Communication Lost

Saturday November 27 1982

Everything here has gone slightly insane. Sharon is threatening to move out of the house into one of the blocks, because she's had enough of A (her room mate) bringing creepy blokes back and having it off with them in the bed six feet away from her. It's hard not to agree that she has a point. A doesn't exactly look much of a temptress with her little pug face and rat-tail perm (not to mention her line in nylon babydoll nighties), but she seems irresistible to a certain type of boy - the type with a bumfluff moustache who wears one of those ties with piano keys on it, judging by the one I surprised on the landing last night. It must be so embarrassing for poor Sharon, but A doesn't seem bothered in the least. She's a bit rough round the edges really.

Meanwhile, Little C has had some sort of emotional breakdown and withdrawn into her bedroom, only coming out for immediate bodily functions and hot water bottles. It's Day Four now and nobody's actually had sight of her, we just hear her creeping round like a ghost. I tried getting her to come out the night before last but just got some single-word grunts through the door, none of which sounded friendly. I suppose she'll surface when she's ready, and there's music coming from her room (endless replays of Carole King's 'Tapestry' from what I can make out, how drippy) so at least we know she hasn't hung herself. Vegetarians are very sensitive types.

Debs Barraclough has pissed off all the girls downstairs because she won't leave her bike outside and keeps bringing it into the hallway, where they've all fallen over it in the dark at least once. She calls the bloody thing 'Sebastian' and talks to it like it's a pet. And she's got a boyfriend! He's one of the Indian medics called Viraf, very polite and quiet, and he looks like Jack Sprat alongside her. I've got a feeling they might have 'done it', which is hard to imagine. I'd have expected her to stay a virgin forever.

Speaking of which, I'm up writing this at 6.30 on a Saturday morning not because I'm so keen to document my fascinating life, but because I was woken up half an hour ago by the charming sounds of R having it off very loudly in the room below me with K (Jo's room mate. I assume Jo is staying with her boyfriend at Beaumont Hall.). She's a top-volume groaner and he's a panter/puffer, you might like to know. And he shouted 'oh god' at the end. What a surprise. They got off with each other at the JCR Bar Games last night - a horrific night out that showed up student life at its worst. Pint-drinking contests (halves for the girls!  Pathetic), leg-wrestling, a Chunder Race*, and them something stupid where you got put in pairs and had to do press-ups with your partner lying underneath you. I wasn't getting involved in any of it, but R and all the sports boys were loving it as were Charlotte (naturally) and K, who ended up lying under R. I suppose it was bound to happen after that, who could resist such seduction? They waltzed off together and Charlotte came up to me and made a point of asking if I'd seen them. What a bitch she is, not that I'm actually bothered. Though I bet that's the end of my chats with R**. Ah well. K's his type, and I'm not. And he's not mine. But he was nice to talk to.

I've still heard nothing from M though he must have got my letter on Tuesday or Wednesday. I thought he might have phoned me but I was obviously right in the first place and he doesn't care. I'm just going to get on with my work and concentrate on that. I'm fed up of trying to socialise with these kids and pretending it's fun. They're all either mad or immature. I'm hungry.

*Footnote from 2012 - Chunder Race. A selection of the most socially inadequate boys lined up to devour, at top speed, a selection of particularly discordant foodstuffs such as a tin of pilchards, cup of marmalade, large cube of lard, Mars bar coated in Marmite, pickled egg dipped in Angel Delight, etc. They were then spun round rapidly several times and made to run round a circuit. The one who did it in the shortest time and without chundering into the bin placed in the centre of the circuit was the winner. The food was provided by the Hall of Residence. We were all on grants and only paid thirty quid a week for accommodation and three hot meals a day. No wonder people hated bloody students. 

**It was. Though we made contact via Friends Reunited a few years ago. He'd just moved back to Basingstoke after several years of living in Berlin working for a multinational. Still conflicted about whether or not he'd sold out his roots. 


Saturday November 27 1982 ( about two hours later)

I'm going mad now, madder than anyone else in this stupid place. I got up, washed my hair (ran into R coming out of the bathroom, he looked embarrassed ha ha) and went over to breakfast early. There was a lot of post in my pigeonhole. Among them a letter from M, and a letter from JA. The only thing I could think of was they had both agreed to write to me at the same time, to tell me they're seeing each other. I don't know why I opened hers first. Trying to put off reading his version, I suppose. But what she said was that she'd gone to the R club on Tuesday night, and M was there. "M asked if you'd come home at the weekend and I said I didn't think so as you hadn't rung me, but then you're not very good at ringing people as we all know. He told me there had been some sort of misunderstanding between him and you (have you met someone else? Is it the sports hero? Do tell!) but he said he was going to write to you and sort it out. He seemed very confident that he could explain it all and get you to reconsider, I must say." And then two pages of the usual gossip and nonsense.

So I opened M's letter. Four pages in which he poured out his heart and practically begged me not to finish with him. I've never seen anything like this written by a boy ("that weekend with you was the best in living memory... I wouldn't have cared if you said you didn't want to go up West, I'd rather play records in  your room and talk to you than ever go to the Wag club again..." My God.).  He'd been expecting me to phone him (which I'd definitely never said I'd do - it's too embarrassing if his Mum answers), and when I didn't (because I was waiting for him to phone me like he'd bloody said he would), he assumed I'd cooled off. Apparently he spent the evening with Bob sitting in the garage with the guitars, Bob trying to persuade him to pick up the phone. Now he can see he was being stubborn and proud, he reckons. Yes he was, or he's a liar. He even put lyrics from that song* at the end "to remind you of what we've had and to ask you not to throw it away over a misunderstanding." I've got his letter and JA's letter here on my desk and I keep looking from one to the other. I hate what she said about him feeling so "very confident" that he could get me back by writing. If I fall for what he's said in the letter, he'll think he's got me on a string.

I'm going out for a walk.

©Kolley Kibber 2012. Mine, all mine.

The Siren and the Ecstacy

MONDAY NOVEMBER 22 1982 Well, that's that. The 'Dear M' letter lies signed and sealed on my desk next to this notebook, and in a minute I will run down to the post box on the corner and send it - and him - on their respective merry ways. And he's brought it all on himself, he absolutely has. I don't feel one bit guilty and I know I'm right to do this.

 My birthday was difficult, as I knew it would be - the first one without Dad, and not even able to hold a phone conversation with Mum as she keeps bursting into tears every time I ring her, so no comfort for me there. People here were very sweet, though - some of them people I would never have expected to take the trouble. I felt really guilty when Silly Soppy Sarah and Weird Kez (the one who smokes a pipe) hunted me down in the library to give me a card - I have been a bit mean about Sarah with her Lady Di blouses and ping-pong ball eyes, plus she's a Tory so we've clashed in some of the seminars, though at least this goes to show it doesn't have to get personal. M did send a nice card that was full of how he 'couldn't wait' to see me at the weekend, and of course I rang him in the evening and he sang Happy Birthday to me, which actually made me start crying which I know confused him but it doesn't justify his behaviour afterwards, in fact it makes it all worse. We agreed on the phone that I'd see my family for a birthday meal on Friday, and then we'd spend Saturday and Saturday night together and do something special, so I was quite bright when I got off the phone to him and headed down to the JCR with the girls from the house.

It was an odd evening, not least as people kept buying me rum and pineapples (not Robin, who is pathetically ignoring me) so I got quite drunk quite quickly, and so did Sharon, so much so that she finally got up the nerve to fling herself at the little Welsh dwarf she's been mooning over for weeks (he's about four feet tall! A typical Beer Boy in my view, getting togged up in a white shirt and ball-strangling pale jeans for his nights out and thinking that constitutes "making an effort", but Sharon really goes for that type, god knows why.). Anyway, she ended up in a really heavy conversation with him about relationships, and he told her that he doesn't really want one, what he likes doing is going to "discos" (he's Welsh!) and having one-night stands with "bad girls" (he really is WELSH!). She ended up getting really upset so I took her outside and we sat under a tree, and ended up in another heavy conversation about the stars and eternity and the fact that this Welsh bloke and actually all of us will be dead in a hundred years (though the same stars will still be there) so actually it didn't really matter that he didn't want to go out with her. It seemed to make her feel better, anyway. She is quite an intense girl, and very mixed up about men and sex. Hark at me, though - the expert.

Anyway, it ended up with people back in my room, then most of them went, then it was just me and R. We talked for ages again, this time about our backgrounds (his Dad's a gas fitter and he's like me, the only one of his family to have ever gone to University.). He said he feels like it will all put a rift between him and his family and old friends, and how he feels he doesn't really fit in here either as there are so many posh people (we really slagged off the public school Longcoats who hog the top table at dinner, especially their disgusting conversation topic that night*) but he can't go back to Basingstoke. I do know what he means, actually - when I look forward I still see London, but not a return to Crapville. He's quite deep underneath all the football stuff. Anyway, it was 2.30 when I went to bed and I woke up with a headache. Charlotte was in the kitchen when I went downstairs, and made some stupid remark about not having heard R leaving last night and was he still upstairs, in one of her silly little voices. I can't bear her. I couldn't wait to get on the London coach on Friday morning (I bunked off Politics and Ideas.).

My birthday dinner with the family was fine I suppose, and I was glad at the time that I hadn't invited M along to be interrogated by my sisters, or have John making stupid jokes about eating pork. Though of course I can be sure now that he wouldn't have come anyway, because he's obviously decided I'm not that important after all, as he never phoned me like he'd promised. The phone just never rang. I waited in until 6pm on the Saturday, biting poor Mum's head off all afternoon, and then I went out with L. It was an awful night and I'm sure I was terrible company, but she was ok about it - some bloke took her number in this pub we went to in Hampstead, so she was happy enough. I was rude to his friend though. I got the coach back yesterday and rang C over at Concrete University in the evening to ask her what she thought I should do, and she said I should ring M as he might have been in an accident, but I wasn't going to do any such thing so she started singing "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", which I didn't find funny.

Anyway, that's it, it's over. I don't understand when or why he stopped caring but he obviously did and if I find out JA has had anything to do with this I will kill her. Though she's welcome to him. I don't mean any of that. This is awful.

*A top-volume account, by the Head Longcoat, of how he had 'bummed' his girlfriend the previous night, with every last muscular spasm vividly and biologically described.  Delivered in fearless, cut-glass Home Counties bawl. Ghastly.


©Kolley Kibber 2012. You can look, but don't touch. 

The Whirlpool of Warning

Thursday November 11 1982. 

We've got the first performance of the play tomorrow so I've been really busy with that, and my essay on the Attlee government (I really need to get a good mark for this one, given all the extra time B**** has given me - a whole hour's extra tutorial, it was great - he's brilliant.). Last night's rehearsal was cancelled because Jane was waiting for the result of the ENTS election - Steve F* was running, but he lost. I think he's a bit of a wanker anyway so wasn't bothered.

So after dinner I went over to R's room again and we did a couple of read-throughs, though we mainly ended up talking about other things (like his ex-girlfriend, who chucked him over the summer holiday a week before they were due to go camping in St Tropez.). At first he pretended he'd been relieved because he hadn't really wanted to go to St Tropez - too full of poseurs, he said - but then he admitted that she'd destroyed him and of course she was - is - the subject of most of the poems he writes. He got out one or two more that had a lot of stuff in them about knives and hearts (better than the insane poems Colin used to write about having dinner with his pet rat because he'd been stood up, but still a bit baffling, really.). Anyway I was there until 1.30 and for some reason he shook my hand and pecked me on the cheek as I was going, which was a bit strange! Of course the next morning at breakfast all the wankers on his corridor were acting like apes, giving us both a round of applause when we arrived (separately) and going on and on about how we didn't have to pretend we hadn't spent the night together. One of them who thinks he's a particularly fine wag made some comment about "method acting", so I had to remind him that as R's actually playing my father in the play and I'm supposed to be a lesbian in it anyway, he was talking crap. These boys are idiots.

Sunday November 14 1982
Well, we didn't win the play competition, but it was hilarious and a real laugh. I'm so glad I did it. The first performance in the JCR was hardest as the whole of Hall was there, meaning all the stupid boys, so there was loads of catcalling and general overexcitement when C and I had to kiss each other (which never got any easer, to be honest - I can't stand her.). There was also some predictable muttering and hissing when I had to deliver the line "Oh, it's all just 'the North', isn't it?", so I imagine Julian was skulking round the back somewhere, obviously unable to understand that it's only a play and I was ACTING. It was much easier last night, in the actual theatre on a proper stage with lights so you couldn't see the audience, and we got a lot of good laughs and applause but not enough to win. We all went to the bar afterwards, all in a really good mood, but unfortunately Robin got very drunk and started grabbing my thigh, which was embarrassing - I asked him politely to stop and he wouldn't - he said he was "out of control" - so in the end I told him to fuck off, which I hadn't wanted to do, and then he got really angry and said I was a "callous bitch", and stormed off. R went to look for him after a while and eventually found him running round and round the track at the sports hall, in a right state. R took him back to his room and put him to bed, but it put a bit of a damper on the evening. I'm angry with Robin for being so stupid. I hope it hasn't made people think worse of me, as I never gave him any indication I was interested in him like that. I hope R doesn't think it was my fault. It's not that I'm interested in HIM like that either, but he's really nice.

Tuesday November 16 1982.
I'm lying on my bed in my green bathrobe. The record player's on, it's "Big Sleep" from New Gold Dream and I've just been reading (again) the letter I got from M this morning, which is very sweet..."I went to phone you on Saturday night, but then realised you'd be out receiving your thespian acclaim" - that made me laugh. I've been down to the JCR and had a couple of vodka and limes, then we nicked some bread and came back here for peanut butter on toast. I also did some washing. The record's just ending so I'm going to turn it over, and by the time the other side's finished I shall no longer be a teenager. I shall have attained the ripe old age of twenty, and shall consequently have one foot in the grave. I am recording all this minutely boring detail so that I can remember what I was doing in my last teenage moments. Ok. It's 11.47pm. I'm going to turn the record over, stick on my headphones, and be damned. If I don't die of old age overnight, I shall face my twenties in the morning. And I SHALL age gracefully!

*He's an editor on the Financial Times now, so it did him no lasting harm...


©Kolley Kibber 2012. All memories and depictions thereof my own. Geddit??

I'm back...

...and straight into a dose of norovirus. Normal service will be....oh excuse me a moment....

Intermission

I've come away somewhere remote to celebrate/avoid my 50th birthday at the weekend. The good news is, we got an upgrade to a swanky villa; the bad news is, the Internet connection there is down. I can only log in while back at the main site over breakfast, as I'm doing now. This means that despite all my good intentions to finish the tale while I'm away (I even brought the source material with me, folks!), I won't now be able to do it until I'm back in a week or so. Bear with me, as they say everywhere these days when they're being a bit inept.

Have fun in the meantime, everyone. I'll be doing my elderly and decrepit best.

Slipping Back on Golden Times...

Monday November 8 1982. 

I'm supposed to be writing an essay on Marxist Theories of History, but I need a break from Dialectical Materialism as it's giving me a headache. Fortunately my broken bedroom window - smashed during the party by a stupid grob* who decided he needed to open it in a hurry so he could be sick, so put his head through it - has been mended so I just had the one night of sleeping in a freezing wind tunnel. I tried so hard to find out which grob it actually was, but they all stuck together in silence and wouldn't tell me. Wankers. 

I suppose it was a typical student party, not that I had anything to compare it with. C came over from Concrete University, and L came up from London (L told me JA had asked why she hadn't been invited and she'd made up some story about lack of beds, ha ha. I'm sure she found something else to do, and as long as it didn't involve M I don't care what it was.) so I had a couple of good friends on hand, and as I was holding the drinks kitty along with little C from downstairs, we all trooped down to Woolco on the Saturday morning to buy the stuff. No wonder the locals here hate students - little families all doing their weekly shopping, while the four of us held up the queue with a trolley loaded with booze and crisps, and then counted out a hundred and ten quid in cash (£110!!) to pay for it. They'd have hated us even more if they knew that 'the organisers'  (me and little C) were keeping back a bottle of Malibu as our reward for doing all the organising. 

We all got dressed up far too early. I put a few colours in my hair and Debs got upset over the length of my leather skirt - she couldn't believe I used to get on the bus in it to go out for the night. She knows nothing. Sharon looked fantastic as a Playboy Bunny**and K looked a bit fat as a Pierrot but at least most people made an effort. Jo went as Paddington Bear and still managed to look quite pretty and cute. As we were ready and waiting, little C and I opened the Malibu and made a start on it (she copped out a bit with her outfit, just wore Pink.). Skinny Paul was the first boy to arrive, all in white so I asked him if he'd come as a Pipecleaner, when apparently they were surgical theatre clothes and he was supposed to be a Physician. Apparently he was offended by that!! Andy C came as a Priest, and then Robin arrived at the door in his normal clothes but with his mouth full of milk, which he then spat all over the floor and said he'd come as Premature Ejaculation. We weren't sure whether or not to let him in but then little C keeled over backwards from the Malibu and started vomiting. We had to drag her by her feet into her room, and prop her up with pillows while she was sick, then we had to leave her to get back to the door but most people had just come in anyway by then. The house was overrun and the punch vanished in about ten minutes. I made sure there was some decent music on, but of course that didn't last long once Charlotte the Harlot*** got her hands on the tape deck. Blondie, Blondie and more Blondie. How boring.

Things got worse. L had finished off the Malibu, and decided she didn't feel well and needed a bath (trust her...). So she went off and had one, which therefore meant one of the bathroom loos was out of use as well, so disgusting boys started pissing in some of the sinks (mine being one, from the smell in my room.). When L had had her bath, she apparently opened the window wearing just a towel, and a grob that was leaning out of a window opposite spotted her, climbed out, and started clambering across the pitched roof to get her. She had to slam the window and get most of her clothes on in seconds. While all this was happening Robin was giving me a lecture on how I'd only ever have half the real University experience because of having a boyfriend at home. He got really mouthy and accused me of being a coward and just playing at being a student, which made me really angry and then really upset. I ended up hiding in Debs' room with Jane, who was crying because she and Paul had had a row. I was sick in K's bin, although Jane told me I did it very elegantly. Next thing Paul appeared, she burst into fresh tears, he scooped her off the bed and carried her out. What a pair of poseurs. I fell asleep there and woke up feeling terrible with poor K clinging to half the bed. She hadn't had the heart to move me. 

I'd arranged for M to ring me yesterday at 4 and made sure nobody else got near the phone, but he didn't ring. I hung round for fifteen minutes, but then Sharon needed to ring her Mum so I had to give up. I thought about phoning him, but he'd said in his letter that he'd ring me as it saves me having to keep a stack of 10p bits to hand (though he has to tell his Mum that he's on the phone to Bob.). If it hadn't been such a lovely letter I'd have worried a bit, but it was full of amazing things ("you are about a thousand times more stimulating than anyone I've ever met"!!!). So I suppose there's nothing to worry about and I'm just tired. I expect I'll hear from him in the week. I'm not phoning him though, why should I?

I'd better get back to the essay. Got my ticket for Simple Minds next month at Municipal Hall today! I'll have finished a whole term here by then, assuming I don't leave. 

*A local corruption of 'grebo', used to disparagingly describe any white male with long hair who sported a leather jacket.

**It was an 'Anything Beginning with P' party. Ho ho bloody ho. 

***Public schoolgirl daughter of a Neurosurgeon. Did 'baby voices'. Small and spiteful. I hated her. Probably still would.

Antique Agony

Monday November 1 1982

I'm so brave for coming back yet again, especially given the mood I was in when I left for London. The Bauhaus gig last week really lulled me into a false sense of optimism - they were so fantastic I almost wish they'd been two thirds as good, and then I wouldn't have gone along with what happened the following night. But it was a great gig. We got there early (me, K and C from downstairs; the funny little Scouse girl and the hippy vegetarian girl with huge boobs), and got right down the front, up against the stage which is nice and low at Municipal Hall. When Bauhaus came on it turned out we'd judged it just right and we were perfectly placed right in front of Pete Murphy. He was cavorting just inches from my face! I could see every bobble on his black tights. And they were wonderful from start to finish, his voice is brilliant and even the slow ones managed to sound thrilling live. I was so cheered up. It was the first time I've felt excited since I got here.

When we got back to the house Julian had turned up and was drunk in the kitchen with a crown of leaves and foliage round his head. He kept saying he was ' The King of the North' which got really boring and irritating very quickly so he was asked to leave, but said he'd be back the next night to take us (TAKE us!!) all into town for a nightclub crawl ('even you stuck-up Cockney bitch', the stupid prat. How can you be a Stuck-up Cockney??). Nobody expected him to remember the next day, but he did, and somehow my guard was down and I said I'd go along. Five of us plus Julian and his three tit mates.

It was so horrific. We went somewhere called Adam and Eve's first, that had a circular metal dance floor which you couldn't dance on without falling over (but it didn't matter because everything they played was horrible crap like Tight Fit and Shakin' Stevens, so you wouldn't have wanted to dance anyway.). It was full of sweaty married men in nylon shirts, and meatheads in denim waistcoats who all ended up getting together in the middle of the floor at one point to do Ace* to Status Quo. I wanted to go after one drink, but Julian and his prattish friends made us all stay until 11 when we went on to another hole called Granny's, which was slightly less terrible as the oldest person in there was 'only' thirty rather than fifty, but they were still all dancing away to Musical Youth like it was the best thing ever. Lots of perms, too, though only about half of them on the women. Two more drinks and then on to Prohibition, which is tragic as it's themed like a Chicago speakeasy but it's more Bugsy Malone than anything else. Some old wanker came up to me and told me I was 'very exotic', which made my night, honestly. If it hadn't been 1.30 when we got in I'd have phoned M and begged him to come and get me. The only good thing about the night was finding a chippy that was still open.

So of course I couldn't wait to get back to London again and of course it was just what I needed. Well mostly. JA came out with M and me for a drink on the Friday night and she was winding herself round him like a boa constrictor. It really got on my nerves. I know it's been hard for her being left behind when we all went off to our various Universities, and she was probably only doing it to make herself feel better, but I really got the impression she was throwing it at him, but aiming it at me. She kept trying to have little private conversations with him about things that are going on at the R Club, which of course I'm not party to now because I'm 100 miles away. She's probably lonely but it's not my fault and I haven't forgotten what happened with S six months ago.** She knows how much I like M. So on Saturday he just came over and we stayed in my room chatting all night (his Mum still won't meet me. My Mum's quite polite to him but can't resist making snide remarks about noses and Dustin Hoffman after he's gone. Cow.).We talked about whether he should come up for the party next weekend and I said he shouldn't as it will just be embarrassing, a load of drunk students in fancy dress. I can't get out of it but I won't put him through it. And the following week is the play, so I might not be able to get back down for three weeks! Three!! How will I cope... I don't know why but I asked him what he thought of JA. He said she was alright but always looked very miserable. I felt better then.

I've got to cope up here for three weeks now with no fun whatsoever. At least there's a play rehearsal in  a minute. That'll pass a couple of hours. Must go.

*Ace. When blokes would get together in a circle with their thumbs in the waistband of their jeans, and do that 'up/down/side-to-side' thing very fast. No dignity to be had there.

**What happened with S six months ago? I went to a party with a bloke I'd met the week before (another beautiful Jewish boy, as it goes. I clearly had a taste for the forbidden.). When we got there it turned out we had absolutely nothing in common and though we spent the night talking it was all a bit painful and awkward. My friend JA had a car and offered us both a lift home. She dropped me off first, then took S back to her Mum and Dad's house and shagged  him on their bed (they were on holiday.). She rang me next morning to tell me. I thought it was rather a breach of etiquette. Amazingly we're still friends. 

©Kolley Kibber 2012. Mine, all Mine.

Meanwhile, back then...

Monday October 25th 1982. So much has happened. I ran back to M the weekend before last, and soaked the shoulder of his Johnson's shirt from crying on it as we said goodbye on the N98 back from town. It was 3am and we'd already walked around the West End for an hour after coming out of the Wag Club, trying to find somewhere else to go so we could put off the final moment. Coming back up here on the Sunday was awful, really unbearable and I know I was in a surly mood with everyone. It was so hard to make the effort to fit back in again, as I'd had a taste of London again and felt very distant from all the dullness up here.

They're all so young...my room seems to have become the meeting place to watch Top of the Pops from every Thursday as I'm the only one with a portable telly, and this week we had shrieks of outrage from Debs when George O'Dowd turned up on the show (that awful band! They've come a long way from the Regency in Chadwell Heath!). She started saying that she'd 'get up and leave' if he sat next to her on the bus but when I asked her what she thought would happen if she stayed put, she didn't have an answer. Silly cow. Mind you I felt sorry for her this week as she ended up having to tell her room mate that she smelt. The girls who've had to share rooms are already falling out with one another - I let Y stay in my room when I went home as Lin had her boyfriend staying over and apparently it was all a bit embarrassing having the two of them in one bed and Y on her own in another. Y gave me some flowers, which was nice of her. She's the only one who shook hands with everyone she met on the first day. Quite posh.

 And C has finally split up with Brett!*I had a very tearful phone call from her last Sunday night, but I can't help thinking that it's partly her own fault as she slept with another bloke in her first week at Concrete University. Did she think B wouldn't mind? Anyway, it's over after almost a year of being joined at the hip. She wanted to come over and see me this weekend but I had to tell her M was coming up to see me without making it sound like I was crowing about it ( I suppose I was, a bit. Ha ha.).

I've got a part in a play and have been rehearsing for that which is fun, really. It's called 'Trevor' and I'm supposed to be a fashionable young lesbian, living in secret with her girlfriend. Which wouldn't be a problem except the girl I'm supposed to be in love with is a big noise in the Tory group; a real plain Jane from one of the 'Shires' with a cut-glass accent and a load of clothes 20 years too old for her. We have to kiss briefly in one scene and I'm sure it's as bad for her as it is for me. Still, the rest of the group are ok. J who's directing is very glam in a Page Three kind of way, a bank manager's daughter who doesn't look as though she's ever had to worry about anything. She's going out with the one called P who looks like a Bee Gee and thinks that's acceptable. We did some reading-through in my room the other night and everyone stayed chatting till about 1am. I ended up getting my photo albums out and showing them all the old Blitz pictures. R said "you must really hate it here," which was sweet of him. Last night I did a bit more reading-through with him in his room, and he read me some of his poetry (which was a bit of a surprise as he's captain of the football team and really sporty, so not your typical poet. The other football boys call him 'Wordsworth' but they also look up to him a lot, you can tell.). I didn't really know what to make of his poetry, it was lots of stuff about the sea crashing down on him.

Anyway the real event of the week was M coming up here. It was wonderful. Actually spending the whole night together is incredible...we fell asleep listening to New Gold Dream.  He was so nice to everyone here he met, even P with his ridiculous Bee Gee hair and ball-strangling jeans. Though of course he stood out like a sort thumb in the bar - all the rugby boys were in there, in their stupid blazers, and there was M looking wonderful in his Johnson's stuff. I saw one of the meathead youths make a pretend head-butt at M as he was queueing for the bar, and then he caught me looking at him and didn't know what to do so sucked at his pint like a turd. I just kept staring at him. M gave me his Foundry shirt to wear for the night and I felt great in it. We walked all round town the next day and discovered some quite nice bits, then we had lunch in the Wimpy and shared our table with a couple and their two kids. M said they were 'a nice little family' and I got the impression he'd eventually like to have a nice little family himself. Oh god!! Imagine the complications. When I got back from seeing him off at the coach station I was in a terrible mood. Louise whose room is on the ground floor saw me coming in and must have read my face as she came out into the hall going "Someone needs a brew". She meant tea. She's from Lancashire or Cumbria and quite funny. Very sweet but in some ways she seems about forty. According to her room mate Julia, she wears a hairnet at night that she keeps on with Kirby grips. Her father is something big in Nuclear power so apparently for that reason she says she can never vote Labour!

I'm going down to the bar in a minute to probably drink a couple of vodka and limes in the boring bar, watching the silly boys making fart jokes and talking about what they ate for lunch. It's just how I thought I'd be seeing out my teens, it really is.

I'm going back to London again on Friday. I can't be away from M too long. We can't be away from each other.

•BF from home. At another University 25 miles away. A very complex friendship...


©Kolly Kibber 2012. Find your own inspiration.