This hideous replica

Mum and Dad came home about one. They are both as brown as berries. Rob & Carol showed up unexpectedly at two as well, fresh from their week in the Lake District, and the house was filled with talk. Robert is crippled by blisters, his arms red raw. Entertaining tales of respective holidays continued all afternoon and everyone was in a good mood. I really wish I could have gone to Calverdale with Mum and Dad. I remember its ancient, almost medieval atmosphere as timeless and uncommercial.

Lee rang mid-afternoon, his voice full of accusation: “They’re saying you broke into Laxton’s parents drinks cabinet and drank half a bottle of QC and a bottle of Scotch. Is it true?” I hedged and fumbled, half-denying, but sinking already into inner recriminations: “It’s exaggerated” was all I could lamely manage in reply. Why do I always make the same stupid hypocritical mistakes? I don’t know what to say. Should I be ashamed?

When Peter and Tim called round in the evening it was even worse: “You were too pissed to remember anything. There's half a bottle of gin missing,” and so on. Why?

Lee rang again in the evening, sounding despairing, depressed and utterly sick. His Mum is constantly on his back over his lack of work and he tried to persuade me to flunk the ‘A’ levels with him. He wanted to go away (“like your hero”) and muttered something about Norfolk and looking round churchyards. “You’re just going to get paper grades and get institutionalised at Uni.” He's right but I can’t: I have too much at stake. I’ve gone too far to fuck it up now!

We arranged to meet in Moxthorpe and sat in a bus shelter and talked as lightning flickered and flashed across the moors. He seems so lonely and says he has no-one to turn to, can't talk with his Ma, his step-sisters too remote and unknown. His ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude was so unlike his normal self and he went on mysteriously about not knowing where he was and feeling like he's going insane when he's at Tesco. My advice about “sticking it out ‘till September” sounded contrived and corny. He looked very alone as he wandered slowly back through dark Moxthorpe streets.

I feel so angry with myself, as if somehow I'm to blame for what's happened. I am filled with a despairing rage at everyone. Sometimes everything is too much.

We could stay here for ever

An early start again, up at seven thirty, working by eight. I hate being alone sometimes; I don’t know, I must be missing Mum and Dad or something. I got a postcard from them this morning and they seem to be enjoying themselves with hikes to Croft Castle, along the Blea Gate and up Gilsey Gill. They’ve seen bats, newts, owls, lizards, stoats, birds galore, and their postcard ended with “We could stay here for ever.”

I worked an hour or so, mainly on Persuasion; Lee called round early afternoon and we didn’t do a thing after that. Lee, bored: “I just want to go and stay in a tent in a really bleak place and lay on my back and look at the sky.” He left again at two.

At Tesco at 4.45 and I had to price stock and put it on the shelves. The heat was stifling. Got out at half-eight and had half a cider at a pub in Nunstead, and Lee and I called in on Jeremy and spent an enjoyable hour listening to Madness and laughing.

Walked home to distant rumbles of thunder and horizon lightning-flashes. Lee planned on coming back here to work all night but just rang up to say he's not.

I feel calm and strangely content.

Hangover

I felt absolutely terrible all morning and early afternoon. My head ached and I felt sick enough to puke a few times. Lee came about eleven and we didn’t really seem to get started. I ending up working for about 15 minutes or something.

Dad rang early on, as did Grant, who says he’s working quite hard. At four I set off for Tesco leaving Lee in the house doing revision; we promised to meet outside the Odeon in Farnshaw and go see Britannia Hospital.

Tesco was tiring, hot and thirsty work. I cardboarded most of the evening and talked to Stephen. I’m gradually learning my way round. I was dripping with sweat as I pulled out all the heavily laden palettes.

I met Lee as arranged but we decided not to see the film because of revision pressures. When I got home he’d accidently locked me out and so I had to clamber through the dining room window.

Plain truth

The telephone call from Lee came later this morning, and he showed up at half-eight. We didn’t do as much work as yesterday and lapsed more often into doodling and reading the Plain Truth mag’ Lee had brought. After another fish and chip dinner we did hardly anything except lounge around and mess about with the tortoise.

I was nervous. Set off for Tesco mid afternoon in dry searing furnace-heat; it was an uncomfortable journey but I got there early and hung about. Then a nice, young, suntanned woman showed me and another first-timer round the canteen, cloakrooms, prep rooms and warehouse before I was handed off to tall black Mr. Thomas who told me, “You work hard and we can see about being friends.” I heard Stephen Brown’s crazed jeer of anticipation from the dark recesses of the warehouse.

Nigel Muff showed me the ropes, teaching me how to pick stock and how to figure out how many boxes of, say, sweets were needed out on the floor, before taking me up to the flimsy steel-girder gantry floor in the warehouse where the sweets were kept. He also showed me how to “cardboard” on the shop-floor itself and how to operate palette trolleys. . . .

After 3½ hours we were told we could go home. Nigel gave me a lift back through wet twilight scenes of Farnshaw urban sprawl. I felt suddenly weary when I got home and fell asleep, only to be woken up at nine by Lee who’d come round to go to Sean Laxton’s party.

We bought some cider in Moxthorpe and were soon being ushered by Gary Abbott into the music babble and glass chink of the party. All the expected crapsters were there, and I stayed in the kitchen while the jeans and T-shirt brigade hung around laughing and joking. On the stairs, Carol Lancaster, Tina Margerison, Elaine B. and Karen were already woozy and semi-drunk. Lee sat glumly apart, apparently unimpressed by the ‘fun’ and loud laughter.

Spencer Haynes bared his arse and pubes to all and sundry and attempted to molest a reluctant Angela Watkinson. Over in the corner Abbott and Tracey were all over one another and someone joked about her having no knickers and she said, “I had them on when I got here!” Upstairs in the bedroom I blundered in on Lynn Norden and friend, her on top of him, hazy alcohol blur of bare flesh. . . . Darren Busfield kissed Tina and Elaine, who kissed Tim in turn and Sean L. snogged Karen. I rifled gin and QC from Sean's parents' cabinet.

Carol was celebrating her birthday outside, spattering vomit down the wall of the house by the kitchen door, surrounded by a comforting crowd of males. Then there was more midnight lunacy in the street and garden. Youknowwho staggered and stumbled around, making oafish comments. Why do I always fall into the same boring rut of stale repetition, the same frantic rounds of cider, lager, whatever's available? Why don't I have the willpower to just leave?

Pretty drunk as I swayed home.

In a wild moment

At last did some revision! Lee here by 6.30 a.m. and we worked conscientiously and silently all morning and into the afternoon, only breaking for a dinner of fish and chips and cider.

Late afternoon the humid, sultry weather finally broke and a thunderstorm rolled and clattered across the sky. We sat in the gloomy dining room, the Art Ensemble shrieking and wailing a storm inside to match the one outside. Lee fled upstairs with a headache.

We worked a bit more after tea and Lee finally left at 10.30 after watching In A Wild Moment.

The Ministry of Defence has announced that Argentinian casualties in the Goose Green/Port Darwin battles number 250 dead along with 1400 prisoners. Only 17 dead on our side. How did they manage that?