If it were autumn 1996...

working data-entry in the payroll department of st george's hospital, my first post-grad job, and sweating blood over my zine.

I wuz traveling across the country for the first time in my life...

I normally don't agree with the "I don't regret the things that I've done; only the things that I haven't done philosophy"...but in this case, I have virtually no regrets.

I think we were on holiday in Mauritius about then.

Ah, we had a few bob back then, for a while.

I'd just started college and had been suffering from stomach cramps probably related to anxiety over starting college. The halls were horrible, the people were nice enough but the place was full of dorks (dorkier than me, i mean) and one girl next door who kept listening to Jamiroquai. the opening lectures fucking ruled tho. 'what a relief, i am going to love this course' i thought, and i did. i met cool DJ/music-geeks quick enough and joined the student paper, taking over the music pages by the end of the month. went back to mum's every weekend to work at the supermarket on Saturdays (grim) but jacked this in after few more months.

i'm not sure i'd rather have been doing anything else - i wanted to be at college, maybe just a better college in a nicer area (Hatfield was a dump) somewhere by the sea (e.g. Bournemouth or Brighton) - didn't want to be too far from London.

OMG I HAS A PIMPLE

stevie- is there something you'd rather have been doing at the time?

Mark- I hope you have obscene $$ shortly

blueski- I'm glad it worked out well, despite the butterflies in the stomach!

Jagga- I trust that you made liberal use of Clearasil, or whatever the kids were using back then, in the waning days of the Brit-pop era

I was in gymnasium (the Finnish equivalent of senior high), I had recently met many some cool folks, some of whom are still my close friends today. I was boozing, hanging around, and having lots of fun, and in general I was happier than ever before during my teenage years. So I wouldn't change much of it, except that it would've been nice to have had a steady girlfriend already back then.

I was being all miserable after my first proper boyfriend went away to university, leaving me to start the upper sixth. Other than that life was fine - so perhaps I would somehow let my 17-year-old self know that:

1/ He will find you in 2004 to apologise for being a dick. You will look at him with bemusement and say 'But it was eight years ago!'

2/ He will tell you that he is marrying the girl he dumped you for, but that he intends to go and live in Antarctica for several months right after the wedding and that she's not too pleased about this. You will stare at him open-mouthed and say 'I don't blame her.'

3/ He will turn into an 'I've been travelling' bore and a Tory voter.

4/ You were best off out of it.

I was in Dublin doing an exchange term at Trinity College.

I'd rather have been a bit more outgoing, but what's new. I didn't make many friends, but that was partly because joining a course in the 3rd/4th year you don't get the whole fresher thing of everyone getting to know each other, because everyone else already does. Plus I wasn't given a place in hall so I was living in a bedsit and couldn't meet anyone that way. Apart from the other bloke who lived in the bedsit, but he was a dick anyway.

Annoyingly I did start hanging out with some cool people right towards the end, then I had to go back to Reading :(

xpostses

That's cool!

So, (full disclosure: I'm working on a free-lance article which I've pitched to the %3|~~~xj``rkian Times (sloppy Terra-Romanization of Betelgeusian satellite hypaspace "blog")), and I'm curious-- is Tuomas basically the equivalent of the Ned Raggett in terms of having a sunshine-y outlook on life?

I was starting my third year of college and was finally really starting to enjoy being there. I'd survived both the socially awkward first year and the year of hell that is sophomore year of architecture school. This was when I finally figured out how to balance my social life (which was very neglected sophomore year) with my design work. I'd just met a group of friends, many of which I still talk to/see on a regular basis today. I might not have appreciated it back then, but in retrospect it was one of my favorite semesters of my undergrad years.

wtf was a tory doing in Antartica? (impressive post-mortem-ish apology notwithstanding)

Well, Colonel, that sounds like a solid bummer, but, you seem sane in spite of it all. D'ya reckon drinking like a maniac might have helped? Or did you exhaust that option?

kudos jon, you have succeeded where many of us lesser beings have failed.

...er, maybe i should cut off this semi-creepy m.c.-ing of this thread

I would be just getting back from the casino in Lula and trying to get four hours of sleep before I had to be at the radio station to produce the paranoid right-wing show that was broadcast live from Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico.

that sounds kind of awesome!

I was in sixth grade, being so dorky I'm kind of amazed I survived. I was so into my little world of fantasy and ancient history that I didn't really notice how socially inept I was, so I had a really great year.

I was starting my final year at uni after a life-changing 10 months teaching English in Germany. Incoming music editor of college paper, lovely new girlfriend, and shortly to discover these two things would have profound effects on my final mark! All in all, life not bad.

mackin on chicks

wtf was a tory doing in Antartica? (impressive post-mortem-ish apology notwithstanding)

Marine biologist.

asleep in math class

is Tuomas basically the equivalent of the Ned Raggett in terms of having a sunshine-y outlook on life?

I haven't always liked my life, but 1996 happens to be the the exact year things started to get considerably better. Obviously there's been bad times after that too, but nothing as bad as before 1996.

Maria, you are an inspiration to us all, then!

Charlie, one guy-- nice!!

Anna, ooohh, ok.

latebloomer, wake up.

Tuomas, that's great!

september 1996 is the only september of my life since i was five that i wasn't involved with the start of a new academic year (before that at school/college, afterwards working in a college). i was on the dole, but had been doing a computer course over the summer and was about to start doing work experience.

i was pretty badly single, although all that was about to change...

sounds good!

awright, i'm gonna shut up for real now. carry on!

Scrounging up funds for my first (and turns out last) quarter in grad school without financial support, getting slowly but surely frustrated with grad life in general, trying to manage an explosively popular bunch of mailing lists, wishing my girlfriend lived nearer.

I would be waking up and contemplating going into work.

and now you're AT work

11 years old. My teacher called me a smart alec on my report card, on account of me being both the best student in class and the most frequently truant. I wish I had kept the report. It was hilariously long and she seemed to take it as a personal affront that I managed to score good grades by not turning up.

Autumn? Dancing to the backstreet boys on stage, and coming home to the smashing pumpkins blasting from older bro's room.

Couldn't be better really.

Had graduated college the spring before and was working in my first job as a web designer. I was living on my own in Houston while my newlywed husband lived and worked in Austin.

That city/job/life-choice proceeded years of disaster but none of them were the direct cause so I don't think I would change anything.

I was starting my sophomore year in college at this place: www.hws.edu in upstate NY. At this very moment in 1996 I was probably skipping class and lying in bed with a hangover. I was dating someone who I thought was wonderful at the time but who would later become abusive both physically and emotionally. That Autumn though I don't think I'd have rather been anywhere else.

Living in Brixton working on and off, spending a lot of time in the Good Mixer and such places, throwing chips in Rick Witter's at Skinny (only once), playing bass with Bivouac occasionally. Good, good times.

Just starting grad school, accepting lots of things struggling to be born.

stevie- is there something you'd rather have been doing at the time?

Oh, without a doubt - the job was HORRIBLE, the worst... but I don't really see how I could have gotten from there to here without everything that happened in between, and I like 'here' as it stands so wouldn't really want to change anything. I didn't have much in the way of options at the time either, so it's not like I'm 'Dangit I wish I could've gone travelling', because for a whole tissue of reasons I couldn't have.

acrobat, I loved Bivouac, and often wake with the riff from 'Bad Day Song' in my head.

Not really trying very hard to get a job. Dating a lovely girl from Devon who was about to move (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) to London. Getting used to having a crewcut after 8 years as a long haired public school fop. Feeling nervous about being a real world baby after having got used to being cock of the walk at university (4 year courses do that to you).

xpost ta stevie

hmm,ok. That's similar to my perspective on much of the past. I hate the "Everything happens as it's meant to" sort of cheap new age cliche, but at the same time, I'm inclined to think that when viewed from some vast cosmic perspective, that sort of line is actually probably true...

sound mixer at the kentish town forum.

hmm,ok. That's similar to my perspective on much of the past. I hate the "Everything happens as it's meant to" sort of cheap new age cliche, but at the same time, I'm inclined to think that when viewed from some vast cosmic perspective, that sort of line is actually probably true...

i watched a lot of Quantum Leap as a kid, and am thusly afeard of monkeying about with even the most seemingly trivial moment in my past...

working in a brewery that year as a temp. moved out of home for the first time to a horrible council house in a rough part of town. just come out of my longest relationship eva (5 months)

i saw my first sonic youth show at the forum that summer.

pretty awesome, no?

and now you're AT work

ugh

I was in contract negotiations with the BBC to produce my brand new concept for an animated cartoon series, "Stressed Eric". Little did I know how I was to revolutionise comedy with this idea.

sophomore in high school in suburban houston...playing football but not on varsity yet so it was still fun. and hanging out with my friends on a daily basis. basically the best time of my life.

oh definitely, nrq. i've spent most of this year writing a book about SY, so that was the beginning of, well, something...

sleeping on friends couch and trying to make a living DJing.

That one guy that hit it and quit it were you the long haired guy who always seemed to be wearing a Therapy? t shirt?

September 8, 1996

You know, I cried the day before Stacie left for college, a week ago. We were sitting in her family room like so many afternoons & evenings prior to that night, and I kept thinking about all of her school's "high-minded" Christian rules and how I feared she would feel constrained & unhappy -- mostly, though, about all of the wonderful times we've spent together and how it all had suddenly come to an end. We had to move on, although we knew we would miss each other terribly. Strange how things have turned out since then...

I can't say I don't miss my best friend of the last two years -- there have been times when I've been sitting at home & wishing I had her to call: someone to talk to just to talk, not to ask questions of or gossip or arrange an outing -- just to talk. But in a sense (and this almost worries me to say), her leaving has freed me somewhat -- it has given me more options, if you can understand that. Instead of calling her on Wednesday night (when ordinarily I would have .... and I just wasn't about to phone Boston, either, residency of my stalker, K.E. R@v3n, whose last e-mail message to me read simply "Thanks, I love you." -- but that's for another time), I called Adam, and the result of that ultimately was the two of us going up to Fox Valley last nite just to chill, as the kids say. And it was good to talk to him, though I certainly have done things w/him in the past -- it was a nice change of pace, though. But if it was just Adam, there really would be no need for writing. On Thursday afternoon, sitting up in my little computer room @ my place of employment (The R0ck Cr33k C3nt3r), the psych hospital for which my mom serves as mktg. director & I do basically the same shit I was doing last summer ... but a lot more interesting and varied ... you just gotta love the schizophrenics!), I reached for the phone and dialed the Pr@n@itis number, knowing that if sh wasn't working, Sh@nn@ would be around, since Northwestern doesn't start until late Sept. earlier. After a few missed connections, we spoke for about an hour & a half yesterday (well, Fri, really) -- much to my delight, since I was only expecting me to be like "Okay ... ummm .. I figured since we're both still around, do you wanna do something sometime?" and hopefully her to be like, "Uhh ... okay. Call me on Monday" or something. It's still not definite when or what we're doing anything, but she showed interest, so cool beans with me. I suppose, too, though, that I should mention the motives behind the call. A healthy portion of my drive to dial was indeed the whole "I'm-bored-there's-no-one-left-to-do-shit-with" mentality, but ... ever since J@y J0rd@n's going-away party 3 weeks ago, I've been feeling this rekindled attraction toward the girl -- this "thing" I have for her, no doubt spurred by the neck massage she gave me that night & her losing the first two hands of our 2 AM Strip Uno tournament (she only took off shoes & a watch, as I recall, and proceeded to do fairly well thereafter ... I, on the other hand, would've been completely bare had it not been for everyone else's sympathy toward my relatively small number of clothing items on me & a losing streak that wouldn't quit ... I guess I wouldn't have minded it, though, as long as others were skimpy, too ... Alas, we ended at 3 because some people had to get up early, though that didn't stop us from getting coffee @ Dunkin Donuts and seeing a fisherman come in who was -- it scared us to think -- actually starting his day, while we were ending ours ... it was me, Kristy, Carolyn, Cyndi, Jay & Shanna ... another great party & a wonderful one to end my high school social scene on). Anyway, thats the deal with her -- I think we might actually be going to BHS Thursday morning (my first day of not working ... and she doesn't start her Applebee's shift until noon) so she can pick up her yearbook -- we'll see, though.

But that's not the end of this whole story, either. Today, I ended up at the NHS carwash at Wal-Mart -- your typical fundraising activity, the time & location of which (I had known via the school newsletter that it was today) I found out from Adam last night. I figured I'll donate a few bucks to my alma mater & the organization for which I toiled quite a bit last year. But I also thought -- hey, what else am I doing on a Saturday morning/afternoon, other than sitting on my ass @ home? So I chipped in washing & soaking & the like: a good hour at least, of cleaning cars. Aim33 Rutk0ski (who, since Junior Miss, I had been contemplating taking to see KANSAS CITY -- she would certainly dig the jazz, being a trumpet player herself, and since breaking up w/Andy H0useh0lder, was certainly available as well ... I never worked up the never, and as it turned out, the movie left theatres pretty quickly anyway -- what few theatres it was playing at) & Kr1st1ne Pr0v0 arrived at noon to work the second shift, until 2:15, and my initial plans had been to leave at 12:30; that was, after all, when Adam & Chris & even Zippy were leaving, and of the rest still there, I certainly (alert: overused word!) wasn't going to talk to ... ummm, I won't even dignify their existence by mentioning specific names ... but you ge the picture: I had nobody to socialize with and that was, after all, my real reason for coming in the first place. But when Dave T0wns3nd said he was driving home to return my bowtie (which I had lent him for Cabaret Night and he had promised me in the McDonald's drive-thru window last week that he would give to me before I left) ... I figured I had to stick around. And as long as I was waiting, I might as well stroll over to the Wal-Mart exit where the aforementioned new arrivals were standing & busy recruiting potential customers. I know it's kind of a lengthy way to get to things, but the bottom line(s) is that I stayed there w/them until 2:15, Dave never came back (maybe I misheard his intentions?), and Kristine & I are going out for coffee on Tuesday night. What great conversations you can have w/people you know & like but never talk to.

Now, knowing me & the feelings I have always had for Aim33 & Kr1st1ne (cf. Sept(?) 94 entry), it might not surprise you that I went over there with full intentions to plan something w/at least one of them (and you know Kristine's available now, too, post-N1ck Mar1on & Jay, of course, who we talked about but we decided to best leave alone -- I must be the only person in the world to have remained good friends with both of them, I theorized). But that's very often difficult to do, especially when you feel unwanted. My point, though, is that it was pretty easy and it was because I never did feel unwanted (and that sentence really sucked, but whatever...) They truly like me as company, and when I asked Kristine if she still had a thing for Bob Costas (cf. May 94 entry), and mentioned that as being the first thing I ever really heard her say, she kind of "aww"'d & said she misses having people like me around, if only to say hi to in the halls. And there's when I made my move: "You know," I said, "if you wanted to go out & do something sometime, I'll be around for another week..." She bit. We decided on Tuesday, and for a few minutes, I contemplated (as I apparently do with her) asking Aimee if she wanted to come, too, but I hardly regret not asking now. I actually feel for the first time in who-knows-how-long (because Kristy doesn't count for jackshit in my mind) that I am going on a true bonafide date ... and that as awful as it sounds, Stacie's absence has given me the opportunity go out w/2 girls I've had crushes on at some point, and still, in fact, do.

xpost

(sheepishly) -- at least it wasn't cast, right?!

bivouac's my shit.

I was in contract negotiations with the BBC to produce my brand new concept for an animated cartoon series, "Stressed Eric".

a bitter disappointment, as i had loved your work on Crapston Villas.

[is that one guy who hit it and quit it nrq? i get confused]

(Used that entry since the Sept. 14 one is even longer and talks about how I basically fell extremely hard for Kristine mere days before I had to leave for college. I spent my first month at school e-mailing and calling her almost every day, then I came back for Homecoming and she ignored me the whole night.)

Still working in the TV industry. Settling into my new apartment in Hoboken. My roommate and I having our first first songwriting sessions/rehearsals for the band we were planning. Getting my passport photo and otherwise preparing for my first trip to the UK. Writing reviews for my zine.

I was likely ending my first class of the day in my sophomore year of high school right now, and about to stop at a vending machine for a breakfast of Dr Pepper, a bag of cheddar-flavored Bugles, and possibly a Heath bar. Next up would be English class, where I sat behind these two girls who were kind of cute that I knew in that we're-all-friends-in-class way.

I'd imagine I went home and played Quake and talked on irc all evening while complaining about the waning allergy season.

Living in Brixton working on and off, spending a lot of time in the Good Mixer and such places, throwing chips in Rick Witter's at Skinny (only once), playing bass with Bivouac occasionally. Good, good times.

they fired you and you know it

xpost

...about to stop at a vending machine for a breakfast of Dr Pepper, a bag of cheddar-flavored Bugles, and possibly a Heath bar...

Ouch. Quick thread digression- were Bugles always a second or third-tier snack food? I don't remember them ever being marketed in the way that, say, Fritos, were back in the day. Sure, Combos fell from grace, and, heck, so did Fritos, but I don't remember Bugles ever getting any respectable grocery store shelf space...I'm thinking they're just slightly above Andy Capp hot fries in terms of prestige.

That's not bad, considering they're just below pork cracklins in terms of cholesterol and fat content.

I knew someone who was an avowed Bugles-junkie, but this same person was reported to eat 7-11 pizza everyday for lunch, so um...

I'm having all manner of trouble with tenses, prepositions, and generally all aspects of the written English language; 'scuse me.

Yeah and you parted on great terms with the early Silversun line up hey That mong guy that's shit (:

xp

i had just started uni, had a really irritating roommate who was about to leave anyway, and they had accidentally made me music editor of the student paper (they thought i was someone else, ha ha. by the time they realised i wasn't who they thought i was it was november and i'd proved i could do it so they let me stay). i had just discovered the existence of the guestlist and was pounding it for all it was worth. i hadn't yet completely accepted the fact that 99% of students are complete and utter twats and i was about to be fairly out on my own, emotionally speaking, for the next few years. i was still dressing like a kao san road casualty.

oh, second part. i would rather have been working in a bar on the west coast of france.

Pining for Kristen Coatney.

I seem to have one year per decade where everything turns upside down and I set off in a new direction....1985, 1996, 2004...

In 1996, it all happened in the Autumn - I met someone who I instantly knew I wanted to spend my life with. This obv more than made up for having a really good band disintegrate around me, just as we were getting somewhere, and being told that I wouldn't be able to play contact sport for around 2 years, maybe never. I also visited Japan and Australia through work.

i'd probably still be in bed

Yeah and you parted on great terms with the early Silversun line up hey That mong guy that's shit (:

Silver Sun. It was two words.

it was failure to make that distinction that got me booted

^the correct answer^

Jumping around like a lunatic because of getting a book deal, going to Father Ted tapings and art openings - and trying to dodge PRs who wanted me to write about tail-end-of-Britpop bands.

did you ever see any £££s for writing that bit of "Lava" you claim you wrote?

I'll see you around, That Mong Guy That's Shit

No, I am still optimistic, but being banned from Wikipedia on every computer I have access to has heavily curtailed my main means of highlighting the injustice :(

I don't think replacing their wiki article with; "Those thieving bastards owe me. I wrote that bit out of "Lava" which goes "...like the baby Jesus" and they never even fucking credited me." Was really doing you too many favours.

This isn't really doing anything for me tbh

You guys were the band Electrasy could have been

Just starting my senior year of high school, smoking pot after class, hanging out at the all ages clubs near the University of Memphis (was it still Memphis State in 1996?), awkwardly fumbling through my first relationship with a member of the opposite sex, working the counter at a local Super D and enjoying the perks of being supervised by a forty-something pill freak who would drop acid on the clock.

What a magical time.

96? Wait, I thought it was 86.

Okay, I take back my earlier post.

Realizing I couldn't afford library school and that I should probably just drop out and spend the money on getting three cavities filled. I was working at a Barnes and Noble bookstore and also at St. Olaf College. I also celebrated my first wedding anniversary that fall.

I'd have been married for a month, and was still working at this same damned job. Lived in an apartment next door to where I live now.

i'd have just moved from mpls to dc and would be working in a bookstore. it would also be the beginning of a (sadly brief) period in which ladies loved cool me.

It was my 2nd week of university and a lot of people were nursing colds from having drunk too much, and not slept enough the week before. I had already hooked up with the girl who was to haunt me for the rest of my undergraduate career. There were "Trainspotting" posters in every room, and we were dancing to "Born Slippy.Nuxx" everywhere we went.

lusting, wearing eye-shadow, concerned about my place in the world & why nobody likes me :(

I would probably have not been doing very much. Watching TV, taking the dog for a walk, listening to music. Would have been a few weeks until university started again.

Hey, you know what I did today? Watched TV, took the dog to the park, listened to music...

I'd rather not think about it.

36 years old, living in AZ. Traveling madly all over the Americas for the job I had taken in February. It was supposed to involve 25-50% travel, but in reality was 95% travel, which eventually wrecked my not-terribly-happy marriage completely. At this point in the job though, I was loving it and seeing cool stuff every weekend in a different place and working my ass off for a startup that proved successful.

I was in eleventh grade, in love w. a girl who'd run away from home and met me every day after school for coffee and hot dogs at the nearby Haven Brothers diner. I had a moleskin filled w. musings, drawings, and unsent notes to her. Call her 'CK'. Some days she'd even come watch me on the unathletic-kids' intramural soccer team.

CK and I had met in middle school four years earlier. Back then I'd been funny-looking, gullible, doggedly sincere (easy target for bullying), and quietly friendless. I came from a different, lower, social class than my peers. I projected my financial insecurity like a forcefield, and by doing so elevated awareness of my awkwardness by an order of magnitude. CK was the 'other' poor kid at school. ('Though later I learned she was stinking rich, and just had lifelong commie parents who told her there was some sort of idealistic purity in living poor.) We had met at the funeral of a classmate's mother. CK had been the kid's best friend, I barely knew him. I'd gone because I thought it was the right thing to do. Truthfully, I think I also wanted to befriend the mourning kid. I figured he'd need somebody to talk to -- I didn't realize I was desperately lonely and did too. High-minded ideals, ehh? As the only two young people, CK and I sat together. We struck up a conversation at the reception, continued it in passing for the rest of the year.

CK and I never became outward friends at school. She was graceful, popular, pretty, knew a little about drugs and a lot about sex, and the difference in our adolescent social castes was ultimately too significant to overcome. But at the end of the year she was kicked out of school for something she'd never talk about. As a matter of fact, nobody talked about it. There wasn't even gossip: CK pulled a perfect vanishing act.

We had run into each other walking around Providence a few weeks later. She had dyed her hair purple, pierced her nose (this is '93) and wore corduroy overalls. She seemed happy to see me: we talked for an hour. I told her I'd been kicked out of school, myself, in sixth grade. Another school. Fuck school, she said. Fuck the people there, I amended. Why do you let them treat you so bad? she asked. I don't, I answered. And then she proceeded to outline the ways in which I did ... from that moment on we became friends. Close friends, but never the kind to plan on seeing each other. I don't think we ever called each other, or made specific plans. We just happened to find each other a lot.

Four years later -- a decade to last week -- I saw her sleeping on a doorstoop on Thayer Street. Thayer - to a naive 16-year-old Rhode Islander in '96 - seemed the coolest shit in the universe, Greenwich Village cross-pollinated with Haight/Ashbury and grafted onto the stock of Cambridge. To see that, in actuality, it was four blocks of low-rent retail with a smattering of low-lifes, grumbling artists, and intellectual pretensions was far, far, far beyond my powers of willful self-delusion. And at the corner was CK hawking copies of the People's Weekly World, having run away to Thayer after a fight with her parents. She said it would be absofuckinglutely impossible to live with them any more. WIth their bourgie values and ersatz veneer of social responsibility. Calling themselves socialists, she said, of all the damned gall.

Nobody would help her, she explained -- she might as well waste away right now. Do herself in. Throw herself in front of a train or bus or drunken fraternity. And, being the sucker that I was, I told her I'd take care of her. My love-addled perception considered that it been a major act of faith, an act of trust and intimacy for her to tell me this. I was flattered and touched. And massively in love. As, of course, she'd figured I would be. For the next two months she sponged money (I had $2000 saved from a summer job -- at least half of it went to her) and time, and genuine affection, and daily hot dogs and coffee from me. I didn't know she had moved back in with her parents after four weeks, and that she was friends-with-benefits (first time I heard the phrase) with two mutual pals of ours, and that she had only run away after being placed on home arrest, etc.... until she called me one night, drunk and confessional, to apologize for taking advantage of me. It would be, she explained, wrong for her to keep it up. We shouldn't see each other any more. First phone call I ever got from her, and last. She'd send me a check for the money she'd taken. She never did.

Love this shit, R.

Working third shift in a copy/print shop. 11pm to 7am. My entire life revolved around trying to figure out when I should sleep or eat. I hated that place but it was the only thing keeping me from moving back home. It paid 5.75 an hour and when I was denied a 25 cent raise I was devastated. 25 cents an hour.

i didn't. last i heard (ca. '02) she was in med school at yale.

Mum and I both cried at the airport, so the sympathetic ground staff ignored the fact that my suitcases weighed twice what they should have because they were full of books. Those suitcases became a real burdon, though, when I reached Milan and realised that Italian stations didn't have lifts or escalators. I stood at the top of an enormous flight of steps until a young gentleman took pity on me and helped me lift them down. He then pointed out that I needed to stamp my ticket, which was handy, because it was inspected on the way to Bergamo.

I had four nights booked in the youth hostel and didn't know where I'd be living after that. This was the main reason why I had cried at the airport. To this day, I'm uncomfortable not knowing what the plan is. I spent a night at the youth hostel, not sleeping much, then the next day I spotted a girl I recognised on the stairs. Louise had been in a couple of my classes back in Manchester, but I didn't really know her. I hadn't realised she'd be here too. She, her sister and I got talking, then went out for a pizza in what became one of our favourite restaurants. The food was excellent and the waiters funny. Pizzeria Garden was opposite the stadium, which led us to talk about football, which we both loved.

You didn't get a say in where you lived, but by a stroke of luck the International Officer decided Louise and I should share a room. Within a fortnight we had seen our first football match (and Atalanta's first win of the season, against Lazio), got drunk several times and giggled through our first lecture, of which we understood not a word. It turned out to be the best year of my life and she my best friend.

You know what I mean.

spending a lot of time in the Good Mixer

Heh, this reminds me that before we met, Louise knew me as "sunglasses on head girl" because of the look I exported from the Mixer/Popscene/Going Underground to indie night at the Hacienda.

Right this minute, 11 years ago? Prolly having a bong hit before the night shift at a coffee shop.

Directing Samuel Beckett's Footfalls. Letting the one who got away get away. Hearing Beck's "Where It's At" for the first time in a car overstuffed with people heading toward a Perkins at 2 a.m.

I'd be in a rubbish (but fun) high school band that briefly included this guy, until we sacked him heh heh oh wait

Yeah, right this minute, I'm still all overwhelmed by Kristine, by our late-night phone conversation on Tuesday night, by all the sweet potential in the air and the unfairness of having to be whisked away from it. I don't have much of an appetite at dinner tonight, and I stop by her house after school tomorrow afternoon with a rose, and we lie on her bed and listen to Benny Goodman and I say goodbye.

I was in 9th grade - in my city you didn't go to the actual high school until you were a sophomore.

It was basically the last shining moment of my academic career - last year with all A's and no discipline problems. I quit playing football, breezed through my classes without any issues (nor any highlights, actually). It was a really boring year I guess - I hung out with my friends and listened to the Clash and the Descendents, read a bunch of Twain, Hemingway and Orwell and went to whatever all-ages shows I could get to. Attended my first and last Christian death metal show at 'God's Place.'

oh, i always wore an eels shirt

Did you write that down somewhere, jaymc, or do you really remember this stuff to the day? Honest question. Neither would surprise me.

Being bored at work and living for the weekend. Lots of clubbing: The End, Turnmills, The Fridge, some place in Islington with lots of floors that for the life of me I can't remember the name of, The Zap in Brighton, a disused cinema in Camden...

Well, the journal entry upthread is transcribed verbatim. I just checked the calendar for 1996 and saw that Sept. 8 was a Sunday, so our coffee date was on Tuesday the 10th, and I remember that we said goodbye on a Friday. It was a memorable week, and I ended up writing a lot about it, because I had just started school the following week and didn't have any friends.

jaymc adrian mole

were those entries in a spiralbound notebook, jaymc?

Yeah. 70-page Mead college-rule.

Wait, is Adrian Mole the book that Mark Sinker stole his style from, or what am I thinking of?

i'd be starting my fourth year at edinburgh university. does that mean i'd be writing my dissertation, or planning it? christ, i can't remember. whatever: i'd be worrying an awful lot more about flogging features to the scotsman and the big issue than about my degree.

i'd be tooling about with macs (no change), sporting some kind of daft facial hair (ditto) and fretting about something (much less of that these days). i suppose i'd either be in, or out of, that bastarding on-off relationship with which i managed to cripple myself emotionally for so long.

i'd be writing songs. don't do that any more. probably a good thing for the world at large.

there's a very good chance i'd be in the pub with alext. don't do enough of that either any more, which isn't so good.

oh yeh, and i'd be wearing a really, really bad shirt. almost certainly.

oh: and posting a buttload of shit on usenet, natch.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n11/n58563.jpg

My question remains.

some place in Islington with lots of floors that for the life of me I can't remember the name of,

the complex? i only went there once, may have it wrong. did popstarz used to be there?

xpost molesworth

Thank you, Emsk, that was bugging me!

the complex?

I think that was it. Near Angel on Liverpool Road or thereabouts.

yep, that's the one. what happened to it? i liked it.

I can only remember it being open for about a year. It never seemed to be that full when I was there.

Autumn of 1996 I was enjoying working an embarassing coffee shop job I got fired from after 6 weeks and writing/recording gigantic 10 minute opuses (opi?) that involved layers of detuned guitars, reverse tape effects, drum machines meticulously powered by dying batteries and epic bags of weed while I should've been doing the miniscule amount of homework required by my community college classes. Also in that span of time I discovered that if you kick over the smoldering remains of campfires it creates what looks like a teeny tiny torchlit fantasy novel city.

October 1996 I dated a horrendous girl named Kim whose roommate I was in love with and had a last name like Jazzgarzoosky or some shit, I swear to god.

NB&S, Emsk - that club was also the Paradise, home of drum and bass. The last time I was there it was for something like Popstarz but I think it now forms part of the Islington Vue/Academy complex. My friend who'd been squatting in a house in one of those roads for 11.75 years got given her marching orders when they built the Angel Centre and MY GOD WAS SHE PISSED OFF. Note to non-Britishes, it used to be the case that if you squatted a place for 12 years you got to KEEP it, and she would have gotten huge compulsory-purchase cash as a result. I loved that house.

Also did a lot of Blue Note clubbing: Metalheadz, Swaraj, Talvin Singh.

Adrian Molesworth! if only