The Life and Times of Koppa Hempew

• 27th July 2019 •

I'm camping. It feels awful strange. I haven't been camping in quite the while, and although I had barely come back from an Italy excursion, it felt weird to be with my full family again. My sister was on a music tour for four days and we flew out to watch a concert, which would of been a piece of crap and a drag if my parents hadn't agreed to buy me and my best friend a tall mojito, which, with our lack of food, went straight to our heads.

We had cycled maybe 5 miles to Durdle Door on the south coast in Dorset. It was a pretty ride, but the coastal hills are incredibly unforgiving and I found myself dizzy with sickness when I had conquered the steepest.

I write this like Jane Austen, but I assure you I am much more exciting in real life, I just enjoy her writing style. You certainly feel Victorian when no Wifi or data is available, and I have barely picked up my phone, I am too busy looking at how the camping site's children interact, or how the light reflects of the grass, of the gravelly paths we cycled on, of how my mother's roots are appearing again and I can see it in the sun, how my parent's brandy flashes in the gas lamp light. Life at home seemed too fast to register these things.

At my age, I wonder wether I should stop and look at these things, drink in their details, or rush through everything, packing my days with furious illegal activities with equally aggressive criminal friends. I wonder wether I'll live to see tomorrow, so should I enjoy the things I can now? I can spend my later years peering at someone else's wisteria.

We had a very burnt BBQ, but yummy none the less. We then played frisbee, which I became quite good at and wondered if I could go professional if everything else flopped.

I waste my energy thinking about my future a lot these days. I have managed to convince myself it'll all come together at the end, and I should enjoy the 50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love.
I found that ironic. A time that inspired me and that I had yearned at had come full circle. The Infamous Summer of "69. This summer was supposedly the best. I had finished my GCSEs, and was the 10 weeks before turning into a young adult. Despite being 16, I am no where near an adult. Girls and Boys around me try and act like them, but I know I'll regret the time when I could act like a kid, I instead dived nose first into adulthood. This bridge of adolescence is a time to celebrated, to it's deepest depths, when we can be children. Adultdom seems awful; loud, furious, full of money and politics and stress.

I can brush it off. As a 16 year old. My only resolution now is to love others. As gut-renchingly cliché this may be, I see around me children who hate so passionately, who radiate such negative, senseless thought and feeling because they think that makes them adult. It doesn't. They are not adults. They are children and they are making fools of themselves to convince others otherwise.

We may feel like adults, because we are treated sometimes as such. National Insurance Numbers in our 16th birthdays, drinking beer with our parents, choosing colleges, universities, the stones which pave the future.

For me, I place the stones lightly, and tread lightly. Others push the stones so hard into the ground in furious determination, convinced. they will be doctors or lawyers. But what happens if that doesn't work out? Wrong qualifications, botched interviews, bad days, a change of heart. Too bad, your stones are too far deep, you cannot move them. But me, you'll laugh at my naïveté, my vagueness of my future, but my stones can move. To the sea, the meadows, the neon lights and more. Your stones are straight-lined down an office corridor.

Of course, I say this, but I'll praise you for having such a hard grip on life. Sometimes I envy that determination of simplicity. That easy dead straight line through life. I haven't the brains to decide so brashly.

My ankles itch. I inherited my fathers tendency to get heat rash. I am tired and my back is wet from leaning on a damp tea towel hanging on my chair.

"A spider!"
My sister exclaims from her air bed. It's a daddy long legs. Nothing too scary, yet she moves to my bed.

The radio sings in Wessex pride. They certainly like their jingles. My eyes are drifting, so I'll close up

Good Night x

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Koppa Hempew is not my real name. It's a pen name, quite fancy right?
Koppa for all the Koppaberg cider I drink.
Hempew for the weed I smoke.
Ironic?