too. They needn’t have worried. I wasn’t going to get lost along the way. My destiny had been decreed.
I spent my seven years of secondary school hanging out by vending machines, rustling Monster Munch, gobbling Tootie Fruities, scouting for girls, and playing concrete football. While the kids at the pricey boys’ school in town were building jet planes and learning first aid on top of Mount Snowdon, I was contorting myself into impossible positions to cop a feel of Emily Morris’s boobs in Media Studies as she leaned forward, obligingly, so that I could learn the alien dimensions of her bra beneath the graffiti-scarred desk. Walking across the classroom, I’d shove my hands into the dry-tissue recesses of my pockets to disguise the throbbing bulge of my curiosity. At that age you never know when it might rear its grubby head. You have to be on constant red alert: marching into assembly in front of the entire year; in the sick room desperately pleading with the nurse (“No, I can’t possibly go on”); in the swimming-pool changing rooms … oh god, please not in the changing rooms. Cocked, loaded, and ready to spit; but out of your hands … until you get home (a Ginsters pasty and strawberry milk shake from the garage along the way), approximately 4 p.m.
I enjoyed school. As my personal statement would have it: got stuck in with sports and a bit of music; got high grades; popular with my peers; liked by the teachers. “What a tosser,” many might say. But then my school comprised perennial non-achievers: cigarette-butt-gobbing-unbuttoned-earring-jokesters. My best mate from home, Rob, could be said to belong squarely (or roundly, butwhat’s the difference?) in this category. We were opposites: I could barely muster three kick-ups; he was the captain of the football team … that kind of thing. I liked Charles Dickens; he liked Pro Evo. I was a virgin; he shagged Janice Nutsford in Year 9. I got A grades; he failed General Studies. Yet we were inseparable, doing laps of the schoolyard at lunch, an established tag-team, talking about girls and planning legendary nights out. During the occasional break times when he’d go off to do mysterious things in the Design and Technology block, working on a project or some extracurricular (I never asked and didn’t listen when he talked about it), I was utterly lost. I missed him. Sure he ribbed me relentlessly about my academic interests (though I did a pretty good job of hiding those, my mates being genuinely shocked when I bagged all the A*s) but I didn’t care. I was off, secretly chasing bigger and better things.
And here I am just a few years on. I take a couple of swills from my pint and wonder how many times all the drink I’ve consumed at uni would fill the King’s Arms.
“Mate, it’s gonna be an emotional one, innit?” I say to Jack. We’re hovering in the middle ground between the bar and our table.
“Less of that! I want to get appalling tonight!” says Jack—his usual boast—carefully stroking his quiff with the butt of his hand.
Sanjay fights his way over. His bushy black monobrow looks like a large caterpillar undulating across his forehead, his expression wavering between a frown and a smile. “Ah man, Megan looks
well
fit.”
“Oi, less of that,” we cry in unison.
“What? Ah, I guess.”
The atmosphere is both somber and celebratory. The ignorant bliss of university life is coming to an end, but we still have a big one lined up. It’s been a blow-by experience and I can’t quite grasp what (if anything) has changed about me just yet.
“What time is it?” asks Scott, also strolling over, pint in hand.
“Eight thirty,” I say, checking the watch that Lucy gave me for our one-year anniversary. I’d say “eight firty” and elongate the vowels to death if I was with my old schoolmates back in Wellingborough. But I’m not. I’m in Oxford. So I say “eight thirty,” crisp and clean. You should see me at home though.
I spent my seven years of secondary school hanging out by vending machines, rustling Monster Munch, gobbling Tootie Fruities, scouting for girls, and playing concrete football. While the kids at the pricey boys’ school in town were building jet planes and learning first aid on top of Mount Snowdon, I was contorting myself into impossible positions to cop a feel of Emily Morris’s boobs in Media Studies as she leaned forward, obligingly, so that I could learn the alien dimensions of her bra beneath the graffiti-scarred desk. Walking across the classroom, I’d shove my hands into the dry-tissue recesses of my pockets to disguise the throbbing bulge of my curiosity. At that age you never know when it might rear its grubby head. You have to be on constant red alert: marching into assembly in front of the entire year; in the sick room desperately pleading with the nurse (“No, I can’t possibly go on”); in the swimming-pool changing rooms … oh god, please not in the changing rooms. Cocked, loaded, and ready to spit; but out of your hands … until you get home (a Ginsters pasty and strawberry milk shake from the garage along the way), approximately 4 p.m.
I enjoyed school. As my personal statement would have it: got stuck in with sports and a bit of music; got high grades; popular with my peers; liked by the teachers. “What a tosser,” many might say. But then my school comprised perennial non-achievers: cigarette-butt-gobbing-unbuttoned-earring-jokesters. My best mate from home, Rob, could be said to belong squarely (or roundly, butwhat’s the difference?) in this category. We were opposites: I could barely muster three kick-ups; he was the captain of the football team … that kind of thing. I liked Charles Dickens; he liked Pro Evo. I was a virgin; he shagged Janice Nutsford in Year 9. I got A grades; he failed General Studies. Yet we were inseparable, doing laps of the schoolyard at lunch, an established tag-team, talking about girls and planning legendary nights out. During the occasional break times when he’d go off to do mysterious things in the Design and Technology block, working on a project or some extracurricular (I never asked and didn’t listen when he talked about it), I was utterly lost. I missed him. Sure he ribbed me relentlessly about my academic interests (though I did a pretty good job of hiding those, my mates being genuinely shocked when I bagged all the A*s) but I didn’t care. I was off, secretly chasing bigger and better things.
And here I am just a few years on. I take a couple of swills from my pint and wonder how many times all the drink I’ve consumed at uni would fill the King’s Arms.
“Mate, it’s gonna be an emotional one, innit?” I say to Jack. We’re hovering in the middle ground between the bar and our table.
“Less of that! I want to get appalling tonight!” says Jack—his usual boast—carefully stroking his quiff with the butt of his hand.
Sanjay fights his way over. His bushy black monobrow looks like a large caterpillar undulating across his forehead, his expression wavering between a frown and a smile. “Ah man, Megan looks
well
fit.”
“Oi, less of that,” we cry in unison.
“What? Ah, I guess.”
The atmosphere is both somber and celebratory. The ignorant bliss of university life is coming to an end, but we still have a big one lined up. It’s been a blow-by experience and I can’t quite grasp what (if anything) has changed about me just yet.
“What time is it?” asks Scott, also strolling over, pint in hand.
“Eight thirty,” I say, checking the watch that Lucy gave me for our one-year anniversary. I’d say “eight firty” and elongate the vowels to death if I was with my old schoolmates back in Wellingborough. But I’m not. I’m in Oxford. So I say “eight thirty,” crisp and clean. You should see me at home though.
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