Other life

I returned to my other life today, a journey that took nine hours marooned on a coach and no one to talk to, getting back to Westdorgan Road to find my room occupied once more by the TV, numerous dirty plates and ashtrays and Stu, immobile before the screen, fag in hand. Barry was sleeping in my bed.

I don’t think Stu really understood why I was getting so uptight. I suppose my current mania for order and privacy (of belongings if not of person) does appear a little neurotic and overblown. But I can’t help it. It’s hard to pin down the subtle mental change that takes place as I travel the miles from Easterby to Watermouth, and I think really it’s the losing of full mindfulness of home as the familiar topography flows away and melts into flatter and more modern lines, one life flowing out of direct perception (like the scenery), the other flowing in.

Some sort of perspective on that other life.

Lee is coming back to Watermouth on Thursday. He rang me up last night to ask if I wanted to go across but I had too much packing. It was a tranquil sunny evening and later I half-regretted not going. He’s just got back from a weekend in North Wales with his Dad. They visited Portmeirion which was full of Prisoner  cranks saying “Be seeing you” to one another. He spent £6 on ‘Prisonerbilia.’ His Art College course seems to have gone quite well, although he, Gav and Ian Tropp have been ‘referred,’ so he has essays to write over the summer vacation to make up for it.

Jeremy enters the 3rd of a 4-year course at Edgestow in September and he’s staying in Easterby over the summer, despite Steve Bates’s insistent attempts to get him to go to Spain.

Steve is still at Debdenshaw U. doing Chemistry. He was mugged a week last Monday and was almost proud when he told me about it when we went out on Saturday. He doesn’t like me and I’m not too fond of him with his wooden student stereotypes.

Tommy is now at Brynmor Poly.

Richard Houlding works at the tax office in Farnshaw and is in a band, The Metros. When I saw him last he was wearing stone washed jeans elasticated at the ankle, bright red specs, and low cut blue loafer shoes. I thought he’d changed a lot at first, but beneath it all he’s still the same person he was in sixth form.

Peter Wood is working on his Dad’s fruit and vegetable stall in Whincliffe market.

Robin Quinn makes good money working with computers in London . . . he and Tim Moyles went potholing in the Dales at the weekend.

Andrew Boyd is leaving Ecclesley Poly because he doesn’t like the people there and is going to do a journalism apprenticeship at the Echo. He’s going out with Louise Metcalf, and according to Jeremy says he wants to “change her.”

Deborah is still working for an accountant and is still going out with Tony Megson. She’s undecided about taking up a place on an accountancy course at Brynmor in the autumn, her doubts apparently springing as much from her Mother’s keen promotion of the idea rather than from any real misgivings. Needless to say, Tony doesn’t want her to go.

I haven’t heard from Claire since April. I never wrote back in reply to her last letter, a decay in interest that occurred as I realised all my feelings for her were false and overwrought. I was more attracted to the idea of her than the reality of her. I suppose I should give her my new address.

Grant Riley is home for the summer and is planning a new magazine venture with Nik Gordon and intimated that contributions are welcome. A friend of his at Gloucester is making a film and he’s playing the role of Charles Bukowski. Although I keep inviting him to Watermouth and he keeps expressing enthusiasm for the idea, I somehow doubt he’ll ever make it down.

His mate RJ is still living with Jackie in Lockley. Nik is in his last year at Camberwell College of Art.

I reread my journal for January and February of 1983; how becalmed in non-emotion I am now! Then, every day seemed to pass in a blaze of raw hypersensitivity. Lindsey was a symptom of my despair and lack of direction and I think I was in love with her at one point, something I hadn’t felt before, or since . . . But that was over a year ago, I was 18 then. Now I’m 20 and  a little older.