I don’t have too many happy memories of my years in further education. It's nobody else's fault, I just had a number of issues back then that I'm probably still working through. There are still quite a few fond memories of course, but very few that could be described as actually happy. I met some wonderful people during those years, people who I still think a kind thought for every now and again, and in the unlikely event that any of you ever get to read this, you’ll probably be fairly pleased to know that, no matter what the ravages of time have done to you, you’re all locked in my memory as being in your early twenties, full of vim and vigour and infinite possibilities. In my head, your future’s still out there, waiting to be seized, and any unhappinesses have yet to cloud your joie de vivre.
Quite how I ended up at what was then considered a middling art school in the bottom right hand corner of Wales is due to many things. I could blame my secondary school which insisted I took A-level Maths (the “applied” part of which baffled me for two years) instead of English (which I adored), or a Physics teacher who obviously knew his stuff, but somehow failed to get it across to his class (unlike the ingenious chap who had taken us through the O-level), but I won’t. I will blame the fact that I liked Art, was always moderately talented, worked moderately hard, and was destined for a moderately successful career at the blunt end of my chosen profession. Hey! It's paid the bills for over twenty years, so I can't really complain.
A life in Graphic Design really seemed to be a rational choice for me (Why do we have to be fitted to purpose so young? Exotic professions like “marine biologist” or something never even graced our hallowed halls in those days. “You”ll be a Banker”, “You”ll be a Teacher”, “You”ll be a Soldier” seemed to be the default position they took.), but a middling foundation year and rejection by all of my preferred choices (not least due to an interference by my course head who sent me off on a wild goose chase interview and then immediately forgot to tell the place he’d sent me to that I was coming) led me first to Hull and back (A scary man in purple ran things there) and finally to Wales, the Land of my Father.
I spent three years in Gwent producing artwork unlikely to take the world by storm and fancying lots of pretty girls most of whom had names ending in “a” who were quite rightly oblivious to anything I might have had resembling charm back then and ignored me with a (singular lack of) passion. (In the end that all turned out for the best, and I found my beloved eventually, so we're all happy and few have had to live with unfortunate memories of me, so really everyone was a winner.)
However, I did make some good friends. Many of them on the first night I was there. This surprised me as I’ve always been quite rubbish at friendships, especially at making new ones, and had headed to Wales fully convinced I wouldn’t talk to anyone for three years.
I met them on the village green. I’d strolled down with my immediate neighbour, who I’d “bravely” got chatting to and he knew some of them. They’d all just been thrown out of a pub. There had been a slight clash of cultures. A young lad with a broad Devonian accent had just been addressed by a Landlord with a broad Welsh accent, which was his first real experience of such a thing, and chaos was bound to ensue. Twice the landlord asked “Are you over 18?” Twice the reply came “Parrrdon?” On the third time of asking, the reply was a more considered and emphatic (and completely wrong) “No!” and out they all tumbled, only to be met by us. On such small things are futures shaped. At least the English embarrassment of just saying “I’m sorry, I don’t understand your accent” had been avoided so “Victory was ours!” and we went to another pub and let someone else order, and brewed up some long-lasting friendships over the course of a few beers.
Victory was indeed ours!
Luckily Caerleon village in those days had about fourteen pubs in an area of about one square mile, and socially the next three years were happy enough. Caerleon itself goes down in my personal history as a fine old place, much loved by the Romans and one of four places in my life (so far) where I’ve had a gun pointed at me.
Two of my happiest memories involve those very pubs. Oddly enough, and not just because of the old Welsh cliché, both involved music, a talent that, despite the best efforts of my Grandfather, has sadly always managed to escape me.
The first was just before Christmas in my second year when we were bidding farewell to our American exchange buddies Jeff and Lisa. A glorious night that erupted into a singalong battle between tables in the “Crown”, where my own ridiculous ability to fairly accurately absorb pointless song lyrics came into it’s own with massively out-of-key drunken renditions of the “Muppet Show Theme” and “Edelweiss” topped off what was (for me anyway), a rather special evening.
The other involved a number of jukeboxes. I think I’d had a rather rotten evening. The latest letter “a” had probably been utterly charmed by someone else and I think a few of us had finally given up on that Saturday night and decided to try our luck at the Union bar, when we had what can only really seem a brilliant idea after half a dozen pints of Dry Blackthorn (other brands of drink were available, and consumed).
Now I remember this as involving six pubs, but I guess it was probably only really three, but between the “three” or “six” of us we dashed into the various pubs at just before closing time and programmed the various jukeboxes to play Glenn Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” (it was that sort of village) at hopefully more or less the same time. Then we stood near the village green (or more likely in the queue at the chip shop) and listened as the same song, one that the inhabitants of the village back then could never resist singing along to, soared out more or less simultaneously over the rooftops of that little Welsh village on a rather special night.
No I don’t have too many happy memories of my years in higher education, but sometimes I wonder whether they might possibly have been the best years of my life.
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