Ascending
Octagon rooms,
no furniture fits.
This was someone’s idea.
What’s so great about eight?
At the top of the pile,
we can’t help but look down.
We are high, it is true,
getting higher all the time.
One phone for the block,
how on earth did we manage?
Scribbled notes on boards,
night visits, knock knock.
With Neighbours to watch,
Chiltern FM for soul,
I thoroughly practised
avoidance techniques.
What are you going to do after?
What are you going to do after?
I’m going to dream of eight walls,
spin out all kinds of lines.
RF 2021
Video/audio for this one here.
For my last year of a three-year degree the same three student friends and I moved back into college accommodation in 1988 – this time a modern flat in a block in the green and pretty part of town just over the river from our college. The private rental the previous year had not been a great success in many ways and for our last, in theory, most studious year I think we thought it would be better to have fewer distractions and be nearer to libraries etc. (who was I kidding – I watched a lot of Neighbours, listened to a lot of soul all-dayers on commercial radio). The block we moved to had been built for conferences and/or graduates originally so the flats were well kitted out (two bathrooms per flat!) but the whole place was based on the octagon (every bedroom was octagon shaped) so it was … unique. We were back to the evil carpet tiles but other than that it was a great flat in many ways. Most of the students in the block were second years so, as the senior group, we got to pick our flat first and went for the top of the tree, as it were.
We still had quite a bit of fun in this flat, maybe not quite as much as the previous year but enough. I always thought on some level that I wanted to write so I put together some snarky column pieces about the uni that went into the student newspaper (I called them Trouble in Toytown, they weren’t delightful). Working in journalism was one direction I was thinking about at the time but it took me till the last year to have the confidence to even do that (we were involved in a new ‘radical’ magazine, in the second year I think, but there wasn’t much appetite for that locally and that Spark just fizzled out). Extracurricular stuff at Cambridge could be very high-powered and some students were really focused on their goals in areas like the arts and journalism. Some joined a society, say a particular theatre group, on day one of year one, gave it more attention than their studies and headed straight off into that world after graduation (obviously they didn’t all have huge success but plenty did). None of us four were like that and I suppose that’s one thing we had in common as well.
I think if I’d been braver (or more decisive or focused) I might even have left before this last year. I knew by now that a languages degree had probably not been the right decision and I was envious of my friend studying English (though I tried a lecture or two and, in the times of Kristeva, Barthes etc. I couldn’t really follow what they had to do with anything, what even was semiotics?). But by now it was too late to switch, I still had enough Spanish to get by and there was so much talk of ‘once you have a Cambridge degree you can do anything’ that I felt I should at least stick it out till the end. My heart, however, couldn’t have been less in it and I practically ran away once it was all over (on a National Express coach to Chesterfield if I remember correctly). Also in the spring of 1989, at the grand age of 22, I had finally been introduced to ecstasy and what was to become ‘rave culture’ in a London nightclub by a friend of a friend. This was much more my kind of specialist subject and if they had ever given out degrees for it I like to think I would have got a first in All Night Long from the University of Acid House (by the way I got a 2:2 from uni, more than I deserved really).
More on the raving in a couple of days/poems but tomorrow it’s back to a different Midlands village, a maypole and a very different kind of dancing.
This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were mostly taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.
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