Sneer

My frustration right now is difficult to convey.

This morning Lee, Ian and Philip went as planned to Sutton Road to occupy the empty No. 39: the front door was locked, and so they climbed in through an open basement window, only to find five people sleeping in a first floor room who told them, “We’re squatters, man.”

I turned up at half-one after my Faulkner class to be greeted by strange faces staring down at me from an upper-storey window. When I found Lee I learned the worst. The punky five-some had moved in on Thursday, two days after we had been in the building, and had beaten us by a matter of days. They told Lee that they hadn’t been able to believe their luck in finding an empty house with an unlocked front door—it’s sickening even to write this—and so Lee and co. retreated in confusion and anger.

I couldn’t believe it and even now find it difficult to stomach. The horrible impotence and frustration I feel at our incredible bad luck is almost too much, and when I found out I really could have cried tears of anger and bitterness—fourth time unlucky. The gods have really got it in for us it seems.

Lee and I drifted around town in a daze, my mind a blur, just disbelief at this turn of fate and circumstances.

Robin Coldwater-Hicks is visiting the Grey House soon to tell Gav and co. that his mother’s dead and he’s selling the house, so we have to unearth another occupiable building soon or we’ll have half-a-dozen rivals also looking.

I know the people who moved into Sutton Road are innocent of any malicious intent or intrigue and that we were just very unlucky, but I can’t help feeling very bitter and these feelings are vented in the direction of Alex, Gav, Jason and their type; I won’t try and explain these feelings in any logical or reasonable fashion because they can’t be justified in any rational way, so I won’t try.

Too much arrogance, too much pretentiousness, too many students, too many post-punk hippies, too many young-people-with-hairstyles . . . Sometimes I walk round town with a permanent sneer on my face.

I won’t try and be consistent in my attitudes.