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.