Floating

I spent £21 on a new coat and new shoes, an extravagance which made me feel a little guilty. The sun was again glaring down as I sweated my way around town, walking all the way along Leckenby Road to see the empty mills of Southampton Woolbrokers Ltd which Lee had said was worth a visit.

I called in on Nanna P. She had a “turn” on Monday and thought she was dying. “I felt like my head was separate from my body and was floating around the room.” She still looked ill although she was vocal enough and trotted out the expected tedious stories of Uncle Kenneth and Shirley and “ar’ Nicola.” Her wheelchair stood in the hallway, folded and awaiting use. . . . She says she gets a pain in her head which sounds to me like a potential cerebral haemorrhage.

Her Mum and Dad died of these.

I came home, had tea and watched TV all evening. Old routines. My mind has frozen up as I try to write this, evidently because the torpour of my existence the last few days has allowed it to fall into a dull, forgettable state. How slowly I write—how slowly the thought processes are clumsily parodied by word formation. The Acker-inspired torrent of Sunday night is the least self-conscious thing I’ve written since I came home.

John Turney rang at 11.30 p.m. to remind me to bring him a biography of Stalin I’d promised him.

Old delights

Colin Wilson regards the onset of Christianity as a disaster for ‘magical’ man. “Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because human beings are gullible and superstitious” (p. 272). The doctrinaire and ruthless nature of Christianity fitted well with the savagery of the world into which it sprang, hence its success.

I was in Easterby during the afternoon, the day hot and sunny more akin to high summer than the stutterings of early spring. Town was packed, but for once I quite enjoyed the jostle and throng and had a contented day; I bought a couple of books, a pair of plimsolls and had a curry at the Bahawal . . . the old delights.

I took leave of the city centre and wandered aimlessly through the mills and warehouses and near-empty streets between Leckenby Road and the Polytechnic, full of thoughts of Lee and Grant. How is it that Easterby seems unreal? Even when I walk in it I can’t grasp it; it’s as though I’m blinded by my image of the town, a conception that’s grown from all my memories and the past lives I’ve lived here, from Lee, Grant, from Ashburn, Lodgehill and Hainsworth Hall, the derelict mills and houses . . . If I try to rationalise the point it merely makes it all the more diffuse and difficult to grasp.

My mental Easterby is as real as the Easterby of actuality. It’s only when we’re distanced from the places we take for granted that we appreciate them, stepping back from unthinking involvement with environments and realising them for the first time.

Step inside

I went into Easterby and met Lee. We went up to the Admiral Street dole office, then down to the one on Lloyd Street so that he could sign on. It was again very hot; I felt as if I was being burnt.

We wandered up to the Art College and Lee collected a boxful of ‘objets d’art’ which we then took around to the derelict house on Abbot Street that he's using as his base. He’s boarded up all the doors and we climbed up onto the porch roof to gain entry through an upper floor window. He hid the box in an upstairs room, barricading the door with a huge wooden beam, and we left for the pub for a drink, and then drifted around Easterby feeling jaded by the heat.

Lee seemed distant and uncommunicative.

We went to Suits Me and I looked for a second hand overcoat and after this, we ended up down on Lockley Lane, trying to gain entry to the old photography studios where he found all the photos. We crept through the overgrown rubble-choked yard but found the back door locked, so Lee suggested we explore an empty school nearby, the old Easterby Grammar School building that stands near the point where Hetherington Road and Dyson Street split. It’s been empty for as long as I can remember, the odd pane of glass broken, brick work black with soot and grime.

We got in through a gaping glass-less window, jumped down and I found myself in a classroom, empty and debris-littered, but still recognizably a classroom. The rest of the school was being gradually overtaken by grass and weeds; a dark and decaying staircase with a spidery tracery of banisters wound up into unknown regions above, the steps worn into hollows by the tramp of long dead feet. We visited each classroom in turn, gazing in on the huge main hall, its floor strewn with glass and lit by sunlight slanting in through large arched windows. Plants grew in green profusion from the walls.

Upstairs, Lee found his way into the tower up a cramped and steeply narrow staircase hemmed in by walls, up into a tiny secluded room lit by floor level windows—quite tidy. Through a hole onto the roof we could look out over the hazy skyline of Easterby.

We had a coffee at a Schofield Street café and I spied a girl I remembered from school, feeding her baby. She’s nineteen. Lee signed on at 3 and we said goodbye. I bought Joy Division’s Closer, but when I got home I discovered it was scratched.

In the evening I met Lee, Jeremy and—a ghost from the past—Tommy Whelan, at the Egley Former Students Disco. It was inauspicious. Tommy hasn’t changed a bit. Harvey’s was as crap as ever, a handful of people from our year there but we ignored them and they ignored us. Several times I felt hidden feet attempt to trip me up as I walked to and fro from the bogs. I ran into Julie Crabtree and Dawn Jagger, both very different now. Dawn was dressed all in white; gone the monkey boots and spiky locks of yesteryear and Julie’s hippy days are over too, apparently; she was dressed conservatively in a white skirt and red T-shirt with a page-boy haircut. She’s getting married next year.

We sat ourselves in a distant corner and hooted at the dancers, all girls initially, flowing virginal pastel shades of green and yellow predominating. They stood like statues, decked out in glowing ultra-violet whites, twisting and swaying imperceptibly in time to the music; they were soon joined by clone-like lads in tight jeans and white socks.

We spied Matthew Knight who looked like some gone-to-seed overweight thirty-year old. All the usual wankers were there, flashily dressed Mr. Farrar in mouthy good humour, Lynn Norden gone the way of all the rest it seemed. By way of parody and just for the doss, Lee and Jeremy went and stood out on the dance floor, totally motionless, gazing blankly into space like two waxwork dummies while people danced around them.

Tommy and I joined them and soon we began to attract attention, people pushing us or waving their hands in front of our faces. The wanky DJ said “They don’t realise how stupid they look, do they?” Them and us, and we were four.

I was hassled by stray dogs on the way home and got back at ten to two.

Art Volé

As it was my birthday I thought I ought at least make an appearance before the afternoon, so I got up about 9.30.

Mum and Dad gave me £10 and wished me many happy returns. Andrew seemed embarrassed that he hadn’t anything to give me. My birthday was very low key, just three cards from family, and anyway it’s hardly a cause for celebration; just another meaningless milestone, just another year to cross off. Nineteen down, how many more to go?

Birthdays used to mean so much.

When Mum and Dad brought Nanna P. over she gave me £5 and we watched TV until Lee rang at three from Tesco to ask me if I wanted to go over to his house. It wasn’t long before I was banging on his door.

He ushered me in, looking smart in black and grey checked shirt, dark trousers, pink socks and ancient gleaming leather shoes. He showed me some of his bounty, looted on recent trips to an old garage on Geoffrey Road opposite Montreal Woolpacking Co., and the basement of an abandoned photography studio on Lodgehill Lane.

Most of the stuff came from the garage; he and his mates had broken the lock and discovered a treasure trove; a ‘50s car in perfect condition (“we thought of putting petrol in and driving off with it”), two motorbikes from the '30s, and piles of old car and motorbike mags. In a cupboard they found stuff that once belonged to a lieutenant in the First War—Lee showed me a photograph of a ‘20s lounge-lizard type in plus-fours with slicked down hair, and Lee has the man's dress uniform, each dark trouser leg with a red stripe down the outside, along with a pair of leather boots in perfect nick,. All of these fitted Lee perfectly of course.

He also showed me a WW1 German cigarette lighter (operated by caps), an initialed solid silver cigarette case, a metal suitcase, and a leather case still covered with old travel stickers that he’s polished and expertly relined. Lee said that as he’d put on the old uniform and boots he almost felt as though this man was taking him over.

What started off as a casual wandering into empty houses has so caught on at Easterby Art College that everyone is doing it and now even the tutors are involved. For a laugh, he and a friend decided to call their ‘movement’ Art Volé, and have even drawn up a manifesto. They’ve now progressed into virtual break-ins, kicking down doors and looting what appears to be (but might not be) abandoned property. The garage with the car and ‘bikes in it was padlocked, and Lee said he smashed down the door to the abandoned photography studio to gain entrance.

We were in hysterics over the photos he found in the latter, which was also apparently some sort of low-key '60s soft-porn concern, full of very tame pictures of bikini-clad girls eating ice cream, scores of head and shoulders portraits of strange old men, and frightening looking '70s-era Pakistani families.

Afterwards we went and tried to fly a boomerang (something else he’d “picked up”) but we broke it, so we sat instead beneath a small tree that was stripped of bark, feeling smothered in the hazy late afternoon sun. We sat and talked by this dying tree, and Lee told me he and a few friends recently smoked some nutmeg to try get hallucinogenic effects but it didn’t work. He asked me if I fancied going mushroom picking sometime.

I had a good time, but bid him goodbye until Monday and finally got home close to eight to find my tea nearly spoiled.

A dewdrop, a bubble, a dream

Robert strikes me as being consistently sad and down at heart. Maybe this melancholic streak (which he’s inherited from Dad) accords with Buddhism’s acknowledgement of mortality and destiny in death. I have it too but it’s often overridden by the everyday joys of youth. It’ll emerge in time I suppose, abiding and permanent.

I’m scared of getting old. My life now is full of zap (no matter be it bad zap, still zap all the same) and I don’t want to lose the great sweeping tides of feeling and end up middle-aged in mind and outlook. As Carol and I listened to Roxy Music’s first album today, she told me that inside she feels just the same as she did in 1972 when she was 18. Dad too has often said that inside he feels just like he did when he was my age. I can’t believe I’m almost nineteen. It doesn’t seem so long ago since I was the kid who regarded nineteen-year olds as adults.

Now I'm part of that world too.

I planned on going back to Egley, but just as I was shoveling down  food so I could catch the last bus, Mum and Dad showed up, fresh from Badon. They had a good time and visited Avebury, Silbury Hill, Castle Coombe etc. Andrew got a 2.1 degree, much higher than the 3 he’d expected.

It was a fine evening, so Mum, Dad and I walked down through Saxton village. The sky was clear, the green peaceful tree-topped hills were bathed in warm light, a scene marred only by the raw scars that mark the new bypass that has cut straight across the little path that used to lead up past the farm and into the grass and woodland beyond. We paused at the pub for a pint, overshadowed by cool green trees, before continuing on past the village and out along the road towards the roundabout.

Mum picked wild daisies and I ribbed her by telling her that she was committing a crime. This semi-jocular banter continued all evening.

Awakening

I woke up at six, then at eight, nine, and so on until finally I heaved myself out of bed at ten.

Weird dreams: a strange rainy and muddy landscape, a garden, a ruined village under renovation by a Canadian millionaire. Dotted on the distant hills are yellow and orange meditating figures. . . . Then, a confusion of shooting, hunting—a war. I'm pursuing someone, killing him finally, although I'm not there at the death. . . . Now I'm walking along a road filled with enemy vehicles; there are men on horseback galloping towards me, and they hack at my head and swear as I try helplessly to fend off the blows. . . . Armistice . . . I embrace the cavalrymen joyfully, running towards a jeep with two officers inside, crying happily as I throw my arms around them. . . .

I haven’t done any work since last week although I'm still optimistic about it for some reason. I got my essay back from Miriam today: “quite an impressive and sophisticated discussion” her comment, but also lengthy criticisms that I hadn’t tied my essay down to the text and that it had got too abstract. Perhaps I took her “concentrate on the social moment” too literally, but at least I know where I’ve gone wrong.

I’m supposed to have finished Kate Chopin’s The Awakening by tomorrow. I have lots to do . . .

I got a letter from Lee telling me he’s got in at Watermouth Art College. I feel glad; it will be so odd and so interesting having him here. He writes that he recently broke into the cellar of a disused photographic studio in Easterby and discovered boxes and boxes of old photos, portraits of Pakistani families from the 1950s through the ‘70s and a lot of glass negatives from the ‘20s, showing Easterby street scenes and buildings. He plans on selling them.

His letter really made me laugh. He sent me three photographs – one a bizarre family portrait from the ‘60s (“It’s a cracker – no explanation necessary”). I burst out laughing because I could just imagine his hysteria at the pic. He also broke into an abandoned pub’ but set off the burglar alarm and fled.

Something definitely to look forward to.

Today’s the third anniversary of this journal’s beginning and my mind goes back to that lazy Sunday, three years ago now, to how ordered everything was then. God, I was so innocent! Then I was looking towards ‘O’ levels, now it’s nearly my nineteenth birthday and I’m anticipating moving into my very own flat.

It’s been hot today once more, but there hasn’t been any thunder. I lounged about in the Humanities common room, drinking tea with Guy and talking about the summer. I’m looking forward so much to moving out at the end of term. In the late afternoon I went out into the sun and sprawled on the grass with Shelley and Lindsey and tried to read The Awakening but managed only a few pages before we went down to the dining hall for some food.

In the coffee shop later, Guy, Barry and I watched as Katie stole food from right under the cashier’s nose. She and Rowan have been nicking fags from Shelley’s and Stu’s rooms too. They act out their position of ‘No Limits, No Laws,’ stealing from people they know and not giving a shit about anyone or anything. They’re heading for Morocco in the summer.

Guy finds them both thoroughly repulsive and I can see his point, but still . . . there’s something about them that is vaguely attractive to me. What do they think, I wonder? Katie was in my room tonight, talking, talking – Susie had cracked a joke earlier, saying I had a thing for trying on her underwear, and as I told this to Katie, she asked me in all seriousness, “Well, do you want to . . .?”