Dry musings

You will have to excuse me over the next few posts as I try to find my feet once again. These past two weeks, in fact these past four months, have left me a little shaken. So I’ll start with last night:

Last night I went down to Essex for the Christmas party, which was pretty good as usual, for some reason they always throw a great Christmas event. I crashed on the floor of a friend of a friend in the towers. Wow. I so wish I had been able to get into those. It’s strange how the direction of your life can rest on administrative lotteries. I ended up in the Quays during my first year, despite marking it down as my least but one choice, and my life really has sort of stemmed right from there. The (admittedly amazing) people I met there and the things we did together have shaped my life entirely. But that first year was also extremely difficult for a number of reasons, not least was its sheer isolation from the rest of the campus. It is surprising what difference a twenty-minute walk over a soul destroying architectural barrier can do to a mans spirits.

If I could go back – roll the dice once more – I would hope to get put in the towers. I know people who had excellent experiences and others who had a pretty miserable time in them, but either way I would have fancied my chances more there then anywhere else. But alas. It was not to be.

Being there really made me want to go back and do it all over again, and strangely, to do it at Essex again. It might not be academically renowned but it is easy to overlook just how communal the campus is and the possibilities this gives arise to. It came as a bit of a shock to see the Essex girls in action again too, people always said it but I never really thought they were much different to anywhere else… I was wrong. Perhaps I’m getting old but a lot of those girls must have been very cold last night.

I also got to witness some great drunken political discussions, I opted to stay out since they are never a great way to make friends – plus there was an American involved. However I like the exchange programs that bring American folk to our shores. In this flat there were no fewer than four of them leaving and it was both heartening and sad to see them say their goodbyes. Two years ago to the day I was doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same party, and it’s not an easy thing to do.

If there was no such thing as life, if the capitalist system did not bind us to a slave like existence of production and consumption and if there was not a social stigma on students and their tax dodging habits and if there was no such thing as parents who take great interest in ensuring you settle down into the life sapping, monotonous death cycle of adult life - I would reenrol in a heart beat. Universities are amazing places that seem to tap and funnel the creative energies of youth. Given that I am desperate to go through the whole process for a second time it continues to astonish me that many people I know have not decided to go. I simply do not understand it for a second. Excuses like “I can’t afford it” or “I don’t enjoy study” or “I don’t want to move away from home” are, unless in exceptional circumstances utterly miserable things to say. Believe it or not anyone can go and if you do more than just read the headlines you would know that Blair, far from making it more difficult, has abolished up front tuition fees. This means any unimaginative, working class, binge drinking, football shirt wearing, maggot can attend university for three years then return to their minimum wage job without ever paying a penny. You only live once and surely you will want to have at least tried to see what university can offer, no? If not then you need to ask yourself the question- “Am I really that boring?”.

Sure it’s not the ‘be all and end all’ and after three years you will immediately feel it was all a bit of an anti-climax. But with time you will come to realise that never did you have so much opportunity as when you did back then. I remember this old British feller in the bar in Vancouver over the summer. Like every drunken old guy everywhere in the world he kept telling us all his stories of lost loves and past glories and how we needed to simply ‘make the most of it’ because we would miss it once its gone. So if we assume regret is a universal constant in human life, this surely means all we can control are the stories we have to tell.

Fortunately I am only twenty-two. And that’s far from to old to have another go at this life business - right?

p.s. My Dad has just gone off to a Christmas party wearing a musical tie.