And so he'd become a student. A point in anyone's life when escaping home suddenly revealed a whole new level of disconcerting decision-making, one's he'd never really wanted. He could now, within reason and capability, do anything. His life could assume whatever colour he chose, take on any smell or taste he desired it to have. The internal friction between the risk taking and the risk averse, combined with the financial impoverishment accompanying being an inexperienced sophomore, almost paralysed him. These constraints of life weighed heavier upon him than you might expect. Why wasn't he more devil may care and fancy free? He couldn't afford to be.
Money proscribed the amount of insouciance you possessed, abundance was liberating, any lack felt imprisoning. Today he was painfully aware that the sparse wafers of cash in his wallet were being drawn from a rapidly diminishing bank account. And it was only mid term. Christmas, And the financial relief of living off his parents income, well, that was more weeks away than there was the money for. He'd never had to manage his own money before. Paid his landlady rent, feed himself, decide when he could afford a special treat? These concerns unsettled him. He'd yet to learnt how to efficiently manage the surges of anxiety. Still in a semi improvised phase, money could indeed suddenly run short without him fully understanding how. Living abstemiously off bread and butter, until the next munificent grant cheque arrived. That, or quick return home to check the parents were still alive, and be well fed for a weekend or more if he could swing it.
In the meantime, he'd make the most of subsidised meals served in the college canteen, and plugged any remaining pangs of hunger with anything readily and cheaply available in his local Spar. This was consistently bags of crisps (cheese and onion not plain), doughnuts ( with not without jam ) and a ubiquitous saccharin filled cola ( bottled not canned). Cos he did have standards. Cola had long been his late teenage drink of choice, a sugary drug rush he craved with it's sweet caramel fizz. It was bad for his acne, and as a consequence his self confidence. He looked at his puny eighteen year old body in the mirror, saw the small tire of fatty doughy settling around his waist, and sighed with a helpless shrug. This would only continue expanding, until he took control of his sugar and fat consumption. But you can't fight your genetic inheritance. Anyway, this sort of life shaping decision felt, as yet, completely beyond him. He proudly wore the badge of a blind but youthful optimism, convincing himself it took decades for waistlines to turn obesely flabby. There was oodles of time left to self indulge, before the outward preservation of a deceptively lithe youthful appearance would suddenly enter a more noticeable phase of shameful decline.
Today, he was spending his remaining lunchtime, doing what he often chose to do, wander aimlessly around the semi-rundown, punched out windows of wharf buildings by the old docks. The desultory ruins of an industry broken to smithereens by fishing quotas and adversarial wars over trawling rights, now totally abandoned to historic sentiment. As was his want, he stopped on a favoured wrought iron bridge, once the pride of this municipal trading city. The malnourished bones of which now stuck out like a flicked V sign. Manifesting decay in the sickly flow of its streams that fed into the estuary. There were days when the water seen hurtling down from this bridge, would be a bright scarlet red, or a fluorescent yellow, occasionally pure turquoise blue. Whatever the dye wash the works upstream needed to dump. On this occasion the stream was an unusually normal piddle of shit colour.
Taking a short cut over rubble and wire infested scrubland. Squeezing between the rotting wood skeletons of dilapidated semi-industrial sheds, he reluctantly ambled back in the general direction of college. The one beacon of bright modernity nestled, as it was, beneath the venerable soot blackened statue of a Victorian anti slavery campaigner, perched atop a pillar like Simeon Stylites. Whose watchful eyes missed nothing. Nope, he wasn't ready to return to the over peopled thrum of college campus yet. He veered off down a cute narrow, almost Dickensian, alley peopled by single roomed solicitors offices and the smallest pub in the town. He knew exactly where he was headed, the large sprawling family run department store he'd recently discovered. Where he'd found nectar of pure gold. Welcomed smoothly in through revolving doors, swerving passed the perfume counters, he clambered in increasingly excited expectation up the slow moving escalators. Quickly negotiating his way around the complex layout of the men's clothing department, then haberdashery, then interiors, then gardening, til he reached his top floor nirvana, the department store cafe.
Calling it a cafe, was a bit of a misnomer. It was more a perfunctory adaption of a series of changing rooms into a wall bar and a gaggle of stools. It's dreary terracotta paintwork, much scuffed with disconcerting major dents in its walls, as if it had suffered the consequences of a pensioner bar brawl or two. This cafe was tightly squeezed into one corner of the retail trading floor. With not one window to look out from, through which to view the grey mist shrouded suicidal world beyond. If you were a troubled introvert seeking the rejuvenating solace of being truly alone, and not just with your thoughts, this was the one, the only place. It was his secret pleasure, one not to be shared with anyone else, ever. Because this cafe served him his new obsession, a highlight of this or any other day - the ginger beer float.
No comments:
Post a Comment