A Fucked Up Life in Books (7 page)

I wasn’t meeting my boyfriend. I was meeting my rather large male friend who I thought might scare him off a bit.

Man: ‘You will teach me English.’

Me: ‘Look, I’m not qualified to teach English. And besides, you are speaking English now. It’s really good. REALLY good. I don’t think that you need lessons.’

Man: ‘I will read your Asimov and we will talk about it in English.’

Me: ‘I really have to go now.’

And I stood up, walked out of the pub and began what I thought looked like a casual but brisk stroll down the street. It was only when the Man came jogging up shouting me to ‘wait’ that I realised how fast I’d been walking. And then suddenly, ahead of me a beacon of light – I could see my friend! I shouted to him, a lot, loudly, a bit like a madwoman and start to run in his direction. The Man disappeared.

Friend: ‘Why the fuck are you running at me?’

I told him briefly that some mental cunt tried to accost me and if he wasn’t always fucking late then he could have fucking saved me, prick, and where the fuck had he been anyway?

And he apologised, and we went to the pub and had some lunch, and we forgot about the Man for a bit. After a little while it was time for him to go, so we said our goodbyes and he began walking down the street. I had a look in my purse and was feeling a little flush, so decided on a taxi home. I went and hopped in to the back of the nearest black cab, told the driver my destination, the doors clicked locked and then someone was there trying the handle and shouting at me to let them in.

‘FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING MAD TWAT!’ I screamed at him through the window.

Taxi Driver: ‘Do you know him, love?’

Me: ‘No I don’t fucking know him, he wants to read my fucking Asimov book and talk about it in English.’

Taxi Driver: ‘Eh?’

The Man was still shouting at me. His English really was very good. He knew all of the good swearwords and then some.

The taxi driver by this time had obviously made up his mind that I was probably the victim here, and started to pull the cab out in to the road. Then do you know what happened? As we started to drive away the Man ran and threw himself in front of the cab. We ground to a halt and the taxi driver did some shouting out of the window while the Man banged on the car and shouted a lot more abuse at me.

I did get home eventually, and the taxi driver rang the police and I never saw the Man again. I do wonder whether he ever got his English lessons, and whether he ever read
Towards Tomorrow
.

So while you are sat reading in public, and you see people looking at you from across the way – they are probably not admiring you for your choice of clever literature. They are probably wondering what your nipples look like.

And that is why you should
never
read Isaac Asimov in a pub.

I didn’t really want to go to university, I went because everyone else was going. Now that I look back on it I’m glad that I went but at the time, particularly in my first year, I found it quite difficult.

I’m not sure what the process is for other universities, but where I went, when you applied for your first year and got your place you were sent a big list of stuff that you had to fill out and post back.

One of the lists was information about the different types of accommodation, asking you to pick a place to live and list a few interests of yours so that you could be matched in a flat or house with people who you might be able to get along with without stabbing each other to death.

A couple of my friends from school were also headed to the same university as me. I phoned them, asked where they were planning to live, and marked my form out accordingly. When the results came back a week later, I had been placed in accommodation so far away from my friends that I wanted to cry. I looked at lots of maps and bus routes, and eventually consoled myself that they would be in the same city as me, and that I needed to fucking man up.

So I moved to a new city and met the people that I was going to live with. We said brief hellos and then went and sat in the kitchen for a bit of a ‘get to know you’ session. They all started by talking about what they had written on their accommodation applications, specifically, what they had written in their hobbies and interests, as in theory we should have all matched.

Girl 1: ‘I wrote that I like drinking.’

Other girls: ‘Yeah!’

Girl 2: ‘I said that I like shopping.’

Girl 1: ‘Oh my God, I put that too!’

Girl 3: ‘And me! And I also put socialising.’

Other girls: ‘Yeah, I LOVE socialising!’

Girl 4: ‘I put down clubbing and magazines.’

Girl 2: ‘Oh my God, did you see
Heat
this week?’

Other girls: ‘No, why?!’

*Girl 2 runs out of the kitchen and rushes back with the latest edition of
Heat
magazine.*

Girl 2: ‘Look!’

*All girls crowd round the magazine and gasp.*

All girls: ‘OH. MY. GOD!!!!!!!’

A lot of laughter followed and when they had calmed down they turned to me. I hadn’t seen what they were looking at in the magazine, and I was very aware that I hadn’t said a single word yet.

Girl 1: ‘So what did you put?’

Me: ‘Well … I put the stuff that you all put: shopping, socialising, you know, normal stuff.’

Other girls: ‘Oh my God!’

I actually had done no such thing. I put that I liked reading and going to museums and eating. It is even possible that I explicitly said that I
did not
like the things that they mentioned. How in the name of almighty piss had I ended up here?

The girls all decided to unpack a bit more of their stuff and then we would all go to the bar together. We were all best friends now, there was no escape: I was fucked.

I went into my room and started to take stuff out of boxes. Out came the books that my reading list had told me I needed:
Dracula
,
Regeneration
,
Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams
,
Birdsong
,
Frankenstein
, and
Beloved
. The only one that I’d had to buy new was
Beloved
, I had already read and owned all of the others. They all went on my shelves, and
Beloved
on my bedside table.

I went to check how the others were getting on. They were all cunt-deep in their bags and boxes of clothes, so I went back into my room and started to read
Beloved
. About an hour later they were ready, so we went out to the pub.

They all drank vodka and lime. I’d never heard of such a drink so I had a pint of ale. They all talked about boys, and one of them got off with some ratty-looking creature who had joined our table onto the one with him and his friends. I didn’t really like it. I felt really uncomfortable, and weirdly, I felt like something was wrong.

I always have my phone set to silent. All ringtones annoy me. I took my phone out of my pocket and saw that I had a missed call from my brother. I knew that it was something bad before I called him back.

I excused myself and went outside. I phoned him back. He answered straight away, his voice strained:

‘Nanny has died.’

My Grandma had died an hour before, while I was sat in my room reading
Beloved
, listening to the noises through the walls of four girls who I’d just met unpacking their things.

I hung up and went back in to the pub. I told the girls that I was going back to the flat. They asked why. I told them. They didn’t know what to say. One of them offered to come back with me but I declined.

I’d already missed the last train home, so I had to wait for the morning. I went and sat in my room and called my brother and spoke to him some more. I could hear people crying in the background, probably my aunties, and I could hear my Dad asking him, ‘Is that your sister? Is she okay? Who is she with?’

The next day I got the first train back home to see my family and to go to the funeral. I missed my entire first week-and-a-bit of university. When I came back my first assignment was due – an essay on
Beloved
. I hadn’t read it, but I wrote something and I got enough marks to pass that semester.

To this day, I still haven’t finished reading that book. It’s on my bookshelf with the receipt poking out where I marked the last page I’d read that first night away from home.

It could be the best book in the world for all I care, but it reminds me of a time that was too sad. Maybe one day I’ll finish reading it, but for now I’m happy for it to stay nestled on the shelf with the others.

I spent a lot of my time in my late teens when I was back home from university for the holidays working in temp jobs for very little money. And when I wasn’t working I was reading Neil Gaiman’s
Sandman
comics over and over in a little place I’d discovered close by to my Dad’s house.

You walk down the long country road, over the bridge, under the underpass and follow the river until it runs into a lake. When the water stops moving you turn left, and after a little while left again.

Through some trees and under another underpass and then in front of you you’ll see a circle of willow trees in the middle of a field.

Walk across the field and into the trees and you’re surrounded by the drooping branches. The sun can still stream through the gap at the top of the trees so it’s still light, but the space below is just enough so that you can sit down in the middle but not see outside.

And that is where, aged 17 for the first time, and 18 and 19 after that, I used to sit and get stoned and read comics.

So one day after I’d got home from work and it was warm and sunny outside I sat and tried to roll a joint to accompany
Sandman
. I’d done it loads of times before, but for some reason this day my hands weren’t working and I kept spilling tobacco and ripping the papers and making a complete twat of it every time I tried. So I went upstairs and asked my brother to help. I left him my hash and tobacco and papers and he rolled me a small and neat little joint. Then I went downstairs, shouted goodbye to my Dad, I’d be back later, I was going to the lake, and off I went.

The walk takes about forty minutes, and I never rushed it. Once I got there I unfolded my tiny little blanket that I’d bought from the pound shop and sat on the little bit of sunny space in the middle of the trees. I flipped open
A Game of You
and put my hand in my pocket to retrieve the joint.

Except it wasn’t there.

That was a bit annoying, but not the end of the world. I was a bit pissed off that I’d managed to lose it along the way and wondered where I’d dropped it. Oh well. It was fine like this. I’d stay and read and not get stoned for
A Game of You
. You don’t need to, anyway.

After an hour or so when it wasn’t so warm anymore, I got up, folded my Poundland blanket up, popped my comic under my arm and headed home.

I arrived home and shouted to Dad that I was back. He didn’t respond. I went and sat on the bench in the garden and after a few minutes Dad appeared, clocked me, said ‘Hello, Flower,’ (yes, my Dad calls me Flower) and wandered up the garden to the greenhouse.

Then my brother came downstairs.

‘You’re fucking lucky that I don’t think you’re a cunt,’ he said.

I looked at him.

‘Stoned?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘I think I dropped it somewhere. When I got to the trees it had gone. Bit annoying.’

My brother nodded his head. ‘You didn’t drop it. You left it on the kitchen table. Dad found it.’

Fuck.

‘Fuck. Did he think it was yours?’

‘Of course he thought it was mine. He came upstairs to bollock me about it.’

‘Shit. What did you say?’

My brother peered up the garden. Dad was still in the greenhouse, looking pretty intently at the tomato plants. Nothing unusual there. He fucking loved the greenhouse; the tomato plants especially, but also the chillies and artichokes and various herbs he had potted on the tables and on the stone floors underneath.

‘He came upstairs and asked if I’d left a cigarette on the table. I knew you, you fucking idiot, must’ve left your joint on the table on the way out. I told him it was mine and then he kind of laughed at me. Said that he knew it wasn’t just a cigarette, and did I think he was stupid.’

‘Oh fuck.’

‘Yeah, fuck. And when I said it was just a cigarette he said to me, “It was not just a cigarette, and the reason I know that it was not just a cigarette is because I smoked it.”’

We both looked down at the greenhouse again. Dad was still looking at the tomato plants, and now we could see quite clearly that he was stoned off his tits.

That evening was great. Dad got really hungry and cooked us all a feast and we watched
Indiana Jones
.

My Dad never bollocked me or my brother for smoking, in fact, now I think about it. He never really told us not to do anything.

There’s not really a point to this story. I’m just thinking about my Dad and wishing for a day like that again.

In my second year of university I got glandular fever.

It started with me going to bed at 6pm because I felt a bit tired, and by 3am I was the most poorly I’ve ever been in my life. I could not deal with this shit, and I didn’t know at the time that it was glandular fever and thought that I was actually dying, and so I went to the train station at half 5 in the morning and got the first train home.

The train home, for a start, was fucking horrible. There were three drunk boys, obviously on their way home after a night out who were well horny. They would not shut up or leave me alone until I told them that I was quite heavily diseased, possibly dying, at which point they all moved carriage and left me to die in peace.

After two days at home and not feeling any better, I decided to make a doctor’s appointment and see what the old bastard who’d been dealing with me for all of my life so far had to say about why I was ill.