The Eejit

Chapter 2: No Surrender

The funny thing is that, despite my best attempts, I must have actually received a good education. I got all my A levels; my mother's tears and my father's benevolence in the face of my idleness, must, I suppose, have prompted me to get my head down and do something. I worked when I was supposed to, and even began to be interested in my chosen subjects. At night I would learn to play my new guitar diligently, and I also began to write some songs of my own.

I was beginning to establish, though I wasn't aware of it at the time, something that would follow me for a long time to come, something Simon had already realised for himself, and that was a sort of uneasy equilibrium between what was expected of me, on the one hand, and what I actually wanted to do on the other. Even my reports got better and the school holidays were all the better for everyone at home because of it.

I also managed to get into the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, to study politics, somewhere I had chosen, with all the usual care that I took about important matters affecting my future, because of it not requiring applicants to have passed their maths O level and because it was by the sea. It was at Aberystwyth that I met Sean Webster.

Sean Webster was the first person I met at college. He had sparsely furnished room, save for a miniature cactus and a bed and in time I'd learn that the cactus was probably surplus to requirements. His room was opposite mine in our hall of residence, which we didn't stay in long, and once we had both been visited by the Socialist Workers Party Students Society and the Christian Union, we set about getting to know each other a bit.

Now I don't want to go on about this but I will never understand why the Christian Union try to recruit people just as they have arrived at university. Do they honestly think that the 1500 or so 18 year old adolescents, who have just arrived and are in most cases away from their overbearing, over-protective parents for the first time in their lives, are seriously going to pass up this once in lifetime opportunity for a prolonged period of intensively consuming as much alcohol and shagging everyone they can and playing the giddy goat, preferring instead to dedicate themselves to god? It was tough sell. The Christian Union rep was a sincere looking, bespectacled girl who wore pleated jeans and asked me, as I was unpacking, if I had found Jesus. The temptation to make the obvious 'No, why, did you leave him in here! ho ho' type comment proved almost irresistible, but I managed to be polite to her. I knew she wasn't going to get anywhere with me and there seemed to be no reason to be rude to her. Anyway, once she found out I was a catholic, she left pretty sharpish, as if I had some contagious illness.

Sean, another second generation paddy, was a carthorse of a man who had a rugged look about him as though he had spent his life in the open, roaming the Peak District, where he lived, like some legendary Yeti, of whom only murky and out of focus photographs exist, taking the occasional shelter from extreme weather under a rock. He had grown up in South Yorkshire, the son of a Dublin builder and his English wife. Sean was an only child and had a self-containment about him that reflected this. Inarticulate as he was, (and he really was) he was also very bright; three A grade A levels had brought him to the Welsh Riviera.

Unlike Simon and I, we agreed on most of the important issues in life and we both sailed through our student initiation ceremony which involved us going into town with the 2nd and 3rd year students, wearing 'L' plates until we had drunk 10 pints of Guinness in one night (Oh the wit and repartee). This, it must be said, was no great hardship for either of us, and we often repeated the feat.

There were firsts to be had at university but the only first I was after was putting a band together and playing some gigs and so it was that my first band, Citizen Shane was born. There were a number of us in Citizen Shane depending on who was free at the time and we ranged from being a sparse but classic, guitar base drums combo to a more elaborate Santana type arrangement with Brass and other such fripperies.