remote control...

Not surprisingly, I've been thinking over the last few days about my own exam results. Of course, unlike this year's pupils, I was lucky enough to sit my exams in the usual way and to then receive my results at some point later in the summer. I got the grades I needed, so I went to my first choice University. It was pretty simple.

Then I thought about my experience a bit harder.

I expected to go to University. I was good at exams and therefore had a pretty crucial advantage that this was the preferred way of assessing someone's academic merit and deciding their future, both in the immediate term and almost certainly in the longer term too. But I expected to go.

My expectation went much deeper than simply expecting to get the results that would enable me to study the course I wanted at the institution I wanted: I just assumed that the way my life was mapped out, I would drift from school to University to job. Oh, sure, there were all sorts of uncertainties for me along the way and my exact future was clouded... but never for one second did I consider that my path lay away from further education. 

Of course, I didn't stop to think about this for a moment. I just went with the flow.

This privilege and expectation was a new in my family. My father was the son of a publican who ran a pub in the Plymouth naval docks. Dad didn't get especially good grades in his exams, but he was determined to be a doctor, and St. Bartholemew's hospital in London took a chance on him. By his own admission, he'd be nowhere near getting the grades he would need now, so the medical profession would have been deprived of 50 years of selfless service, with thousands of hours given not just to the NHS but volunteering for St John's Ambulance (apparently he used to do their pandemic response planning!). Even now he's retired and in his 70s, of course my dad put his name forward to volunteer as we went into lockdown. For my dad, this education was a gift and he's cherished it for his whole life (he's got a stack of letters after his name that often requires a second line on his latest certificates).

He wanted this gift for his children, of course he did. We didn't grow up wealthy, so my parents saved every penny they had to put their children through a private education. I was on a scholarship, but even so, for three kids, this was an absolutely collosal investment. The staycation is not a new concept for my family, that's for sure.

So, barely 25 years after my father became the first in his family to grasp at a further education, I was already drifting into it. He read Medicine and became a doctor, I read for a BA in Modern European and Renaissance History and then drifted into an MA in Medieval Studies and only didn't drift into a DPhil because I had the realisation that wanting to be called "Doctor" wasn't anywhere near a good enough reason to do four years of research into something that ultimately no one would care about, never mind to fund.

So I drifted through University. After 11 years at boarding school, being away from home wasn't a new or revelatory experience for me, and I actually found it a bit boring that so many people thought that it was. It was mainly an examined degree, so being good at exams was still an advantage for me, and I got a decent result without ever really throwing my heart and soul into it, whilst probably not being as good as I could or should have achieved (I ended up right on the cusp of a First Class degree). I can actually remember a conversation I had with the tutor who supervised my Masters dissertation ("Historical Precedent and the Deposition of Henry VI in 1471" - a page turner that showed the rise of parliamentary power in the sucessive removal of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI). I can write and I was interested in my subject, but this tutor could see that I was only really interested in doing a good job, not an exceptional one and he helped me to achieve that. Looking back, I can not only see his mild disappointment at this wasted opportunity, but I share it. If I was to go to University again, this time around I would approach it very differently... as more than just another box to be ticked as I drifted through life.

This privileged drifting seems all the more infuriating as I'd already rejected a lot of the behaviour of many of the people that I'd been to school with. I had a massive, visceral reaction against the kind of arsehole that we now see running the country, swanning around as if they owned the place and everybody else in it. I also hated the idea of going to Oxbridge. My intellectual vanity did mean that I ended up applying to Oxford, but I received zero guidance from my very expensive school, refused to sit the fourth term entry exam (remember, I was good at exams) because I didn't see why they thought they were so special.... and then ended up applying to a college where I was pretty much the only person who hadn't done the exam. Nice job, everyone. My dad actually had a close friend who was the admissions tutor of a Cambridge College, and he arranged a meeting. Rather than see this as a priceless opportunity, my takeaway was that this guy had spent the whole time trying to boast about how every undergraduate was a published author. In my teenaged stupidity and arrogance, I rejected this (perceived) bullshit by applying blind to Oxford.  What a prat.

I do think that not going to Oxbridge after 11 years in private education was very good for me. Warwick and York are both excellent universities in their own right, their history courses arguably better than their Oxbridge equivalents, but they are also much more socially mixed, and I'm sure it was good for me to breath some different air. I had a girlfriend from Stockport, for goodness sake. Imagine that! (she's now a lecuturer at King's College, London, I'm told. Another person who took their education more seriously than me).

So yes, I look at the scandal of this algorithim that advantages pupils from private schools and I think fuck them and fuck the system that perpetuates their preeminence. They --- I --- have had every possible advantage in their lives to date and they don't need a leg up when there are plenty of other people who just want an even crack of the whip. Of course this government didn't see anything wrong with this approach: they've benefitted from this system every single day of their lives for generations. 

If privilege can be that corrosive in the course of 25 years and one generation, imagine how destructive it must be over 250 years and 10 generations; over 500 years; over a millennia. This country is dying under the weight of all this privilege and has been for centuries. The very idea of British exceptionalism is ridiculous and an insult to all the people and countries and cultures we've pillaged as we tried to claw ourselves out of the mire by standing on everyone else. If we now want to jump back in, it's probably best to just let us go.

Just let us go.

the melting men....

I flicked the television on this evening when I sat down with my tea and saw that Raiders of the Lost Ark had just started on BBC3.  Obviously, I sat and watched it.  I've seen it hundreds of times, of course, but you can't flick past that, can you?

This film was made in 1981, and even though the special effects are positively Stone Age compared to what's possible today, I was watching the famous face-melting scene at the end and thinking that it's a far more effective special effect than any amount of million dollar CGI thrown at the latest Transformers movie.... because the film doesn't JUST hinge on the special effects, but has an actual plot and characters you care about and old fashioned things like that.

Then I remembered that half my team at work haven't seen this film.

Ever.

Imagine that.  They all know who Nicki Minaj is (and what her fragrance smells like), but they have no idea who Indiana Jones is, and in fact they probably couldn't name a single thing Harrison Ford has done in his career.

Young people, eh?

sweet little lies....

If you'll indulge me again, I think I'll do just one more nostalgia post to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this blog before putting it all behind me and moving on to the next decade (!).

I've been writing about earworms here almost since the very beginning (well, March 25th 2005, so almost the very beginning, anyway...)  Maybe I'm more susceptible than most to songs worming their way inside my head, or perhaps I just like cataloguing stuff.  Maybe both.

Over the years, I've listed all kinds of shit.  For a while, I had lots of other people guesting in the regular Friday earworm slot, sharing the things that were stuck in their heads.  Sharing is caring, after all.  I like hearing what's playing on other people's internal jukebox.  Besides, as a cut and paste job, it usually made for an easy post.

I think my absolute favourite guest in that slot was Lizzy, and her earworms guest slot produced what I think is probably the single most brilliant piece of writing that this blog has yet seen or is likely to see.  Reading the post again now, I just have to marvel at her creativity.  Read it and weep.

The clue is in the title....

-----
Falsehood Merchant, Nobody Believes You
Friday, December 15, 2005

Evening all. Earworm time again. My internal jukebox is still alternating between Nelly Furtado, Panic! At The Disco and vintage Iron Maiden, so it's probably just as well that I'm handing the keys over to a Guest Editor with a much more varied and interesting musical palate than my own rather blunt instrument.

If bloggers were musicians, then I rather think that she's probably the virtuoso lead guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and song writer to my rather lumpen bass player.

Ladies and Gentleworms, without further ado, it is my great pleasure to present for your earworming pleasure, TAFKATUF....

Earworms of the Week - Guest Editor #51 - Lizzy from Literary Hoax

MY WEEK IN MUSIC – Lizzy Hoax

1. Mouldy Persephone – Umbilical Glow

I heard this lo-fi garage rock song in a dream in the small hours of Monday morning. When I awoke, it was still playing. As you can imagine, this confused me for anything up to a minute. Looking out of the bedroom window, I saw the fit man from two doors down slumped and snoring in the front garden, while his phone rang loudly from his lap. Perhaps it was his worried boyfriend? Perhaps it was a wrong number? I don’t know. Anyway, this song was his ringtone. It annoyed me, because I hate waking up suddenly to songs. They stalk you all day.

2. Egg Might Wake – I Fashioned A Simple Tool

When Tanya Donnelly left Throwing Muses, rumours circulated that she would soon join Egg Might Wake. They were entirely without foundation. This song sounds like Billy Idol being dropped down a lift shaft.

3. The Dullards - Epic Transport Stench Syndrome

Yes, a song that is over 14 minutes long if you include the cymbals solo at the end. Inconveniently, I have a rare form of musical OCD which requires me to sing the entirety of any song which I find myself humming. I didn’t get much done this Tuesday as a result.

4. Samantha Happen – Coruscate

This is the club anthem that samples the Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummers advert from 1988. (Sorry, non-Brits: I doubt you know of these high quality meat products at all, let alone the attendant promotional campaign from nearly 20 years ago.) It includes the classic mother-son exchange: “Did it rain?” “Not all the time!”, mashed up and looped with a Timbaland-style Indian drum track. I feel obliged to say “Bootiful!” now, as a weakly amusing verbal tie-in. But the track’s useless, so I won’t.

5. Mine All Mine – Double Poinsettia On Ice (bonus track on ‘Christ & Co’ EP)

The first and last festive entry. This song is quite rare even among hardcore M.A.M. fans, so how it kept waltzing into my shower all week, I have no idea. It’s on Mine All Mine’s 1992 Christmas EP which is unfeasibly hard to find. The “John Major’s got no baubles” chorus dates it terribly, but it holds up rather well apart from that. Sort of like Tina Turner gargling paint stripper over a Polyphonic Spree B-side. That good.

6. Leatherette – Parachute Offences

Probably the only song in my collection that rhymes “faecal contamination” with “Ascot train station”. For that, I can almost forgive its relentless hounding of my synapses last Wednesday. The saxophone intro can go to hell though.

7. White Crime – If Dick Thought It Would Help (He Would)

How this electronica bleepfest managed to hijack my internal jukebox this week, I really couldn’t say. I only heard it once and that was while walking past someone’s car. It must have hooks like a scorpion. Why do some songs do that? Why do some people drive a convertible with the top down in winter? Why do attention-seeking maniacs install enormous bass bins in their cars so that one’s teeth rattle at 140 bpm when they drive by? Or is the clue in the question? Hey, if I had all the answers, I wouldn’t be talking to you now. I’d be on a beach with Joaquin Phoenix. But would I really be happy?

8. Riga – Fuerteventura Kidnap 1982

The original singer from Riga once threatened to punch me. This exchange took place outside the Spread Eagle pub in Camden in the summer of 1996. Admittedly, I had just written a a review saying his band made Menswear look like Motorhead. I stand by that statement, and the rest of the band dismissed it good-naturedly as fair comment. Which meant his suicide attempt in the Dingwalls gents’ later that night came as quite a surprise. He moved to Bournemouth 3 months after that strange night, without telling anyone but his sister. I hear he still makes music, after a fashion. ‘Fuerteventura Kidnap 1982’ was recorded shortly after Riga got their current singer, Jo Pinto, but it’s still the same old fey jangly shite.

9. Dominik Pringle – Not Even With Yours

Dominik Pringle is the pseudonym of someone very famous indeed. I won’t spoil it for you, but you’d almost certainly recognise him if you saw him. Here’s a clue: he’s married to someone really thin. Go on. I bet you can guess. This is standard R&B, incorporating a cameo-by-numbers from a middle level American rapper, and boasting a video full of gyrating nubiles. Our host would love it.

10. Manifest Deceit Corporation - Tricks Of The Trade (Queen Liar Liar dub)

I was hoping for some peace and quiet today, but I’ve been mumbling this shouty electropop to myself all day. Inexplicably, it performed really badly on release in the UK but was huge in South America. The woman behind it made enough money to retire, just from the Peruvian market alone, or so the music industry gossips claim. Good on her, I say. It’s a great song and you really ought to buy it, or your record collection will have a yawning chasm where it ought to be. In fact, the void will be so big, you might fall into it. Years would pass before you were found. Your friends would shake their heads sadly and resolve never to let their own music collections fall into such disarray. Small children would devise innovative new insults derived from your name. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

----

Thanks Lizzy. I have to confess that I'm a touch disappointed that Cliff Richard hasn't made it onto your list this week... but apart from that it all sounds aces! (erm, not that I've actually knowingly heard any of it, that is... stuck in the pale, indie guitar ghetto as I am).

----

Dear, oh dear.  Lizzy.... that was frankly brilliant.  You cheeky scamp.  Now that I put YouTube links on every song in an earworm post, I don't think this would work today, but it sure as hell worked back then.  Or maybe I was just really lazy and gullible back then.  Yeah, it's probably that.

Incidentally, it's also Lizzy that I have to thank for my current non de plume... She's quite the talent.  I salute you, wherever you are!

can you read my mind?

As we continue the 10th birthday celebrations, here's another memorable post - to me anyway - from out of the archives.  In this one from 2005, I prove once again that I share more of myself with my readers than most other bloggers.....

Insane in the Membrane....
Saturday, September 24th, 2005

If you're at all squeemish, you may care to look away now.

Allow me to present for your viewing pleasure...... my brain.

(Feel free to click on an image if you want a close-up....)

I ask you - what other blogger gives you more? Could you ask for a greater insight into the innermost workings of my mind?

Samuel Pepys eat your heart out.

And yes, now you mention it, I do look a little bit like a fish in some of these shots....

(**respect due to the Eye In The Sky for these quality photos of the original scans....**)

And the neurologist said:

Brain: Coronal T1 and T2 sagittal FLAIR

There is no evidence of a space occupying lesion. There is a mild enlargement of the posterior bodies and occipital horns of the lateral ventricles with a slightly colpocephalic appearance. Areas of ill defined high signal change on FLAIR and T2 imaging are noted adjacent to the bodies of the lateral ventricles bilaterally and a small subcortical high signal lesion is noted involving the right middle temporal gyrus. There is no definite involvement of the corpus callosum or posterior fossa structures.

Cervical Spine: Sagital T1 T2 axial T2* sagital and axial T1 plus Gadolinium.

vertebral height and alignment are maintained. Canal dimensions are generous. There is a discreet oval high signal lesion located ventrally in the cord at C3 level causing mild cord expansion. This is poorly visualised on T1 imaging but shows evidence of marginal enhancement on the post contrast images. Axial images show the lesion lies on the left side of the cord at the C3 level. No other cervical cord lesions are identified.

Thoracic cord: Sagital T1, T2 and T1 plus Gadolinium.

Vertebral height and alignment are maintained. Canal dimensions are generous. There is no evidence of extrinsic compression of the thoracic cord, or of an intermedullary lesion.

Conclusion: The combination of the definite left ventral cord lesion at C3 and the subappenydymal lesions on the brain imaging is rather suggestive od demyleination.

---

Pick the bones out of that.

(as I said at the time I originally posted this, "And what does that mean? Well, my neurologist actually disagreed with the hospital neurologist that wrote the report, and said he couldn't see any lesions in my brain, but only on my cervical spinal cord. This is good - I don't want lots of lesions, as that way MS lies. I have a single lesion that seems to be on the way down. It's probably caused by a virus and may take about 3 months to go away and they may never know what caused it. It may mark my spinal cord permanently and leave a physical limit that wasn't there before, albeit one that won't affect me in my every day life, but might come into play when I really push myself physically and my nervous system will just say "NO". Ho hum. Back in 3 months time for a follow up appointment, and in the meantime just wait.

It's if it comes back that I really have to start to worry.

The colleague of mine who had similar symptoms to me at the same time has just been diagnosed with MS, so I'm currently feeling that there but for the grace of God go I....")

Hmm.

---

It was another four years from here until I was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The entire journey from that first morning in summer 2005 when I woke up with a numb hand all the way through to diagnosis and starting to inject myself in 2009 and beyond.... it's all documented here.  I don't know if any of it has, or ever will be, of any use to anyone else.  Who knows?  What I do know is that it has certainly helped me to be able to take my thoughts out of my head and to put them down here.  The act of writing has always helped me to see what I'm thinking more clearly, and that's never more so than working my way through the mass of emotions that come with a diagnosis like this.  I just hope that I don't come across like I'm moaning all the time.  I do seem to talk about my condition an awful lot.... But even now, looking at pictures of the inside of my head just seems impossibly amazing.  Even if I do look quite a lot like a fish and appear to have a large hole in the middle of my brain that the neurologist doesn't seem to think worth mentioning.....

dirty....

As we continue the 10th birthday celebrations, I thought I'd come back to a post that I often think of; a post that confirms once and for all that this is not a sophisticated establishment. Of all the many things that I have written here, this has to be one of the low high points....

unusually copper-coloured plughole?

And All The Things You Do
Tuesday, February 01, 2005

I'm now going to seriously lower the tone: if you are of a nervous disposition, or if you harbour delusions that I am some kind of sophisticate, please look away now.

----

Who am I kidding? You're all still here, aren't you? Nobody thinks I'm a sophisticate?

Well, don't say I didn't warn you.

I have a question for you.

I was inspired by something that Charlie wrote over on Late Night Radio (one of the first blogs I ever found, actually. Discovered using the "next blog" button and still a regular read).

Over to you Charlie:

"after years of reluctance, and after the longtime recommendations of all 3 roommates and several of my friends, I finally found an opportunity and peed in the shower last night. I didn't like it, and don't think there will ever be an encore."

As I said over there, on the one hand, that's gross. On the other hand, his roomates have clearly been pissing in his shower for months, so it's partial payback, right?

Before you take the moral high ground here, think on this:

Have you ever had a bedroom with a sink? Could have been a room at University, a room at college, could have been a bedsit, perhaps even in a prison - wherever.

Here's the question:

Did you ever take a piss in that sink?

Come on now. Be honest. You can tell me.

----

Some of the best bits, of course, came in the comments that followed:

Damo: Ben Elton's never been that funny a comedian. But he once told a story about how he got embarrassed when he was in a public loo cubicle and he took a dump - he couldn't have anyone else hearing the noise. So beforehand he laid paper down on the water, which deadens it. At this point he looked round the crowd, hoping for recognition that he wasn't the only person that did that. Well personally I never have. But I now feel like Ben Elton must have done every night on that tour when he found out that he wasn't the only one. Because I too had a hall of residence room with a sink. And did I REALLY want to get dressed every time I needed the loo in the night? Naaaaaaaaaaah.

Guilty. And anyone here who had the opportunity and says they didn't is a liar... I hope...

Mark: Yes. It was one of those hotels with a toilet shared communally at the end of the corridor. I couldn't be arsed walking 5o yards just to go. Not proud of it, but there you are.

Des: Yup.  Halls of Residence are a very conducive to this kind of behaviour.....sink in the room, but loo 30 yds away....was there ever any doubt at 0200 on a Sunday morning in Newcastle, ne fooking chance man!

Jenni: I've never done that, but maybe it's a bit different for women? I did, however, live next to a girl in my dorm who wouldn't take her finger and toenail clippings to the trash bin, but would instead just drop them on the hall carpet right outside her door. Oddly, I am more okay with the thought of someone else peeing in the shower/sink than with stepping on someone else's toenails.

Di: Um... I thought everyone pissed in the shower.
Am I a non-girl? Do I get banned from the fraternity now or something?

Bee: Of course it's possible for a girl to have a wee in a hall-of-residence-room-sink. All you need is a chair to stand on. And yes, I do speak from personal experience. The toilet on the 1st floor of Furzedown was VILE (and so were quite a few of the people who lived on the same floor ...)
Also, I can recommend the lining-the-toilet-with-a-piece-of-paper thing mentioned by Damo. It not only minimalises the sound, it also lessens the chance of skidmarks and eliminates splashback.

LB: I would like to also heartily comment the use of toilet paper as a sound insulation device for pooing in public toilets. As is running the cold tap very fast if you are in someones house and there is a chance they may hear you...and as for the shower. well. if you haven't done that, you're a liar.

John: There was a guy on our uni golf team who got the nickname 'sinks' - for months, no one would tell him why. Finally, someone got sick of him asking and told him that, when he'd been standing at the sink in his room with his curtains open in the first week of term, someone on the same floor of another building had happened to look across and see him doing what he was doing.

He wasn't pissing.

Ka: The first time someone told me that they didn't pee in the shower, I was shocked! You don't? It's gross? REALLY? I mean, it's not like peeing in the bathwater and sitting in it for an hour - the entire point of a shower is rinsing ick away. Isn't it?
I feel vindicated by your post and your readers, SwissToni.

Yoko: Everyone pisses in the sink at Uni. I didn't even need a chair, I'd just hop up on the edge like I was scaling a low wall.
I think the piss-deny-ers are the same people who never masturbate.
Oh, wait, you mean none of you do? Oh, me either...

---

BEST.  COMMENTS.  EVER.

.....Funny.  Confessional.  Informative.

We lived in simpler times back then, friends.  Happier times.  Cleaner times?  Ok, maybe not.

the writing's on the wall...

As part of the 10th birthday celebrations of this blog, I'm digging back into the archives for posts that I love.  Actually, I might only do this once, as I've got better things to be doing than rummaging around ten years of mostly pointless posts.  Panning for gold?  There's very little decent prospecting around these parts.....  Anyway.  When I was thinking about ten years of blogging though, this is the one post that really sprang to my mind.

I can't quite imagine doing something like this these days, and if I did, I'm not sure that anyone would be interested enough to take part.  Still, those were different time.  So, without further ado, a repost of something I wrote in November 2005.  Morrissey lyric post title, obviously....

Anonymous call, a poison pen....
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005

So here's the thing:

In the end, eighteen people answered my call for handwriting samples:

[2014 note: I imagine many of these links are now defunct, but I leave them mostly intact as a point of historical interest]

--> Jenni from Wonder(ing) Goddess

--> Aravis from Exploring Aravis

--> Di from Suburban Hen House

--> Le Flash from The World of Flash

--> Statue John from Stand By Your Statue

--> Foxy from The Urban Fox

--> Spinsterwitch from Life As I Know It

--> Chig from World of Chig (welcome Chig!)

--> Mark from Fear & Loafing in England

--> SwissToni from SwissToni's Place

--> Adem from The Big Blog

--> Rufus-Fan (who has a blog, but isn't ready to tell us where it is yet!)

--> Bee from Life in the B

--> John from The Ultimate Olympian

--> Michael from Yummy Brain Gravy

--> B1rdie Num Num from The Num Num

--> The Eye In The Sky (who doesn't have a blog, but likes prog rock!)

--> LB from [redacted]

Each one of these lovely people sent me a picture of a handwritten lyric. For a dazzling prize -- the honour of naming a post on this blog and perhaps a SwissToni mix CD -- all you have to do is match the handwriting to the person.

To help you out, an eminent graphologist (the numnum) has kindly provided an analysis of each sample.... click on each picture to enlarge.

You ready? Here we go then......

Sample 1



Mystic NumNum says: "This person has a good level of confidence, requires personal space a lot, and is fairly caring of those around. The convex baselines indicate a good starter, but a rather poor finisher in most cases. The short upper loops indicate a material person who does not partake in religious type thought. The short sharp hooks indicate a irritable and cranky persona. The lack of a g/y/f/j may have tilted this analysis off track though."

Sample 2



Mystic NumNum says: "This person is a clear thinker who is reserved and caring. This person is a tad hypersensitve, so I shall tread gently. Focused in the here and now, but with a strong fantasy drive and a very childlike demeanour in most cases. (This person is also one who dislikes unlined paper, which makes my job bloomin hard!)"

Sample 3



Mystic NumNum says: "This peson is a logical thinker, who is keen to keep distance (slightly reserved). This person is unfortunately a tad insecure, and tries to balance that by involving in social activity. The clash of behaviours leads to insecurity. A strong focus in the past, and a non-egocentric view of life. However, the slightly falling baseline indicates a level of fatigue with life, which needs rectifying to balance the usually strong focus."

Sample 4



Mystic NumNum says: "Optimism, and a bit of a penchant to dwell on the past. Another good starter but not really geared to finishing with much aplomb. Strong level of self confidence, this person is slightly emotional and spontaneous with a bit of a quick-judgement. Sometimes prone to inferiority bouts, the optimism helps keep the driver going. Sometimes childish with a bit of a dreamy quality."

Sample 5



Mystic NumNum says: "An entire song when a lyric would have sufficed, matches the overreaction quality of the narrow spacing. Unfortunately I cant see it in good detail, but it looks like a bit of an inconsistent personality - at one stage calm and another very nervous and insecure. Very here and now, material driven, so no dreams of utopia or unrealistic futures, but a bit of an optimisitic streak."

Sample 6



Mystic NumNum says: "A balanced mind, thinking a fair bit about the future. Keen to continue learing from mistakes, this person is sometimes a bit too impulsive. However, mostly a very clear thinker with a high capacity to care for others. Very determined too. But again, could do with a bit more freedom and some plain-paper!"

Sample 7



Mystic NumNum says: "An orderly person who is conventional and requires privacy. Has a strong ability to care for others. Fairly confident and proud, though more leaning towards a religious view of life, and extremely hypersensitve. A strong penchant for all things olde, a childlike behaviour and a fantasy driven mind. A very bad starter but manages to finish in the end."

Sample 8



Mystic NumNum says: "Heavens, this is all over the place. An inconsistent personality, flitting between impulsive behaviour and a bit of a guilt complex afterwards. A strong fantasy type mind, that is dirving to optimism. A not so good finisher, but adaptable, caring and conventional most of the times. As an aside, if its a man, he sure has very feminine handwriting! The kind of guy who would have a tie pin and button hole, or the kind of woman who has a trinket or two on her person, but not really driven to catwalk-style (?)"

Sample 9



Mystic NumNum says: "Looks to the future this one, but has a bit of a hangup in learning much from the past. Strong self confident, lives in the here and now. Oddly enough shows signs of a need to fit in! Sometimes childish, but a dislike of y/g/j in their lyrics, leaves me little to work with in 5 mins."

Sample 10



Mystic NumNum says: "Secretive. Sometimes hypersensitive, this person has a lot of guilt driven behaviour. Optimism keeps them going, they are a bad starter but manage to finish in the end. An objective outlook of life, they do need some time alone to themselves. An odd sense of confidence, though the ego is sometimes taking over."

Sample 11



Mystic NumNum says: "Very neat! An artistic view of life, prone to walk off the beaten track somewhat. Very controlled behaviour, with a lack of confidence in most situations. A caring outlook, with a motherly view of life, though very focused in the here and now with little time to dream and fantasise. What is striking, is that amongst this, is a bit of inconsistency, so prone to moods."

Sample 12



Mystic NumNum says: "No time to waste here! Alas inconsistent behaviour shows that this person flits a bit now and then. Keeps their distance, then jumps right in and takes centre stage. No lack of confidence here, though it is sometimes masked as uncertainty. Driven by a need to satisfy material and physical aspects of life, this person is always on the go!"

Sample 13



Mystic NumNum says: "Seems like a clear thinking person, but there are aspect of extreme chaos here. Not sure where they lie, but could be on the personal rather than work side. A spontaneous person, who seems to lack confidence. Living in the here and now, they are able to learn from the past and use that well. Optimistic behaviour, but sometimes lacks pragmatism."

Sample 14



Mystic NumNum says: "Hmmm. Lack of performance confidence, but a stong physial and material driven person. Respects authority, but lacks confidence. Clear thinking, caring and holding a bit of hidden aggression. Conventional, but a need to be slightly different. Doesnt experiemnt, but should do, and if it doesnt go well, should try again and not give up!"

Sample 15



Mystic NumNum says: "This person is tired, fatigued. They dream of something, but something is distracting them, and they dont have the energy to progress. There is confidence there, but no ego. Largely living in the here and now, they can think clearly but have a hard time finishing things. A streak of individualism, but conformist too! I suggest a holiday!"

Sample 16



Mystic NumNum says: "This essay was a bit hard to read. This person is very realistic. Very driven, and a bit on the physical/sensual side! There is a strong ego there, and a bit of a fantasy mind. But a lot of inconsistency, which means there may be some confused people around this person. A bit tired, they do finish what they start, sometimes!"

Sample 17



Mystic NumNum says: "Sometimes forward thinking, sometimes not! Very inconsistent in that aspect. Strong healthy like for the past, but a very healthy confidence. Optimistic, caring, but somewhat conventional. It looks like two people to be honest - or a split personality! One is more grounded than the other, but both have healthy fantasies!"

Sample 18



Mystic NumNum says: "Last but not least - A very bold statement. Determined, though a bit tired. Childish behaviour somtimes, but largely optimistic. Good levels of confidence here, very much here and now though. Conventional, clear thinking and caring. Very good margins too! Person is good with budgets!"

---

Over to you.... shall we say you've got until Sunday night to make your guesses?

Thanks to everyone for sending in their handwriting samples, and an extra special big thanks to the numnum for giving up his Sunday afternoon to pore over them and provide his often scarily accurate analysis.

---

Back to 2014....

If you're interested, then the answers and winners can be found here.  I think what I loved most about this post, apart from the collaboration and how everyone got involved, was the selection of lyrics on display.  I'm reminded, flicking through these comments, that I did one of these on bookshelves too, so I might dig that one out too.  Wasn't blogging fun all that time ago?

Oh, alright then:

1 - Bee
2 - Di
3 - Michael
4 - me
5 - Flash
6 - Jenni
7 - B1rdie Num Num (thanks again for the analysis too, mate!)
8 - Foxy (still love that choice of lyric)
9 - Rufus-fan (aka Sarah)
10 - Statue John
11- LB
12- Spinsterwitch (aka Kari)
13- Adem
14 - John the Ultimate Olympian
15 - Mark
16 - The Eye in the Sky
17 - Aravis
18 - Chig

Good game, everyone.  LB won, but mostly because he'd seen 5 sets of the handwriting before!  I'm still not sure why so many people had me down as the Streisand lyric, mind....

reminds me of childhood memories...

I know I'm talking about music a lot at the moment, but I'm afraid that one of the consequences of buying a record player has been that I am reconnecting with the whole experience of listening to music on an album-by-album rather than song-by-song basis.  Still, from your point of view, I suppose it at least makes a difference to me harping on about running or somesuch.

My record buying policy is generally to either buy albums that I don't actually own in any format - like Folsom Prison or Live at San Quentin by Johnny Cash - or to buy albums that I absolutely love but may already own.  At the weekend, I visited the Music Exchange in Nottingham and picked up a couple of the key texts from my youth, both in gloriously heavy 180g vinyl editions.

My only copy of "Appetite for Destruction" is actually a rather scratched CD.... so scratched, in fact, that the ripped copy in my iTunes library is missing "My Michelle".   I bought this album on cassette in 1988 and listened to almost nothing else for nearly a year, until the release of "Pump" by Aerosmith finally broke its tyrannical grip on my stereo.  I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that it's an absolutely blinding record, perhaps one of the best debuts ever released.  Forget the awful mess that was to follow, this is an almost perfect record that still sounds pulsatingly vital today.  My copy boasts that it is a "Premium Audiophile Pressing on Heavyweight 180g Vinyl in All Original Packaging!"  Well, given that it doesn't feature the cover above, this is a lie.... but it does come with the familiar black cross tattoo artwork, and the songs are the same, so....

It's a brilliant album.

You know how sometimes the strangest things can trigger surprisingly vivid and specific memories?  A few years back, I went to visit an old school, and the smell of the changing rooms unexpectedly took me back to being about 8 years old.  Listening to my other weekend vinyl purchase has much the same kind of effect, taking me back to the sixth form at school and listening to music, drinking coffee and eating Jaffa Cakes.  I actually discovered the Red Hot Chili Peppers through 1989s "Mother's Milk", but it was 1991s "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" that had me hooked.  They've done better albums since, but this is the album that reminds me of being 17 years old.  When I put it on and listened to it all the way through for the first time in years, I was slightly surprised to find that I was still word perfect on many of the tracks and found myself happily singing along:

I've got a mellowship, I've got a fellowship
I've got a nonstop "Yo swan" hello chip
Born to adore the big bad bison
Thunderstorm and a man like Tyson
Popcorn peanuts lookin' at big butts
No I cannot keep my mouth shut
Rockin' to the beat of the fabulous forum
My Lakers I adore 'em

[Mellowship Slinky in B major]

It's probably just as well that I'm on my own tonight, eh? The cat's disapproval of such things can surely be taken as read.

Another superb album that still sounds pretty fresh today (even if the band themselves don't sound quite the same since John Frusciante left).

Both BSSM and AFD played a massive part in my musical education and it feels great to listen to them again on vinyl with fresh ears.  If getting a record player has done nothing else for me, then it's been worth it just for that.

By way of contrast, my other purchase of the weekend was "Bish Bosch" by Scott Walker.  It's supposedly the third and final part of a trilogy of albums by Walker that also includes "Tilt" and "The Drift".  I haven't listened to it yet, but if it's anything like those other two albums, then it's not exactly going to be easy listening and may feature percussion on a slab of meat.

Well, it's good to mix it up a little from time to time, no?

Incidentally, whilst we're on the subject of discovering vinyl, what's with some records having a hole smaller than the spindle on the deck?  What's that all about?  That certainly never happens with MP3s, and it looks like I may be doomed to listen to side A of "Hatful of Hollow"over and over again for the rest of my life.  It could be worse, obviously, but there are so many other things I want to listen to as well....

the fallen angel watching you...

You know that feeling when you hear something that gives you a real jolt and you suddenly realise how old you are getting? Usually this happens to me when I’m foolish enough to make idle small talk with my colleagues at work. I’m terrible at small talk, but in the interests of filling a potentially awkward silence, I might innocently ask someone how their kids are doing:

“Oh, Leah is now fifteen…..”
At this point, my eyes will widen in horror as I realise that I can remember when this guy had the time off work for Leah’s birth. Which means that not only have a whole fifteen years passed, but they’ve passed with me working with a lot of the same people.

 Fifteen years!

This morning I heard that “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” is twenty-five years old this month. A quarter of a century! What?!  There's a good article about it on the Quietus here (cheers for the link, Mark)

When it was released in April 1988, I had just turned fourteen. Barely months before, I had bought myself a cassette copy of “The Number of the Beast”. This was a big deal. My music collection at the time either consisted of things that I’d taped off the chart show on radio one or a handful of cassettes. Actually, if I think about it, I reckon I could name them all in order of acquisition:

Kings of the Wild Frontier – Adam Ant
The Riddle – Nik Kershaw
Human Racing – Nik Kershaw
Scoundrel Days – a-ha
Silk and Steel – Five Star

I also had a share in a couple of seven inch singles: the first Band Aid “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and the Frog Chorus.

“The Number of the Beast” was the first time that I went out on my own and bought something entirely of my own choice and without any kind of influence from anyone. I hadn’t even heard any of their music – I just liked the cover – but it opened up a completely different door and set me off in a musical direction that has largely stuck with me ever since.

“Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” was the first Iron Maiden album to be released after this momentous purchase, and I quickly added it to my collection on cassette (CDs weren’t really a thing yet and I’ve never owned a record player). Thanks to the success of the single, “Can I Play with Madness” (and its accompanying promo video featuring Graham Chapman shortly before his death), I was also able to watch the band on Top of the Pops - still a thing in those days, if you can imagine that. I also started putting Iron Maiden posters on my wall, starting with the Seventh Son poster itself, but quickly branching out into Aces High, The Trooper, Somewhere in Time, Piece of Mind, Powerslave… sometimes before I even bought the albums themselves, although they followed soon enough.

I can remember being fourteen, and to be honest I wouldn’t go back there for any amount of money… but at the same time it seems incredible to think that it was twenty-five years ago. I’m so old. Although, not as old as the band themselves, of course, who are playing this album more or less in its entirety on their current “Maiden England” tour.

Twenty-five years. I doubt the fourteen year old me would recognise the 39 year old me if he passed me in the street, but I’d know him from his bad hair, bad skin and terrible glasses (I may have no hair now, but frankly that's an improvement.  I also don't wear glasses now and I've got better skin.  I'm even thinner, for goodness sake....). Poor kid. He doesn’t even realise that his whole life is still in front of him.

If I get the chance, I might even tell him that it’s okay to speak to girls.

It is okay to speak to girls, right?

I was beautiful then....

A helpful random person sent me an email out of the blue yesterday, pointing out that a link on a post of mine from my old site, written in 2004, had a broken link to the US constitution, and suggesting an alternative.  Given that the link he suggested was on an Identity Theft website, and because it's a 8 year old post and not a terribly important link in the context of the post, I haven't bothered to change it (remember when blog posts were full of links to other things?).  What I did do, though, was stop for a moment and read my post.

Have you ever done that thing where you stumble across a dissertation or something that you wrote when you were at University?  It looks so polished and alien that, although you know full well that you did write it, you can't believe that you actually did.

Yeah.  That.

Check me out:

"In the British Constitution, instead of the three branches of government being separate (legislature, executive and the judiciary), in Britain they are concentrated in Parliament. Parliament is sovereign and cannot be limited (in the way that, say, the US Congress can be limited by the Supreme Court). That's not the biggest difference though. Unlike the American Constitution, the British Constitution has never been written down. You cannot take it out of a library and have a look at it. In fact, you pretty much have to be a constitutional expert to have any real idea of what it is. This makes it an inherently flexible system, although its critics would say that never writing it down means that the citizens have no real idea what their rights are or when they are being violated".

Amazing right? It gets better:

"The roots of our parliamentary democracy can be traced all the way back into the middle ages and beyond. It has traditionally been believed that the primacy of parliament began when a succession of kings in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were deposed "by the authority of Parliament" ( a phrase actually used in the confirmation of the claim of Henry IV to the throne).... This view of the "Lancastrian constitutional experiment" is dented somewhat by the fact that Edward IV seized the throne from Henry VI in the traditional way - by battle - and Parliament had nothing to do with it. There is however a substantial body of evidence to suggest that people in the middle ages had a real sense of their historical past and a notion of constitution. This awareness only increased with the advent of the printing press, and is reflected in the popularity of the theories of kingship and law found in "mirrors of princes" manuals (like 'De Regime Principum' by Giles of Rome that had been translated into 10 languages by the end of the fourteenth century). This popularity shows that, amongst the political nation represented at parliament at least (we're not talking about the Monty Python peasant here), there was a notion of a consitution dealing with law, justice and property. Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI - the 3 deposed kings - aroused the anger of the political nation by breaching this notion of constitution to such an extent that parliament acquiesced to their deposition. It is this notion of constitution that still underpins the authority of the British Parliament today. It is the bedrock of the constitution".

Nowadays it's all whining about my job, exercise and half-arsed attempts at fiction.  When did I stop writing boring, barely-relavant stuff about medieval concepts of kingship?

They really don't make blogs like they used to.  Even when they're written by the same bloggers.  Twelve comments too.  What happened to comments?

born stubborn....

I'm watching Queens' College Cambridge on University Challenge and I'm thrown back nearly 20 years to a time when I was applying to various universities in the run up to my A-Levels.  I was encouraged to apply Oxford or Cambridge: my acceptance would apparently reflect well on the school and on my parents, and I was apparently considered bright enough to give it a go.

Although I hadn't yet fully developed the chip on my shoulder, it was at an advanced enough state to make me resistant to the idea.  I was probably vain enough to want to be accepted for the kudos that might bring, but somehow objected to the whole principle of the thing.  Why should I apply to them?  I knew that I wanted to read for a History degree, and I already knew that I probably wanted to do the course offered at the University of Warwick - itself a perfectly respectable establishment - where I would get to spend a term studying in Venice.  Why the hell should I apply to Oxbridge?  What made them so damn special?

My father told me at this point that he had a friend who was an Admissions Tutor at St Johns College, Cambridge, and that he would be more than happy to talk to me about the whole thing.  I agreed, but instead of seeing this as a great way of getting into Cambridge, I thought the whole thing was some elaborate attempt to tell me how clever everyone at Cambridge University was.   I left convinced that this guy, an old pal of my dad with no agenda other than to do his mate a favour, had tried to impress on me how all his students were veritable geniuses and published authors.  In fact, that's all I can remember about our conversation, and by the time I left, I was seething with rage.

In a somewhat pathetic attempt at rebellion - TAKE  THAT! -  I applied to Oxford instead.... not applying to either of them was clearly not an option for me, you'll notice....  I knew nothing about the Oxford colleges and applied blindly (you get a choice of three on the application form, and I choose one randomly and left the others blank to be selected for me).  I also refused to sit the (optional, but encouraged as it gives the University more to go on than predicted A-Level results and your performance at interview) 4th term examinations.  Who the hell did they think they were?  They either took me as they found me or they could bugger off.  I was determined not to go an inch out of my way for their satisfaction.  It was my way, or the high way.

Guess which they chose.

I was interviewed, but not surprisingly, nearly everybody else there had done the 4th term exams and had applied specifically for a college rather than putting in an open application.  I was doomed and the whole thing was a pretty miserable experience.

I'm pretty sure that I did the right thing in escaping from many of my public school peers and going to a rather less elitist University.  I'm also confident that the Modern European and Renaissance History degree I sat at Warwick was at least as good as the equivalents offered at both Oxford and Cambridge, and a lot more interesting to me.  The four months I spent in Venice alone probably made the whole thing worthwhile.  I don't regret my decisions at all.  I'm pretty happy with where I've ended up and it's a waste of energy to think about what never was.

...but looking at these students on the TV this evening, I can't help but think about the sheer, willful, bloody-minded idiocy of my 17 year-old self to REFUSE to apply to a college where an old friend of my father, one who had been kind enough to grant me an informal interview in his rooms at college, was in charge of admissions.

You think I'm bad now?  You should have met me when I was 17.  What a prat.

a room is still a room....

My wife informed me the other day that I would be on my own this weekend because she is going home. It's an odd turn of phrase, isn't it? We've lived together for something like eight years, and we've been in the same house together for a little over six of those years... and yet when she goes to visit her mum and dad in France, she says she's going home. She hasn't lived there for fifteen years or so, and it's not really the house that she grew up in, but it's still home; it was the place her parents were living when she moved out.

Home. I'm not really sure what that means. I was born in Northampton and my parents lived in the same house a few miles outside that town for something like thirty-four years before they moved last year. Does that mean I should consider Northampton my home town? Did I think of that old house as my home? Was I sorry when my parents moved down the road? Not really.

Someone once told me that they thought I had a Northampton accent. If that's true, then I have absolutely no idea how I picked it up. My dad is from Plymouth and my mum is from Essex and I was born in Northampton General for the simple reason that both my parents were working there and living just by the hospital. The worked in the hospital itself, actually. Neither has an accent of any description, as far as I can tell, and anyway, I don't even know what a Northampton accent sounds like. I hardly picked one up by osmosis from the locals either - I was sent away to boarding school when I was seven years old. Although I suppose I technically didn't leave home for another eighteen years, when I finally finished University, to all intents and purposes, from the age of seven, I was spending more than thirty weeks of every year living somewhere completely different: at school until I was eighteen, then as an undergraduate at University for three years, and finally as a postgraduate for another twelve months. In that time, home was probably still near Northampton with my parents, but you were far more likely to find me in, successively, Brackley, Rugby, Coventry, Leamington Spa, Venice or York*

Northampton has never felt like my home town, it was just where I was born. Even the house that I called home wasn't where I spent the majority of my time or near where my friends were; it was just where my parents lived and where I spent my holidays.

I moved to Nottingham on the day that Princess Diana died in 1997, and I've lived here ever since. That's more than a decade now, and certainly the longest I have ever solidly lived in one town in my whole life. Since January 2003, I've even lived in the same house (I can remember painting the skirting board of the dining room on the day that Hans Blix revealed to the world that he had not been able to find any Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq).

Does that make Nottingham home? I suppose the fact that my parents have moved out of the house I grew up in helps clear things up a bit, but is Nottingham now my home town?

Home. It's just a word, isn't it?

* One of the great advantages of buying a house has been finally being able to fill in a form without needing to try and remember about twelve different addresses: I've now lived in one place for long enough that I only need to remember a couple.

let's talk about it....

Unless you're one of those strange people who plans these things months in advance, if you are anything like me, then you're probably still on the lookout for Christmas presents for various people. I find the hardest ones to cover-off are often the smallest; that little token present for that person you're not planning on spending more than a tenner on. If you haven't been struck by a brilliant idea, then no doubt you've been browsing the tat tables in various shops in the desperate hope of receiving some inexpensive inspiration, even if that means getting somebody something that (barely) seems amusing at the time and after all the polite thank yous are done is quietly put away and never thought of again. Well, somebody must buy that stuff.....

I'm sure you've got your own ideas, but if you'll allow me to humbly make a suggestion.....

The Art of Conversation by Catherine Blyth.



"A guided tour of a neglected pleasure"

"Mixing philosophy with literature Catherine Blyth wittily encourages conversation. It seems we’ve forgotten how to talk. The art of face-to-face engagement has lost its allure as the world of facebook has seduced us. Catherine Blyth is on mission to convert us back to pleasures of good conversation in this charming, celebratory look at repartee. Wittily mixing up philosophy with literature, blending science with psychology, and with a nod to the great chatterers of history, she persuasively argues the case for banter and badinage - it’s free, its fun and it gets your brain cells firing like the prettiest of firework displays."

I can sense that you're on your way to buy yourself a copy or two as we speak, so perhaps I should declare a couple of things here:

1) I haven't actually finished this book yet. In fact, I'm on about the fourth page of the introduction (every page of which, to be fair, I have enjoyed hugely).

2) The author is an old friend of mine.

I first met Catherine when she had the great misfortune to be assigned to eat her meals in my boarding house back in the distant, sepia tinged days of 1990. It can't have been much fun being a girl at my school: joining a tightly knit bunch of institutionalised emotional cripples when they've already had three years to form deep bonds and who, even at the age of 17, have absolutely no frame of reference for dealing with the female of the species, having spent most of their lives in single-sex seclusion. Catherine must have been a conversational genius even then, as she somehow managed to pierce my outer shell of awkwardness and establish that we actually lived only a few miles from each other. We soon bonded over the number 33 Johnsons bus that we had both used to get into Northampton as kids, and we never looked back. I admired Catherine hugely for having the strength of character to walk her own path at school and not to be beaten into conformity like so many others, including me. Many people spent their school years trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible, but Catherine always seemed to remain true to herself, even when that made her stand out dangerously from the crowd.

Much to my regret, we lost touch for a few years some time after University, but thanks to the magic of the internet and her very trusting husband generously forwarding on a speculative email from a complete stranger, we have rekindled our friendship. And look! She's only gone and written a proper, honest-to-goodness book. She's been on breakfast telly and met Rolf Harris and everything! The reviews have been excellent, but if she manages to distill a mere half of her wit, insight and droll humour into the book, then how could people not love it? It's hard to explain, but it makes me proud as punch to know that a friend of mine has managed to get something like this out into the shops. I waste my time writing nonsense on the internet, and she's gone and written a proper, published book that you can buy in an actual shop.

So, if you're struggling for ideas for Christmas prezzies this year, why not give someone you love the gift of conversation? You can pick it up for less than a tenner on Amazon, and it's included in the Waterstones 3 for 2.

Bearing in mind that I'm the kind of person who will deliberately and obtusely provide one word answers to small talk in the coffee queue, perhaps this is EXACTLY the kind of book I should be reading.....perhaps I should be more inclined to think of it less as a light and entertaining read and more as a self-help manual.

Beware: I might want to talk about this again once I've read it, so you might as well give in now and go and buy several copies. I'm only going to go on about it until you do..... (and actually, as I've already bought six copies, you may well be getting it from me for Christmas anyway).

is this a vision or normality I see before my eyes?

I've got the post-Glastonbury blues.

It's that killer combination of bone-weariness and a general malaise that strikes me down for a few days after I get back from Somerset. Rubbish. Still, I'm slowly pulling myself out of the slump as my mind turns towards the treat that I've got in store on Saturday evening.



I'm off to meet up with Mark, Stef, Graham and a couple of other guys to watch the mighty, mighty Iron Maiden play Twickenham stadium on the only UK date on the "Somewhere Back on Tour". Unbelievably it's their first stadium show in this country.

Me and Iron Maiden go way back to 1987 when I first bought "The Number of the Beast" on cassette because I quite liked the front cover. It was probably the defining decision in the shaping of my music taste, and although my sonic palate has expanded somewhat since then, I've never been able to quite shake off an enduring addiction to screaming guitars.... and not many people do screaming guitars better than Maiden. I've seen them several times before, of course, but they are apparently playing something of a "golden era" greatest hits set, and I'm starting to get really, really excited about it.



Scream for me Twickenham!

Bring it on.....

come with me friday, don't say maybe....

Not two months after writing that last little cry from the heart, life changed a little bit for the 19 year-old me. Well, it didn't really change much at all, but it felt like it had: I had a bit of a kiss and a cuddle with a friend's younger sister when she came up to visit for the weekend. It wasn't quite famine to feast, but it was a start. She was only a couple of years younger than us, and she was pretty cool (a whole lot cooler than her brother anyway), but when you're nineteen years old, two years feels like an awfully big age-gap. We got on from the very beginning, mainly by forming an alliance against her brother who (once he had taken her down the pub to meet his mates) seemed determined to play the part of the surrogate father, and frowned at every drink she had and every cigarette that she smoked. We got on like a house on fire. After closing time, we all went back to another friend's place where we all ended up crashed out. As I remember it, the kissing all happened whilst we were zonked out on the same bed as her brother. As you can imagine, nothing much happened, and I'm fairly sure that the thought of doing anything else never even crossed my mind. To be honest, I probably couldn't believe my luck. When I woke up, I remember feeling nothing so much as really elated. I had no expectations of it going anywhere, but what had happened seemed like enough.

A couple of days later, I wrote down how I was feeling.... and here it is, fifteen years later in all its horrible, inarticulate clumsiness.

---
Tuesday 30th November 1993

c.12:00am

"On the day that your mentality tries to catch up with your biology"

Strange weekend, what do you make of it? Who can you tell here? No one. Drop hints like you want to - but that would be no use - especially living with someone like Roger and the perhaps dubious circumstances in which it took place. It raises the question though: am I living a lie? all this 'no experience' thing that dominates all my conversations and reaction against this last week shagging fest. Yes and no. Yes in that I haven't actually done it yet, but, well, let's just say I have finally had a first taste in a drunken fumble.

How do I feel? Well a little unsure of what actually happened and how she feels about it (if she can remember). What do I do when I next see her? Well, I know what I will do: either I will be all brash and confident, or all coy (depends on the situation).

Not exactly perfect, I suppose. In a way, it doesn't really matter. Nice now that it's happened. Just a harmless snog after all, but hey, can't even brag about it or face up to it like everyone else has to do.

On a physical level, full marks, I think. [I'm sorry about this, but this is actually what I've written here, and I'm not editing....] Wow - schwing - but did you take a child and make her old? [*cringe*. Step away from the Morrissey... he's done you enough damage already, I think] Don't think so and don't even say so... not as bad as perhaps it seems. Power trip? big bad student / man of the world [!!]. Well, she knew my history and perhaps that was kind of endearing. (He says).

I really feel like shouting it out, but although it doesn't feel sordid, in a way it does. Dirty old man takes advantage shocker. How the fuck would I tell HIM [meaning my friend and her elder brother] ? No way - anyone else and it would be all "nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Well-done-mate-better-late-than-never-it-means-nothing". But HER? Uh-oh. Different story altogether - perhaps she'll tell him, but perhaps not judging by the whole extra parent vibe and 'hoho mum, she was in a trolley" thang. Too heavy.

On the bright side though, that she really enjoyed it and wants to come back might tell me something. Maybe she knows!

Well, one for the record books anyway. I loosened up sufficiently for it to happen and that bodes well for the future - I mean, I'm getting on really well with Nicky and I didn't think that would ever really happen again after last year. God, what happened then? [answer: nothing much] At least I must have relaxed since then - something university has done for me!

Thought I'd write this all down for future reference - or perhaps for discovery! Unlike the last piece, less likely to show it to Leon though! Free love sex machine shocker!!

---

Behind that garbled outpouring, I can still detect some relief and some genuine optimism for the future.... It might not have been much in the grand scheme of things.... but I felt as though I had finally crossed a little mental rubicon. I'd proved something to myself. Perhaps I wasn't really a complete freak after all. I took a little more time and a lot of luck before I got any further than this, but one step at a time, eh?

Although, goodness me, I was still clearly very much in need of a slap and someone telling me to get over myself.

Her brother actually didn't find out about this little tryst until after we had both finished our finals, some 18 months later. It was a complete surprise to him, but he bluffed that he knew all about it... until he realised it was me that we were talking about and not someone else he knew called Tim.

Anyway.

I'm a whole lot wiser and articulate about these things nowadays. Obviously.

*cough*.

Let's hope there are no more manuscripts out there waiting to be discovered, eh? There's only so much of my teenage self quoting Morrissey that I can ask anyone to bear....

unpacking books from boxes...

Whilst sorting through some boxes of my stuff that were turfed out of the roof in my parents' house move, I found a couple of bits of writing from my late-teenage years. They're both about girls, and they're both a little bit embarrassing, but as a historian and as a shameless blogger, I'm going to put them both up here, one today and one tomorrow. Besides, I've had a couple of super-strength homemade mojitos now, so what the hell? Finding this stuff was a bit like opening a window straight back into my past. I certainly remember feeling like this, but I don't remember writing it all down.

Dear oh dear.

Anyway, here we go. Please forgive my teenage self.

---

Notes on Being Single. 10th October 1993. [which makes me 19 and just starting my second year at University, I think. Bear with me. I was a slow starter.]

Is it just me and Morrissey, or is that when you're single the whole world seems to be a couple who are both laughing at you? It doesn't matter if almost everyone I know is either totally single or in a massively disfunctional relationship, I am still the only really, irreversibly single person that I know. Let me explain. I seem to be incapable of making any kind of sexual manoeuvre aimed at anyone - I deeply believed at school that when the girls arrived in the sixth form and we treated either like crap or like sex-objects or both that it should be different. Call me a fool, but I felt that first what you did was to befriend somebody and then things would lead on from there. The first problem that I encountered was that once a friend, I didn't feel it was worth risking the friendship. It might just be a chronic fear of rejection, but I think I really have something that blocks off such actions. I've even got to the stage where I surprise friends by even passing a compliment about such and such a girl who just walked past - of course I know what is pretty, what is ugly and what is fat etc., but I find it very hard to apply to the vast mass of people who fall into the middle category. I simply become indifferent and non-judgmental (another glitch in an otherwise massively judgmental personality.)

What if someone makes a move on me or if I hear of an interested party? Well, obviously, after the initial flattery I'll become deeply scared and avoid confrontation entirely until that particular feeling has died away. What to do? Even worse, many people say that I'm of serious marriage possibilities. As one friend said, I'll marry the first girl who gives me a blow-job [ha! wrong!] Well thank you, but no. The thought of being perpetually single without a single experience at University is deeply worrying, but so too is the thought of instant puppy-dog devotion and marriage.

Is it this deep contradiction that throws me into depression and bad moods? Certainly at such times, I tend to lash out at people who may most likely be my friends and will feel disgusted when a close friend has pulled / been pulled and feel that the whole thing is temporary and sordid. Even now I'm still a bit revolted by the behaviour of my male friends of 19/20 who are in relationships of more than six months and appear to want them to end for no especially good reason - are they simply bored of the sex and the commitment that surely goes with it? Do they think that they will instantly find someone else who will gratify their urges and want very little in return? What time is right to feel secure? What ask me for advice as (a) I'm on the girl's side and (b) what experience have I got?

At the end of the day am I just wallowing in self-pity? Am I just a sad bastard who should get off my arse and do something about it? Well, easily said, but I'm sure that I'm not asexual and whether I'm a subconscious devotee of celibacy, I can't tell. I've now put down pretty much everything that has been praying on my mind - why can't I communicate normally with most women? Can it be only a result of experience at public school? Surely not. Well, I'm sure I'll be pissed off, rude and grumpy for a few more days at least, so I guess I'll make the most of it before you show me yours and you laugh at mine [oh, God...]! I guess I'd just like to be understood.

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So, there you go. Me as a 19 year-old in all of its unedited glory. What a strange, serious boy who has listened to far too much Morrissey and has some very strange ideas about girls and relationships..... so not much has really changed in the last 15 years then.

Dear oh dear. If only I could go back in time and give myself a good slap.

More tomorrow.

it was acceptable at the time.....

I had my annual phonecall yesterday evening from my old University. They wanted money, of course. In spite of being one of the richest educational institutions in the UK, they're not above trying to make me feel all nostalgic about my student days to tap me up for some money.

Having gone to a boarding school, it wasn't the first time I'd been away from home for any length of time, and so university was never really all that big a deal for me. As a result, I'm perhaps not as sentimental about my time there as I might be, and I'm not the kind of person who plans his life around the next reunion. Perhaps the university knows this. Their trick to get my attention is to get a current student on my old course to ring me up. They still want my money, of course, but they get to wrap it all up in a nice conversation about old times.

Although I have absolutely zero intention of giving any money, I always feel for the student in this situation. They are presumably doing this primarily because they need a job to help pay their way through University. They haven't volunteered to talk to old graduates out of the kindness of their hearts, they are doing it because they are paid to do it. I get no thrill at all from being rude to people at the best of times, and I'm certainly not about to get on my high horse about the begging policies of a stinking rich University to some poor kid trying to raise a bit of beer money. Instead, the student will enquire politely about my time at the University, and I'll politely respond.

The best part of my undergraduate course was the term that I got to spend studying the Renaissance out in Venice, and the student who called me last night was particularly interested in finding out about that: where I lived, whether I had to speak much Italian, how hard the coursework was... that kind of thing. We also talked about tutors (she has the same one that I used to have), how the union had changed (they're knocking it down to build a new one over the summer, apparently) and the merits of living in Leamington over living in Coventry. Small talk really, and in its own way it was perfectly pleasant. I made it clear right from the start that I wasn't going to be committing to a donation on the phone, and she didn't push it too hard. We got on fine.

The thing is though, every time I found myself being drawn out of my reluctance to talk in any depth about my time at University, I remembered that I was talking to a kid. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, it's just that she was in the second term of her first year. This means that she is probably little more than 18 years old and was likely born around 1989. I graduated from that University some 13 years ago, and in 1989 I was sitting my first GCSE. In other words, I'm nearly twice her age and I'm more or less old enough to be her father. She was politely interested in what I was saying, but to her, I must have seemed absolutely antique.

Bless her for trying, but my God it made me feel old.

I remember it well....

I sometimes wonder at my brain's capacity for storing information of patently little use. Yes, it's a talent that occasionally serves me well in pub quizzes and Trivial Pursuit, but in the main it's a total waste of time. I can't help but think that all that space in my head could be better used.

Here's an example: I went to they gym this evening to go for a swim. I parked my car and wandered into reception. I was planning to rent a towel, so instead of pushing straight on down to the changing rooms, I walked over to the reception desk. Just in front of me was a short-ish, chubby-ish guy. I didn't catch what he said, but I did hear the receptionist asking what his name was. He gave it, and the receptionist let him through the gates and into the main body of the gym. It was a slightly unusual name.

So far so unremarkable.

The thing is though, that hearing his name had made me stop dead in my tracks. The reason? I remembered him. I'd never met him before in my life, but I knew him.

Rewind to 1995. I am studying for a Masters degree in Medieval Studies and am living in a postgraduate hall on the edge of the main campus. As you might expect, the postgrads living in the hall were an interesting mix of nationalities... German, Portuguese, Rwandan, Canadian, Greek... all sorts. As chance would have it though, my next door neighbour was from Bolton studying archeology.

Are you paying attention at the back?

Will, my next door neighbour, had completed his undergraduate degree at Birmingham University, so when he saw that they were featured on the new series of University Challenge and that one of his mates was the team captain, he made sure we all made it to the TV room in time to watch it.

His mate was a bit of a character. He had long-ish, curly hair and although I can't remember if his team won or lost, I do remember that he had managed to get under Jeremy Paxman's skin... for all sorts of reasons, I'm sure, but the one I remember most clearly is that he stopped Paxman mid-question to wonder whether, in fact, he should be asking a starter for 10.

"This is a starter for 10!" brayed Paxman.

I don't know why that's been stuck in my head for the last 12 years, but it has.

The bloke who wound up Jeremy Paxman? It was the same bloke who was in front of me in the gym this evening. A bit older, a bit balder and a little fatter perhaps, but very much the same person. Besides, how many other people have such a distinctive name. I nearly tapped him on the shoulder to remark upon this. I wondered if it would make his day if I mentioned something that happened to him back in the day. Perhaps it would have done, but I hesitated and the moment passed.

Still, if he or any of his friends happen to do a spot of ego-surfing on Google at any point in the near future...... Aeneas Rotsos, I remember your TV appearance very clearly and I salute you!

Mind you, as he appears to work for the BBC, perhaps this is no big deal for him. Perhaps Paxman put in a word for him after he made such an impression? Who knows, eh? What I do know is that I'm sure that if didn't use my grey matter to store nuggets of information like this, then I might perhaps have been able to put my mind to something really difficult.

Cryptic crosswords, perhaps. It would have been really nice to be good at them......