All this has got me thinking….

I remember a bleak trip up to Lancaster with my Mum and her oversized boyfriend, constantly chugging roll-ups from his engrained perch in the front. We stopped over night in Blackpool and I remember hoping that the clapped out ‘illuminations’, which were nothing more glorious than shoddy old Pepsi ads really, were not an omen for the next three years. I had never been to Lancaster, or visited any universities at all for that matter. A crazed mix of youthful arrogance and too many drug related experiences in my formative years had led me to defer Uni for a year, mainly in the hopes that I would have a better idea of what I wanted to do by the time it came around to go, or, better yet, that I would be ‘discovered’ before I had to. Discovered doing what, I hear you ask. Surely there were other lanky, cynical pot heads with pretentious tendencies around to be head hunted by MI6 and senior government positions? Sadly, no. Perhaps I thought someone was going to drag me out of my weed chugging social calendar because of an inherent brilliance that would summon those who mattered. What a little tosser I was to have even half-seriously entertained such a notion. Still, a little pretension is character building I reckon, as long as you do eventually turn your back on it and don’t become a neckerchief wearing, open mic poetry reader with a leather waistcoat and a penchant for livers warmed in a cock sized glass….But I digress, and I think I always will, so fuck it.

Anyway, anyway, anyway where was I? Oh yes, arriving at Uni and wondering who else’s pots and pans would be shoved into the meagre cupboards in the 25-man kitchen I was bound to share. I would learn later, at the end of term, that some people literally did fall at this first hurdle and simply could not hack the thought of such an enforced communal living. By the look of the cargo unloaded at the end of week 10, it seems they simply radioed back to base for heavy artillery. Then Mummy and Daddy turned up with a fridge, gas stove and microwave oven to save any blushes about shared pans, mess, stolen food, or, most understandably, every shy boy’s worst nightmare, the cackling big-breasted gang of bints that came free with every living space. Fortunately I had neither the means nor the inclination to avoid these things, and I ended up welcoming it all with open arms, for a while. Of course, there were a couple of edgy days. I had no suit for the ‘Fresher’s Ball’, and it sounded like a poor copy of an American thing anyway, so I decided to skip it. Spent the evening in toiling on the half ounce of hash I’d brought with me instead, wondering what the fuck I was doing with myself generally and earning a very short-lived, misguided reputation as a loner.

I soon found my groove though and I think it fair to say that I did feel streets ahead of most people purely because of having had a year out. I excelled in the drinking game and used my small town pub culture roots to good effect in the college pool team. The world was opening to the socially mobile masses and even those less so (it was a good crowd and ‘jock mentality’ was very marginalised). Parties were being thrown left right and centre – it was all laid out for us, like somebody understood that the social side of things needed to be kick-started before we all scuttled off to our private toasters and choked on a diet of pop tarts and throaty sobs. Soon, relations were expanded beyond the immediate kitchen nest and I met an interesting character with bright eyes and a mental grin. We started speaking to put each other at ease, it was one of those times when you know you’ve got to make that step, before it becomes impossible or goes the other way – claimed dislike through ignorance or fear. You know the times – we were primitive social animals back then really. We hit it off and soon formed a strong alliance against the raucous fat birds and the unholy Junior Common Room collective. We fought to keep the Stone Roses on the juke box and to keep the fucking Abba off. We lost. We deconstructed days over spliffs that burnt down evenly and we shared honest thoughts, mutual likes and dislikes and professed love for various college beauties. We kept the arrogance out of one another with well placed verbal slaps and rye smiles – we kept our feet on the ground. We expanded our social circles and got to know each other’s friends – the world was constantly growing.

Even when it wrong for me, as of course it did, and I got involved with a girl I shouldn’t have, long term, our chats and the healthy social scene kept me sane. Our expanded social circles created a constant flux of nights out, places to chill and canal-side escapes on hastily purchased mountain bikes. And we all just kept meeting people and the world was a mass of people to get to know. For the first time, it seemed like even the best looking girls were potentially just a smile and a ‘hello’ away. Of course, we were far too dysfunctional to ever really make that a reality, but the fantasy was there and that’s half the battle isn’t it? You have to believe it possible to do it, and you don’t have to do it to enjoy its possibility.

A wicked time, an eye-opening time, the most socially expanding time, the most freedom. The fact is we abused that freedom sometimes – we got too far into things we shouldn’t have, we dwelled on too many negatives that could have been shrugged off and, sometimes, we sank low. Here’s the deal though – if we wanted to swim back up to the top, it was all there for the taking. With free will comes responsibility, but please don’t criticise the whole game because you stayed down in the bottom of the barrel.