This is just a memory of mine, but you can do with it as you like.
A long time ago, in a different world, it was the summer of 2000. And let's not beat around the bush; it was a different world back then. Not halcyon days viewed through 20-20 rose-tinted hindsight spectacles, by any manner, way, or fashion, but a different world, nonetheless.
My first year on the previous run around the merry-go-round that is the higher education system ended that summer. It was not a success. I was about to type that you couldn't even call it a qualified success, but I suppose you could, in that a 75% success ratio is technically a qualified success, i.e. that a pass rate of 3/4 ain't bad, I guess.
I'd made a lot of acquaintances, and a few friends, and learned a lot about a lot.
And so, on a seemingly warm summers' night in my memory, I ended up joining two of these acquaintances - two rich kids who either mistakenly thought I was one of them or mistakenly thought I fitted in around them, but they were amiable enough, so why worry - in one of their brothers' cars, a white open-top four-by-four mini-style jeep. It was, by his own admission - and take what you will from the class signifiers here - a hairdressers' car.
We lived out in East London, then, on the borders of Epping Forest in three tower blocks, and cars were few and far between because of, I guess, a combination of a lack of parking spaces, a lack of money, and the fact that driving in London is basically assisted suicide. (All right, that's a bit strong. But I didn't drive back then, so being a passenger was basically the coolest thing ever.)
It was warm enough to drive around with the top down, so we did, stopping at an Asda - if memory serves, which it rarely does these days, but still - for stuff along the way.
I had a disposable camera, and I still have the scanned photos knocking around, and it's fun to look back and see the Canary Wharf area still being built, and East London back in the day.
But looking back it reminds me of just how much of a townie I was. Not as a bad thing, but I went to university in London because of the attraction of the city, not necessarily because of the attraction of the university. Guy Ritchie also probably had something to do with it, but let's skip over that, because it's embarrassing.
Se we were driving - or, more accurately, being driven, in my case - around London on a warm summer evening, and, because the driver was a show-off, he took us right through the centre of London, by Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, then down to Piccadilly Circus. At the time, I thought the video wall there was the ne plus ultra of cool, because shiny lights and video have always had that effect on me.
My love affair with London lasted about a year, really, if we're being honest. Then the scales were slowly lifted from my eyes, via a process of slowly but surely walking downwards into my own kind of hell, then walking back upwards and out, a different (and, to be honest, fatter) person at the end of it.
But those summer nights at the halls bar, topped off by this aimless derive through the city I was coming to call home at the time, do have that halcyon ring to them at the moment. If I went back and analysed them thoroughly, it would come down to struggling with money, struggling with anxiety, struggling with coursework, and struggling with relationships.
Those warm nights were nice, though.
It's coming up on winter, here, and the forecast is if not for snow then for sheer bastard cold over the next few days. At the moment, though, I seem to be w-a-y too easily ensnared in what Gillen calls a Memory Kingdom, which, as he rightfully says, is a very dangerous place.
The thing is...
It's difficult to say and easy to say all in one, at the moment. The thing is that life is different and the same, at the moment, because thanks to a tanfastic combination of things, I'm basically going through exactly the same combination of elements now as I was then.
Like, literally. It's really odd. I know things supposedly go around and around in cycles, but this is just freaking me out that little bit.
You'd think that if this was the case that I'm going into it with a heightened degree of personal evolution and experience that give me the advantage, and I'm hear to tell you that they don't mean dick, son. Because all the experience and evolution in the world apparently don't help with the combination of money, anxiety, coursework and relationship problems.
Shovelhandle Me, , we're suffering from a lack of levity here, aren't we? Let's have a picture of Kisuke Urahara.
Doesn't that make most things better?
Here's the best way to look at it; in the grand scheme of things, my problems are trivial. Hell, in the grand scheme of things, my problems probably don't even count as problems. They are, instead, Things To Experience, Grow And Benefit From.
And if my memory keeps tagging me back to the 1999-2003 period, well, maybe it just needs a slap. But living in the moment is hard...
No comments:
Post a Comment