The thing

I went into Easterby again, to Suits Me to peruse their suits, and then to a Heel Bar to buy dark brown dye for my DM shoes that I’ve still only worn once—I dyed them from their original oxblood to black and now to a deep brown.

Jeremy rang me in the evening to persuade me to go to his house; I declined at first, but when he rang back at eleven saying I just had to go, I half-heartedly acquiesced—he said his step-brother Colin was having a party and it was “quite amusing” to watch. So I walked into Farnshaw and met he and Tommy beneath St. Anne’s steeple.

Tommy has transferred to Brynmor Poly and is on a design course, to which he commutes from Easterby. Jeremy has also transferred, from Bristol University to Edgestow, so in September he will be a new boy again. We walked the remaining miles up Whincliffe Road to Jeremy’s, where the beery gathering was reaching an inevitable and time-honoured finale. Jeremy’s Dad has married again, and so Jeremy has inherited a new family, a step-brother and step-sister, plus their friends and girlfriends/boyfriends. He says he feels like a stranger in his own home and wants to spend Christmases away now because he feels he no longer belongs.

For some reason, when we got there all the males present were stripped to the waist, Colin barely coherent, his eyes bloodshot, soon to pass out on the living room carpet. We then had to play host to one of his drunken acolytes, a self-professed biker who constantly impressed upon us the favour he was bestowing on us by actually speaking to us.

“Some of ‘em think yer should speak just to bikers, but me, I think that’s wrong.”

He demanded we share an opinion of him: “If yer think am' a shit then say so, I don’t care.”

Jeremy’s step-sister was pissed as a newt and flopping giddily about, falling onto Tommy and making him flush with embarrassment, before she disappeared upstairs with her boyfriend for a giggle and a grope. She came back down in a dressing gown, saying she felt embarrassed, “in front ‘er so many men.” Jeremy, Tommy and I watched The Thing on video while the revelries subsided and Colin locked himself in the toilet—he had £100 stolen that evening too.

I went to bed at five.