PC Essex had every sympathy with me—as he should if my story were true. I’ll go through life claiming all this happened while I was drunk & perhaps one day this fiction will replace the truth as the version I believe. So let it be said now: I took LSD willingly & I will do so again. If I do get fined the whole scenario will appear so predictable. Possession of LSD while a student . . . I hope I’m never held up as an example of your average student, although with that albatross around my neck people will be forgiven for believing I was. I haven’t worried much about the pending charges, & it’s only over the last week that I’ve been assailed by bad dreams. The fear that the police will get in touch with home sends my heart pounding. It would be terrible, not simply for Mum & Dad to know I’d “taken drugs” but for the demeaning version of events I’d be forced to peddle, & all that this will mean for their opinion of my “maturity” & good sense. Things are better left hidden & unsaid.

I got home tonight at seven after travelling by coach to London & hitching from Brent Cross. As I waited unenthusiastically with a frozen thumb & a placard announcing my destination I wished I’d caught a bus all the way. There were about seven other people waiting & we were moved on twice by the cops. After 20 minutes (!) I was giving up hope when a white van passed us & I saw the driver pointing at me & then pulling in. I got a lift all the way to Easterby & it only took 4 hours (8 total) & only cost £3.55.

At home the Christmas decorations were up, this done especially for my return by Mum & Dad the previous evening. The living room is full of glitter & balloons & everything feels so luxurious & ordered after the past 3 months. The bad dream of Oct 21st seems just that—a bad dream & nothing more, except that the forces of law & order wait in judgment on me. I concealed the fact that I’d hitched back up, knowing Mum’s aversion to that mode of travel, as it saves the moans & worry. My hair caused gripes from Mum; she said I looked as though I’d been to jail, “a Borstal boy.” Apt.

Friday December 7th

Where to begin? Lindsey is leaving University at long last, after constant trouble over her lack of work & non-attendance. She’s away at the moment, staying with a friend in Swansea, & has been since Wednesday morning. I think she’ll leave Watermouth completely. She was down about it on Tuesday, saying she feels as though she’s let her mother down. This dropping out of higher education is a congenital Aukin affliction from what she said. I think she’s made the right decision. Stu escaped being stopped from taking one of the units of his degree by the skin of his teeth; he had to plead with his tutor to be allowed to continue. He’s home in Basildon for Christmas.

It’s 12:37 pm on a sunny, cold afternoon & in a minute I’ll catch a bus into town & get drunk at the Art College Combined Arts Party. The regularity of these entries has ceased & I feel I’ve lost an overall view of things, that sense of continuous day-&-night, day-&-night life each month & year gone . . . The void separating Now from Then will always remain unfilled. Two months of emptiness & untold things. It’s a pity I couldn’t keep it up, but in a way the silence reflects my state of being—I’m rushing through the last months of University & I feel this chapter is coming to an end. I’m eager to be through to the light at the other side & from this vantage point I see next June onwards in the most optimistic terms. Silence was the way it was & had to be (almost). New beginnings, & just a minor hiccup in my strivings & now I’m on my way again.

Sunday December 2nd

After watching Barry’s band at the Cellar on Friday night I fell into conversation with Rowan Morrison, who I’ve not spoken to for a year or more. She’ adopted a decadent ‘20s look—ankle-length fur coat, matching fur hat, flapper hair, cigarette smoked elegantly, cheroot-like, with head held back superciliously . . . We talked all evening & she invited me back to her room on Avebury Street where she lives alone on the second floor. We were up talking until the early hours & I slept on her floor.

Last night I went to a party at 38 Broad Street where ‘Z.’ & Oscar live. It was a predictable hippy gathering, which Lee, Stu, Lindsey & I disrupted with our loud, strident behaviour. Lee continued his record of causing damage at every party he’s invited to by inadvertently kicking holes in the plasterboard walls during a Freddie Starr impression & then running around screaming. Later, four or five heavies gate crashed the party & one of them—Lonsdale sweatshirt, moustache—forced himself on Lindsey (“I want to taste your lips,” etc)., which she politely but insistently refused. But when she went to the bathroom he forced his way in & shut the door, but Lee kept his foot in the way. I thought a fight was bound to happen. I left about 2 or 3 & caught a taxi home alone.

Wednesday November 28th

The term is almost over. I’m in the house alone. Stu & Gareth have gone into town to “get drunk.” Lindsey is in London at an RCP picket of the TUC. Susie is in Germany, Pete & Guy in America. Lee is at Maynard Gardens. I’m supposed to be working, writing an essay on Faulkner & I’ve taken speed with that end in mind, but I’m using it instead to try & break this curse of silence that’s befallen me. I can’t write anymore—I don’t know where I should start. A block stands in the way of further progress.

How little self-knowledge I have, let alone knowledge of others. I don’t know Lindsey at all & I never have done. What was in my mind long ago was an ideal that bore no relation to actuality, hence the tears & gnashing of teeth. Ideals are forever being destroyed & they destroy us in the process, which hopefully leaves us wiser. In this house, her things are all around me; I long to discover the person hidden in them—discovering a hidden person in these empty objects would be a revelation & make me feel things fully. What is this divide between people? I’ve never ever crossed it. I’m trying & failing to capture my meaning in words & to convey a sense of the futility I feel when looking at the things people surround themselves with. I don’t ‘want’ her anymore in that way, although I want to know her & I can’t; I can only get a sideways glance & in that the awful gulf between apparent & real is revealed to me. I’ve been living in the same house as her for five months & I attach the label ‘friend’ to the name ‘Lindsey’. But yet she’s still a stranger. It fucks me up. There are places in people shut away from others, closed off by walls, mysterious places I understand nothing of. We can’t get there by talking. Lindsey has seemed remote all term. There are threats of expulsion from the University hanging over her head, but she never feels any need to share the burden. We hear nothing; perhaps we’re not close enough. Are some walls of reserve so solid that only certain affinities can melt them away? Maybe it’s just Lindsey, just us, or just a combination of the two. I think she should leave University, burn her bridges & move away, start afresh.

At this point in the term, the remaining six months slog towards release seems almost too much. My work has gone from bad to worse; I’ve missed five out of seven tutorials for Palfreyman’s Faulkner course, although my other one goes OK. No essays yet (I got my extended essay in on time, which was an up-all-night-before job), & I have 16000 + words plus 3 exams to write before the end of May. I don’t care. None of this affects me deep down. I continue this ‘charade’ of education for Mum & Dad’s sake alone.

Stu & Gareth are probably round at Barry’s getting stoned. I’ve been round at Gaveston St. pretty regularly since term began & I’ve got to know Paula & Elaine as well as they let me. At certain points in relationships labels are distributed & the barriers go up. This is what I was referring to earlier over Lindsey’s hidden side. Once in a category it’s difficult to break free, & the first few occasions are crucial.

On Friday Lee is reenacting Act One from Ubu Rex by Alfred Jarry. He’s made a puppet theatre & puppets: Pa Ubu is a piece of Lee’s shit, Ma Ubu an egg, MacNure & his merry men sticks painted red + white. I’m helping to shout the lines. He’s also been doing his 3 seconds-worth of pinhole ciné film all term & there’s a performance on Friday on retinal image retention (titled “Post-Imagotype”). I never did move into Maynard Gardens after Pete left. The room stood empty for ages & when I finally resolved to move in Damion & Tony—a caveman friend of Gav’s & Gav’s brother respectively—were established there. Now Ian Tropp has the larger room & Dan Lavin the smaller & I’m in Lindsey’s old room at Westdorgan Rd., all 5’ x 9’ of it, barely big enough for a bed.

I went home for the weekend recently (Nov 9th-11th) to see a football match & was temporarily restored to hopeful self-consciousness. I felt ready to start this back up. It’s so easy to forget.

Sunday November 25th

A party last night at Mo’s. All the crew was there, plus Pete’s sister Leila who was down from London & Tony too, from Gloucester (he’s living with Grant). I got drunk & stayed until 4. Lee climbed onto the roof of the Tripoli restaurant below & was shouted at by the irate owner. I went to see “Apocalypse Now” the night before too & was impressed.

I’ve been putting off writing here for such a long time & now it is such a relief to escape back into this script, although often this writing bears little relation to anything outward anyone else could see. How to avoid melodrama? The pages prior to these don’t satisfy. I fail to tell the stories of my days, but I try at least, which is probably more important. Perhaps one day this secret scribble will find its place, but at this exact moment, university, past, present, people . . . it’s all nothing. I only care about the future. I love life more each day I live it. And if even this means nothing & makes no sense, it doesn’t matter; the answer’s in the attempt. So I channel every ounce of my soul through this hand & pen because this is all I have & will ever have & all the future you-who-reads-this has to tell of me & what I was & how I felt. I have my ‘now’ & you—an older version of me, or someone else entirely?—have your own ‘nows,’ & these words are all we have. Language is metaphorical. History is just words, the only reality we have, a construct of reality. I try to escape the bookish perpetuation of old words, language as metaphor for ‘out there’, ‘in here’, ‘me’. ‘I’ am a word on a page. As soon as I learn that, I’ll be free of the futile attempts at capturing everything that regulates my being through language. I can be free of the book & the page & the word if I can only see it. Words get me well. “They all talked at once, their voices insistent & contradictory & impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words” (Faulkner, “The Sound & The Fury” p.109).

I feel like a trip into town in pursuit of my ideals of company & wild sociability.

Wednesday November 14th

A few days after the above, Stu was charged with possession. I went to the Welfare Office at the Uni. & was told to go see Alan Martin, solicitor with Milton, Abelson, & Goulding. This Stu & I did today & he told us that “the police may well drop charges but I can do nothing until you are sent to court.” My defense is this: I bought the drug while drunk & took it while drunk, I’m naive where drugs are concerned & I was a mug, etc. I think they believe me.

I overindulged. That much is clear. A line of thought can extend itself without end & I became a victim of my own train of thought. The belief that I was about to die scared me shitless & I suddenly valued the normality I was striving so hard to escape above all else. I didn’t want to lose it—I didn’t want to die. Later I read about what had happened. I had a psychomimetic reaction, a model psychosis, & I was insane for two hours, to all intents & purposes. I knew what was happening although I couldn’t cope with it, & I saw myself as an actor in some 2nd rate “One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest.” I remember thinking that I could get myself committed by perpetuating my insane behaviour permanently. For two hours I was locked inside my own mind & it was misery.

Saturday October 27th

Objective view: No work, trouble with the cops. Last Saturday night, about 10.30 in the evening, I dropped 2½ tabs of acid with Lee & Stu. Basically I fucked up . . .

To begin with it was wonderful. I knelt on the floor before Stu’s hi-fi, hands extended in front of me like some new apostle as the music caressed me into near orgasm. Paroxysms of delight, unbearable ecstasy, sounds becoming shapes & coloured lights melting away in my mind—real revelatory stuff. I thought I’d found the answer, found ‘It’; it was just so easy I couldn’t come to terms with it & I kept asking S. & L. how we’d been mistaken into deceiving ourselves that this wasn’t the way ahead? It was so easy, just swallow a piece of paper & there was heaven on earth. I knew at that moment that I’d tasted the ultimate in sensory pleasure & I could have died fulfilled, knowing I had had it all. I knew everything.

But as I was lying on Stu’s bed on his big blue duvet, I ruthlessly tried to suppress a seed of doubt that grew in the very core of my being until I couldn’t hold it back any longer. Already I was a long, long way from Stu & Lee. I sat up & told them, “I am going to die.” Lee tittered—it must have sounded so ridiculous. But the more I tried to fight it the worse it got, as a line of thought raced away into the infinite until I was holding on for dear life. I knew if I let go, that would be it (I can only indicate all of this in a very obtuse manner). I couldn’t sense my body at all & as I felt for my pulse, there was nothing there. I was as good as dead! This had become a hellish nightmare that wouldn’t cease but kept on & on & on. If I stopped breathing then my heart would stop. I started to panic & threw things around, screaming at the misery of my self-inflicted torture, insisting that Lindsey & her brother Ed (who was down for the weekend) be woken up & that I be driven to the hospital in the latter’s car. “I must hold on, I must hold on” I kept telling myself as I lay on my back in the car, my head in Lindsey’s lap, everything fragmented—I can only remember the journey through foreign & unfamiliar streets as a series of suffocating images. The car stopped at traffic lights, Ed asking (scared now) if he should run them, me in back shouting “Yes! YES!” & bracing my feet against the window, about to expire.

We found Watermouth General but it was deserted at this hour & so I ran around in a panic, tearing off my shirt in my fear, pounding at my chest to restart my heart. The caretaker called the police. On the way to Wessex County we got lost & so stopped to phone for directions & here the police picked us up. At the hospital I remember the freezing walk across the car park in stocking-feet, naked to the waist save for my baggy purple shirt, a kaleidoscopic image of a hospital foyer with nurses, wheelchairs, & geriatrics. I crawled across the floor, lost, recovering sufficiently to be led to a white windowless room where I lay on a mattress on one corner until help arrived. A cursory examination pronounced me saved & so I again entered the world of the living. In the car I’d been convinced that normal life for me was at an end; at worst I would die, at best be incarcerated in an asylum—white gowns, strait-jackets, the lot. But now I began the slow descent to ‘normal’ thinking.

Back at Westdorgan Road the police made a search of my room & grilled Stu, Lee & Lindsey. Lee, having handed over the one remaining tab at the hospital, was taken to the cells & spent a night locked up on acid, yet still stuck to his story that he was clean & an innocent bystander. He escaped charges on “statutory defence.” I was OK within half-an-hour & spent an unreal night staring at the wall & feeling dirty.

Now it’s a week later & I’ve been charged with possession & misuse of Class-A drugs, along with supplying it to Stu. I face a maximum sentence of 14 years & an unlimited fine.

Friday October 12th

This morning we were on campus sitting in the Cellar at lunchtime & we caught a glimpse of the Echo—“BRIGHTON BOMBING!” screamed the headline, & a picture showed the Grand Hotel, where the Conservative Party Conference is being held, its elegant façade ripped open.

As Gareth had his Mum’s car we decided to drive all the way to Brighton to join the silent gawping crowds thronging the police barriers. The beach was cordoned off in a hundred yard stretch in front of the Hotel & so we got as close as we could & took photographs with Gareth’s camera, posed smiling before the ruins.

Sunday October 7th

6:40 p.m., Westdorgan Rd, Meadspike, Watermouth & a fresh page, a fresh start to free myself from two & a half weeks of mindless no-thought & the hectic rush of empty headed drunks. Where do I go from here? I tried to say something on 19th Sept then again eight days later but never quite got round to finishing. Much to say, so much so that I don’t even know where to begin. Words.

I am in my (Gareth's) room, the fire is on & the dusk is drawing in. Gareth is due back any time, 4 ½ thousand words of an extended essay on an “interpretation of the Beats as a social phenomenon” to type up & until Wednesday to do it. Term starts tomorrow. Stu has 2 exams on Tuesday & Thursday, Barry, one exam & a dissertation; Lindsey hasn’t even attempted her dissertations & seems resigned to being kicked out.

What I’m really trying to grasp & failing dismally to do so is the essence of the last seventeen days without words nor thoughts. How to tell? What have I done but get up late, lounge around watching TV & usually go out in the evening to get drunk . . . It’s 7.43 p.m. & Gareth just came back . . .