Bleak time

I felt exhausted when I finally got to bed. I woke up at one. Lee was still whooping and singing over the haul of photographic stuff that he says we can all use whenever we want. Pete has been pressing him to sell it.

In the evening Lee and I planned to go to the wrestling match with Ian; L. went to College at two and didn’t return, and I didn’t set off on my own for fear of missing him on the way, and anyway didn’t know what time it started. He returned at eleven and hadn’t, as I’d angrily suspected, gone to the wrestling without me, but had instead returned to the offices of the Planning Department with Gav Heppell and Alex and found a locked cupboard which we missed last night and which contained (L. estimates) £5000 worth of photographic paper.

The tentative plan, more fantasy at this stage than anything else, is to squat the place. The idea had—briefly, improbably—occurred to me as we explored yesterday, and we reckon we could muster around five or six people from our immediate circle at University (Barry, Pete, Gareth, Stu) and Lee says Gav, Alex (and Mick?), Ian and possibly George are all in on the idea. We were very enthusiastic as we discussed the plan but being a realist, I don’t hold out many concrete expectations, although I hope it does work out!

A group of people are meeting tomorrow in 313 at the Art College and are going down to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau to find out about the legal side of things. The possibilities are almost too good to contemplate. At the very top of the building, near the fire escape, is a walled-in patio from which you can see the sea, very near, and a cluttered panorama of roofs—in fact a view across the whole of Watermouth; the Oculus Bancorp building, squat and brightly lit, dominating landward, the pier stretching out into the sea and the sea sweeping away and away toward the horizon and France. It’s an exciting prospect, living on the top floor in the row of adjacent ‘studios’ which face out onto the beach, leaving the rest of the offices below empty and barricaded.

Pete has gone up to 12 Westdorgan Rd to drop acid with Stu. Barry returned mid-evening after spending the night away; he didn't say where. He's been trying to work, trying to keep the tutors at bay. The other day he received a short terse note telling him that “attendance at University courses is compulsory” and that if he doesn’t start working soon he will be excluded from the Finals and awarded an ‘F’. It hasn’t worried him; he’s a little like me in that he can’t muster up any reaction, good or bad, to the course work, just a general sensation of indifference

The last couple of months have been a bleak time for me.