Two Thoughts

Last night I was brushing my teeth and letting thoughts race through my mind as I did so, paying attention to them for only a few seconds at a time. Give those molars a good seeing-to, I thought, and so I took them from every angle I could. I remembered seeing the brush made of Badger-hair that a guest had left in our toothbrush cup. How black and dirty it looked. I wondered if it made any difference at all to the nylon brushes. I gazed out the window and watched the silhouettes of the trees in our garden swing and sway in the wind. In the distance, through the open window, I could hear a baby crying at one of the neighbour’s houses. I remembered my Dad used to tell me that Gandhi would brush his teeth for fifteen minutes a day. What a strange thing to tell a young, impressionable boy. Telling a child something like that could have had devastating consequences. There was the possibility that I would take it to heart and end up brushing my teeth for thirty minutes or forty-five minutes a day just to outdo the guy who preached ahimsa. I imagined being known to everyone as the kid with the toothbrush in his shirt pocket at all times. Maybe I could go one better than that and preach peace with the aid of a toothbrush. Now, there’s an idea.

Dad’s intention, I think, had been to encourage me to brush my teeth through instilling his heroes’ ways into me. He didn’t brush his teeth for fifteen minutes a day, I’m sure of it, and through my teenage years I gradually brushed mine less and less. Brushing your teeth for any length of time can’t hurt. The longer the better, I should think, but I wish my Dad had been able to see into the future and tell me something more fitting. Something that would have made me pay attention and something I would have adhered to for the rest of my life.

I saw a programme on TV about Mothers and their children. I watched a Mother put her little girl on a roundabout and push it once or twice to get it spinning. “Hold on tight,” she said as the camera watched the girl from the opposite side of the roundabout. The girl smiled the first spin round but her expression changed to one of nausea and sickness within seconds. When the roundabout eventually came to a stop she stepped off and stood in the same spot, wobbling slightly. Her head moved slowly but almost uncontrollably on her shoulders and when she next looked into the camera she looked dizzy. A thought came to me as I watched.

Drugs are dizziness. Dizziness sums up drugs, I thought. If only my Dad had thought of that analogy years ago. That may have put me off. Every time I’ve ever stepped off a roundabout I’ve felt dizzy and I don’t like it. Yet I continue to get on the roundabout in the first place when I know exactly what will happen. Forever going back to the things we know we don’t get on with – will we ever learn?

Boating in Stratford

We’d ridden out to see Tim at his new home. We’d navigated the muddy bank to the right bridge number, punctures along the way, and knocked at the third boat. “Tim, you remember going boating in Stratford?” I asked, sitting in the stern of his newest acquisition – a narrow boat.

He seemed pensive for a second, unlike the Tim I know, and then said: “Of course I remember Stratford. Those tiny fucking boats. Thought they were gonna tip over. You know where you are with this baby”. He tapped his knuckles on the roof of the boat and admired it for a second.

“We all thought we were gonna get soaked through,” I said. “Who else was there? I’m gonna write about it.”

“Ah! So you want my facts for your story,” he smiled.

“Well, in a fashion, yeah I do. You know how it is dude, gotta get it all down. Jamie was there I think, Mike too, weren’t you?”

Mike shook his head, lit his spliff and said: “I’ve been to Stratford once, and I didn’t get on a boat so...”

“Maybe not then,” I replied.

“Jamie was there, yeah. John too, I think. There were a few of us that day, it was cold and miserable,” Tim recalled. “I paid for one of the boats cuz no-one else would chip in. It was a bit of a lost day really – too much weed for my liking. Just giggling all day I was – that was the stuff from my neighbours attic.”

“I remember you getting some stuff off your neighbour but I can’t remember what it was like. Skunk?”

“Yeah, he had skunk. Tons. I just sort of had a lost two weeks with it. That afternoon in Stratford must have been right in the middle of it all.”

“Probably.”

“We took out two boats didn’t we?” Tim thought about it for a second, looking off over the open field on the opposite side of the bank. “Yeah, it was two boats. Jamie and I were in one and..”

“Who was in the other one?”

“You and someone else probably. John? We just sorta rode out slowly. It was pretty hairy to be honest.” Tim chuckled. He held out his arms slightly and acted unstable, wobbling his arms slightly with crossed eyes.

“Rowing boats weren’t they?” I asked.

“Beats me.”

“Didn’t we go up some little stream and sit under a bridge in the boats for a bit? I’m sure we did. I remember thinking what the fuck is the guy gonna say when we get back with his boats like, what, two hours too late. I thought we’d get charged some extortionate price for the time we’d over-run.”

“Three pounds for twenty minutes in a boat on a little poxy stretch of river. Man, what a fucking jip. No wonder we were out for so long, you can’t get anywhere on water in twenty minutes.”

“It’s for the nice tourists though Tim,” I said, “I should think they quite enjoy pottering about on the river for twenty minutes and then going round Shakespeare’s house or whatever. We were just plain bored.”

“Still am,” Tim noted. All three of us laughed. Still bored.

“Man, those were the days,” Tim declared, picking up his cup of tea off the roof.

“Man, those were always the days,” I retorted, “There’s this quote...”

“A quote!” interrupted Mike, “Another?”

“Yeah, course. ‘I tend to live in the past because that’s where most of my life is’. Now, that’s a quote, man. That’s a real fucking stunner.” I pointed and jabbed my index finger in front of me.

“Who is it?” Mike asked.

“I can’t remember but I’ll have it written down somewhere.”

“Don’t you have anything written about Stratford then?” Tim asked.

“Tim, man. Sometimes the days just float away from you. Y’know?”

First Impressions of Ballinasloe

Everyone has to find somewhere to lay their head for the night; whether you live at your parents house and are trying to escape, or homeless and looking for a decent enough railway bridge, or, in our case, you’re on tour and need a hook-up. We’d set off late from Dublin, having run errands around the city all day. The motorway - the 6 – led us west. Although it was getting dark by the time we were hit the road the country slowly revealed itself. I’d seen it before, and everyone I was with were locals so they’d seen it many times, but you always seem to be slightly more interested in somewhere that isn’t your home. Having the front centre seat I probably had the best vantage point in the van.

This girl was meant to be putting us up for the night in Ballinasloe. That was all I knew. I think she was a friend of a friend or something like that. Anyway, she had floor space. We just had to make it there, and as long as we didn’t stop the van probably wouldn’t konk-out either. In the morning we’d just have give it a push and get it going again. I don’t know if Dylan named it ‘Old Ivor’ after the engine or not, but that tank engine has a human-like soul all of its own which seemed pretty fitting. Everyone else had two more full weeks of gigs – and pushing the van – to do yet, I was just tagging along for a couple of days. Driving in Ireland the first time I went it struck me that the scenery, the roads and the signs at least, seemed much more European than British.

Somehow we found her house and pulled up on the gravel driveway. All nine of us introduced ourselves on the doorstep and went inside to find our own nooks to sleep in. ‘Always sleep behind something,’ that’s my motto on tour. I pulled out the sofa a little and set up camp for the night. Then a couple of us looked around the big cold house. Plants grew out of pots in every empty space available, some looking rather tropical and out of place in rural Ireland. Long, thin windows with push-up wooden frames stretched themselves down every wall but showed nothing except darkness. We killed time for an hour or so. I talked to some kid who appeared out of nowhere about photos, of all things, whilst some tried to get to sleep and some walked around talking in weird voices with leopard-print bandanas wrapped around their heads. Eventually I climbed over the sofa and into my waiting, welcoming sleeping bag.

In the morning I sat on the doorstep first thing shackled by a chilly breeze. I flicked through a couple of Irish zines and smoked a ciggie or two. Ivor sat on the drive. Various members of the touring party came and went through the huge front door. Eventually we were all called in for an unexpected breakfast. Fresh homemade blueberry muffins, strawberries, yoghurt, pancakes and coffee, which I drank at the time. It was an impressive little spread and a salute to the touring party. We tried not to gobble it all down too quickly and made small-talk whilst staring at the food in between bites to prolong the feast. We’d hit some sort of jackpot.

Driving away from the big old house we all waved backwards at our hosts, or ex-hosts. There were a few more miles to do before the next gig – an afternoon affair in a small Galway youthclub.

On Campus

My time at University is coming to an end, at least for now. Three years have gone by so unbelievably fast. It seems the case that the years go by faster and faster the older you get. I can still vividly remember our very first day and all those mini-introductory lectures that they managed to cram in for us. I still recall looking around the hall and thinking about homogenisation of the masses and how the way to do it would be whilst the unsuspecting victim is a young, naive student. All the similar haircuts and similar clothes young people share, following the next person like a sheep, all in search of what? Adulthood? Looking at the people around on that day would be enough to make you think that there could never be another youth movement. So I made a conscious decision on my first day to get involved in the town – that’s where I felt the genuine, lasting feel of both friendship and community would be. Localisation not globalisation, that has to be the way to improve this fractured society of ours. The students were likely to be pretty boring anyway, just like I was. 

I’ve been pretty lucky with my time at University. I haven’t had to live in complete dives with paper peeling off the walls and mould growing everywhere and piles of rubbish stacking up like some friends have. I haven’t paid over the odds for a room either – but then again everything is over the odds when property is involved. You could say I haven’t been living like a real student and you may be right. Who wants to live in squalor like everyone else anyway? Getting pissed every night and acquiring both traffic cones and shopping trolleys on the way home. That just isn’t for me – it’s not my idea of fun. Even when I am drunk I only ride my bike slightly more dangerously; like a king on the way home. I had fun certainly, but with locals instead of students. Our idea of fun was midnight bike rides over dark fields, or rooftop barbecues, or dodging the bats at the lake. Getting out and about and around the town, that’s what we did well, whilst everyone else drank 2-for-1’s at some smelly dive. Granted, all the girls were drinking 2-for-1’s but we were interested in getting out and about around the town, not the standard, typical monotony of drinking in the town centre. Nothing heals the soul like a good, cold evening in the park eating blackberries and talking shit with a friend.

At the same time as being thankful that I haven’t lived just like every other student I also have this feeling that I may have wasted some of my time at University. I realise now, with hindsight to make it easier, that I should have met everyone, spoken to everyone, been more open and listened more than I did. I shouldn’t have kept myself to myself so much – whether it was good for my thirst for knowledge or not. I should have talked to that girl on the graphics course. I should have smoked with Gill more often. I should have claimed that abandoned filing cabinet for my small, humble office. But, when I’m on the bus and sat by a stranger and they don’t bother to talk to me it makes me feel exactly the opposite. Why try and meet everyone? Let fate take its course, if you speak then so be it; take it in your stride, see what happens. Some of them are probably pricks anyway, right? And this world is home to a shitload of people.

Back to homogenisation: once on campus there is almost no need to ever leave, except to see family back home, and most of the students didn’t leave campus during term time. Why bother? There’s a chip shop, a book shop, a supermarket, a gym, a swimming pool, patches of grass to lounge on and a room of your own. The problem with this is that it can easily become a breeding ground for single-mindedness and apathy. The circumstances are just right for it: everyone starts to eat, drink, and sleep in pretty much the same way. They unconsciously live exactly like the next person. The definition of campus is ‘a self-contained student community.’ But is the word community really even appropriate?

Something else that further backs up my theory that university actually encouraging homogenisation is the lack of culture on campus. Look at various bands’ tour schedules from twenty or thirty years back. Every other date is likely to be a Student’s Union or a hall at a Polytechnic. In three years at one campus I didn’t see a single band, or even a flyer for a gig. The Rock Society obvious wasn’t doing its job properly. I just took to putting on bands in town and not at the campus for one reason: the locals were more interested. Strangely enough students now are not flag flying radicals like our parents were but a very sterile bunch. They were a apathetic and a-political. There was no sign of campus activism whatsoever. I was surprised by the violence at Millbank. When the student elections came round no-one was interested at all, and the number of votes was significantly less than it had ever been before. The rest of the arts (which, we must remember, should have equally the same amount of bearing on culture; literature, painting, sculpture, theatre) were also distinctly lacking from campus life. All we’d get were shitty glossy colour flyers with listings of numerous drinks promotions. When I organised readings no-one at all showed up. Sometimes on campus, absorbing culture was really difficult but absorbing booze was easier than it had ever been.

Even on my course I shied away from engaging in much conversation. I kept myself to myself and tried to keep my head down in books instead of keeping myself intoxicated. Save drinking for the weekend, not just Tuesdays because the drinks are cheaper. My self-directed studious approach worked well. I’d come home, make dinner, then go back out and sit in the library with some books I wanted to read. I read Laurie Lee’s complete prose output in about a week, two or three hours every night before the library shut at 10pm. In the city 10pm may sound early, and no doubt your university had a library that was open 24 hours, but here in the real world – in the Midlands – 10pm is late for a library. I got everything done each day that I wanted to get done and as the first months rolled by my stack of crossed-off lists grew larger and larger. I was succeeding.

It was right at the very end of my three years that I actually began to associate with other students, actually began to talk to people. I found that older, ‘mature’ students made for much more interesting conversation. They’d talk of a life already lived and not a life eager to be lived like the younger students. Our generation seem so hung up on want, I suppose that it’s no different at our age anywhere in the western world. The younger students were all full of “I wish this” and “I want that” and “I will do this and that,” so much so they had nothing in the end except drive – they had little life already lived to fall back on. I made it a routine to go and sit in the restaurant for my lunch and take notes on people. It was this huge glass warehouse with a corrugated metal roof – smartened up a bit. The first time I went there I walked up to the hot food counter, ordered a plate of pasta and as the dude was dishing it up I noticed a long queue of people next to me, waiting to get a scoop of this amazing thick soup from a huge pot. I spotted the sign: “soup & roll £1.” I turned back to grab my plate and looked at the price for the pasta: £3.60!! Needless to say I didn’t make that mistake again – I bought soup ever visit after that. Being surrounded by people but actually sitting quiet and alone was still my idea of fun. No-one talked to the scruffy guy in the corner with soup on his face and notebooks laid out on the table – and why would they want to? To anyone else it probably looked like I was working. I’d watch the girls with folders under their arms walking in and out.

Then I’d get into the queue for the bus and watch all the pretty girls with bleach blonde hair and headbands jump the queue. I’d go home and muse some more on it all, on everything; the state of the world, the state of my block, the afternoon’s TV, the milk in the fridge. It was a glorious time, those last few months of university, no matter how rushed off my feet I was with dissertations and meetings and stuff. Unlike some, I work best under pressure, under the impending doom of a deadline.

University isn’t for everyone, and I don’t think it was really for me, but I choose not to yield to the game they would have liked me to play. Some people didn’t make it at all, they dropped off after two months, six months, a year or two. I feel for them as I feel for the ones who managed to complete their course. Where are those people who ditched it all now? What do they do? Are we better off for sticking through it all? Who is to say? For every single assignment brief they handed out I found a way to twist it to be something I wanted to do. I made my way through quite smoothly and managed to get my own studious leanings in too.

So that would be my advice to something thinking about going to University; make the course fit you, not the other way around.  

Miscommunication

It was a Sunday afternoon and as usual I was eating out at the club. I liked the routine, the friendly faces, the low price and the atmosphere, and the fact it was usually the most nutritious and healthily hearty meal of the week for me. If no-one I knew turned up for the cheap food I’d pick through the leftover Saturday supplements and catch up on the week’s literary news. I was huddled over my plate with the paper spread out in front of me when I noticed a girl looking at me from the other side of the room. I smiled, she smiled, and I went back to eating my lunch. 

Whenever I looked up from my plate she seemed to be staring straight at me. I wondered if I either had food on my face or was eating like a horse or something. This went on for about five minutes. Our eyes would catch as we both looked up and around from our plates.

Soon enough she got up and started walking straight over to my table. I noticed her blonde hair bouncing gently as she strode towards me. These full pink lips pressed together but with plenty to say. She had her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her jeans until she reached the table. I felt nervous just watching her.

“Hi,” she said smiling, brushing her hair over her ear with her middle finger.

“Hi,” I said.

“Are you finished with the salt and pepper?” she asked.

Going Home

1.

During the final morning of our first trip to Amsterdam I fully admit I lost it. It is not often that I get so angry as to shout at anyone, let alone friends, but the pressure of getting to the airport on time, and almost certainly of the heavy dope we had been smoking the night before really took its toll.

Travel can do strange things to people. It does to me. It makes me even more punctual and alert than I usually am. This manifests itself in turning up to the train station at 1:30 knowing I’m catching the 2:05. Why? Because I don’t want to miss the train. In the ticket office I’m checking the departures board and figuring out which platform I’m after before even buying a ticket. I’m always ahead of myself, at least ahead of where I feel I need be.

We had to catch a train from Amsterdam Central Station to Schipol Airport, but no-one knew which platform it was on. I was literally thirty feet ahead of the other three with bags hanging off my shoulder and looking fully unkempt. I wasn’t stoned – but the other three were, very. They’d tried to smoke the rest of our batch before we left, and before 10am. Nick shouted me and they quickly turned off down a staircase. I followed in hot pursuit and bounded down this flight of stairs faster than I’d ever moved before. They hopped onto a stationary train, I followed.

We all took our bags off and dumped them on the floor. I tried to catch some breath and sat back in the chair. When the train started moving it dawned on me that no-one knew where the train was actually going. I quizzed the other guys hurriedly and they all presumed. Great. A plane to catch in one hour and no-one knows if we’re on the airport train or not. I lost my temper and hastily used the words ‘fuck’, ‘you’ and ‘guys’. I flew off down the aisle with my bag trailing behind me to find out where the hell we were going. I found the train manager in the next carriage, and then went crawling back to the others.

At the Airport we checked in and went in search of the plane. We noticed a board which listed our flight leaving from 17b in ten minutes. I rushed along, turning round every ten seconds to hurry everyone up. As I opened the door to 17b and ran down the flight of stairs I came face-to-face with an old couple looking lost. “Are you here for the Coventry flight?” they asked, looked totally perplexed and lost. I looked out at the airport runway and didn’t see a plane waiting. Just then Nick pulled open the door at the top of the stairs and called us up. “Quick, quick” he said. The old couple walked but I ran up the stairs and over the corridor. On the opposite side we went through the door and down the stairs and this time were faced with a room full of people and a plane waiting. My heart pumped twice as fast for the whole flight home.

2.

Two years later, with two of the same people who were both stoned again, we’re in Vancouver. It’s 10am too and not one of us can figure out the fucking bus timetables. We are totally and utterly lost and running out of time, only able to rely on another tourist’s ability to methodically de-code the timetable. We took a chance with this Hungarian who decided he was definitely right. I sat on my backpack with the sun bouncing off the concrete and felt the patience get drawn out of me slowly. It felt like the inevitable deadline was crushing me.

A bus came soon enough, but we still had our plane to catch yet.

3.

The last time I was in Dublin I spent the final night alone – well, mostly alone. I walked around the city all fucking day then stumbled upon a decent gig in Temple Bar late in the evening. I screamed and shouted as another generic US punk band screamed and shouted up onstage. The atmosphere was great – the locals were all friendly and held out their hands so I could crowd surf and then shared their massive slices of pizza with me outside whilst we talked music and what-not. After the gig I was in a great mood but stumbled off to find a decent place to sleep instead of staying up all night. This tiny groggy hostel provided a stiff but ample bed for the night.

In the morning I went out for breakfast and vividly remember sitting on the North Quay by the River eating an apple when a lorry drove by with this crazy sculpture tied on the back. I probably smoked a few cigarettes too quickly. I worried about missing my ferry and so I set off early to the ferry port. I didn’t really have a clue how far the port was – I just knew the direction it was in, and once I started picking up signs I just kept following them. I had my walkman playing fast-paced punk stuff and I tried to walk in time with the beat.

To begin with I passed all the old port buildings and distribution warehouses – big, old red-brick buildings with the names of the original businesses carved into the stone above the doors. The path was cobbled and I just trundled along and along. Occasionally there were these glass circles set in between the stone which contained little colourful plastic fish. It looked like these fish were swimming away from the city, not towards it, just like me. I walked and walked and eventually came to the industrial docklands area. More and more lorries came speeding past me, kicking up all this dust. Alongside the pavement ran these huge old pipes which seemed to dart off in every direction at some points. This one road – Alexandra Road – led all the way to the ferry port, but was a couple of miles long and totally straight. To keep occupied I looked at all the workyards, and silos, and warehouses, and shipping containers which lined either side of the road. I saw no-one else on foot with whom I could check the time so I just kept going at as fast a pace as I could manage. A thick layer of dust and grime covered everything – as is always the way with industrial districts. No-one in their right mind would walk down that road if they could help it.

     At the very end I took a right, a left, a right and followed even more signs meant for cars not pedestrians. The ferry port terminal came into view on the other side of a dozen fences and a vast expanse of concrete. Needless to say readers, despite all the rushing, and fretting, and worrying and nail biting I had arrived on time.