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...


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