Growing Up

In this story there are two Simons. One of them we shall refer to as Simon. The other is Simon James (soon shortened to SJ). The two Simons are living opposite each other in a purpose built wooden unit that houses eight students. It is one of three such buildings that supplement the main accommodation block at the Weston Road campus of North Staffs Polytechnic.

The year is 1985. Autumn. First term for both of them. SJ hails from Oswestry, somewhere close to the Welsh border. The other Simon – yours truly, the unreliable narrator – has come up here from Essex. We share the same first name, but we’re very different people.

I arrived with a battered old cassette machine and a bulging assortment of tapes – with which I proceeded to fill up what appeared to be a small bookcase next to my bed. SJ had a smart and modern looking boom box and just two cassettes. One of these was whichever Led Zeppelin album features Stairway To Heaven. The other was an album by prog rock band Marillion, the one with their hit song Kayleigh on it.

That’s it. For the whole of that first term, the only music I heard through the thin walls of this makeshift building was either one or other of these albums playing in rotation. It definitely had an effect on me - and to be frank, I was never a fan of either band to start with.

By contrast, I had the Ramones live double album. Various works of Cabaret Voltaire. Misty in Roots classic album: Live at the Counter Eurovision. Buzzcocks. The Undertones. Soul Mining, the fantastic debut The The album. And several dozen more. I’m sure my musical tastes were no more acceptable than his, if you look at it objectively, but at least I wasn’t playing the same fucking songs EVERY single day.

At the end of each week, SJ would be picked up by his dad and driven home for the weekend. Sometime on Sunday afternoon or evening, his dad would dutifully drive him back. SJ was a quiet, diligent engineering student. By contrast, because I lived a significant distance further away, I stayed on campus at the weekends. In that first term I think I went home once at most. The rail fare and the length of the journey didn’t really make it feasible, even had I wanted to.

I don’t know what I expected from uni life. Like a lot of what had come before – paper rounds, alter service, the Saturday job at the library – I was following in the path of my siblings. When you don’t know where you’re going, just follow the footsteps in front of you and hope they take you somewhere good.

I wanted to fit in. I wanted to make friends, go see bands, spend time in the pub. Live what I’d observed at second hand to be the student lifestyle. I didn’t want to study computer science and become a computer programmer, but what else could I do? An arts subject, in retrospect, might’ve been a better option, but my A-levels (at which I’d graded so badly) had been in Maths, Computing and Geography. Maths had been a nightmare and I had zero interest in geography.

There’s a lot I could write about that first term and the people I came to hang out with, but that’s peripheral to this piece. I settled in okay. The course was mostly not too bad (it mirrored a lot of what I’d studied at A-level, so for the most part it didn’t overly tax me). I worked. I socialised. North Staffs Polytechnic was a bit off the beaten track. Stafford was not the most glamorous of towns. The campus itself was on the edge of town. The computing department was on a further edge of this already peripheral location. The living accommodation was basic. It got worse when winter arrived.

In my second term I remember getting invited to a party. It was held in the main accommodation building, on the third floor where the female students lived. Two final year arts students were having a party. I’m not sure how I got an invite, but several of the crowd I used to hang out with had been invited.

At this party I got talking to one of the women (I think her name was Sue, but I can’t be sure) whose room we were in. She had similar tastes in music to mine. Even better, she’d recorded backing vocals on a record by A Witness who were an up and coming indie band that had done sessions for John Peel. They were a band I’d heard of. This seemed pretty glamorous to me. Among other common musical interests, it turned out she was interested in that classic Misty in Roots live album, so I offered to lend her my copy.

At this point we were nearing the end of the spring term. At Easter I’d be heading back to Southend. Then one night I got a call from my mother. (For reference, we are off course in a pre-mobile phone era. There was a single payphone on the residential part of the campus where I lived, just outside the canteen area, where people would queue up to make phone calls home to family or loved ones). Someone had answered the phone (I guess I’d given the number to my parents in case of emergency) and come across to find me. It turned out my dad was in hospital after suffering what amounted to a minor heart attack.

I remember that Sue (the woman from the party) came later that evening to return the tape I’d lent her. I think I was still in shock from the news that my dad was in hospital. I explained what had happened, but that was the extent of our conversation. I was already preparing to make a hasty and unplanned trip home. (There was still at least another week to go before the term ended).

*

This is a story of change. Of people evolving. Growing up. At some point after that first term, SJ stopped going home every weekend. He acquired a girlfriend, one of those final year arts students. They were pretty much inseparable. He grew a beard. His music tastes diversified. The young, studious engineer that arrived in late September, had become a different person across the course of nine months. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.

By contrast I didn’t think I’d changed at all. I was still the same quiet, shy introvert. I had done my best to climb out from my shell, but it hadn’t really worked. When I finally returned after an extended Easter break, Sue had moved in with a mature student called Ray who lived at the far end of my block. (He was a muscley, gym guy, so I suppose apart from a shared love of music Sue and I weren’t ever likely to have been compatible). A few weeks later when I made another weekend return to Essex (my dad - with added pacemaker - was now on the road to recovery), a bunch of the people I’d been hanging out with all year decided to group together and find a house share for the following year.

It probably wasn’t deliberately organised to exclude me, but it knocked my confidence. I was suddenly on my own searching for somewhere to live next year. The computing course was going okay, but I knew in my heart of hearts that the technical side of computer coding was not for me. I could no more get my head around it than I could the A-level maths I’d struggled with for the last two years at high school.

It was an odd feeling, returning home at the end of that first year. I’d had a lot of fun, experienced a lot of new things, and I suppose gained some level of independence. But it had fizzled out unsatisfactorily  and I don’t think I was optimistic for the return next autumn. Across the hallway from me, SJ had definitely evolved. We’d never been friends. Maybe he resented the fact that I got first dibs on my name and he was forever left to be SJ. We weren’t enemies though. We were just two very different people, growing up in different ways. At least I no longer had to listen to Stairway To Heaven droning through the walls of my room every evening. For that I would always be grateful.