You don’t look the type

I’m dreading the Letter (or the ‘phone call) with the verdict on my future. Just now the telephone rang and I went to answer it with jangling nerves and a thudding heart . . . but it was only Andrew ringing to talk about the match.

Things are better left hidden and unsaid.

 Last night Lee called in at Westdorgan Road and he and I took the bus into town and went to the Underground. It was full of first year students and I almost felt pity for them all having so long left. I talked briefly with one, a Poly student named Jim who seemed surprised when I said I was at Watermouth.

“You don’t look the type” he told me, which I took as a compliment. 


Afterwards Lee, Barry and I went to Maynard Gardens. These days Gav’s room is always full of people coming and going. While we were there several soul-boys came and settled down, acting very familiar with Gav. His room presented a sordid sight; foil, wads of dirty cotton wool, used syringes, and Rizla papers littered the floor, all the seedy paraphernalia of the drug culture. Ian got quite carried away by it all and started talking about “jacking up” and “dorking out.” 


Barry too is always coming out with drug clichés, endlessly trotting out all the miserable words and phrases (“Chasing the dragon,” “skag,” ‘Blow,” “crash-out”). It’s difficult to believe he takes it all so seriously, but evidently he does.

This afternoon we were at Broad Street, in Jason’s room, and it made me realise again how much I despise that whole type (for it is a definite type that’s about these days, a newer version of the old hippy dope smoking, pacifistic, ‘Bongs-not-Bombs’ formula).

Lee and Stu and I amuse ourselves by parodying the sort of “it’d be good on acid” type comment that they’re always coming out with and which sums up their outlook completely. And sure enough, today as Barry and Jason discussed the relative merits of music vis–à–vis painting in terms of its impact on the audience, Barry declared that music is much more effective and Jason came back with, “yeah, but if go to a modern art gallery while you’re tripping . . .”

I should have got up and walked out right then.

Righteous maelstrom

Lee turned up late last night. He’d been to see the wrestling at the Starlight with Ian and Mick and he’d been at Ian’s house earlier while Ian and his friend Gav snorted heroin, got sick, and generally behaved oddly, talking of travelling down staircases in their minds, etc.

Then they’d all watched The Exorcist, the only light coming from the single candle on Ian’s windowsill in the other room. Ian is strange. They offered Lee some H. but he refused, & he says he wants to become “totally puritan” and cut even alcohol out. I see what he’s getting at. I hate the crap that goes with the ‘drugs scene,’ but I suppose looked at in the right perspective they can be useful.

Lee stayed overnight and I failed to get my essay done; my head was too full of ideas to sit down and focus. I planned on getting up early this morning to make a start, but I slept for eleven hours and didn’t get up until after twelve.

Barry got back at eight a.m. He, Guy, Gareth and Stu went to two parties, the one in New Lycroft and another one at Sutton Road. He found out that Alex Margolin has supposedly blown his grant on a ‘plane ticket to Peru and isn’t coming back. Goodbye Alex. I doubt I’ll ever see him again.