westid

In a way I couldn’t wait to get there. In a way I couldn’t wait to come back. I know someone who hates students with the same zeal that I perhaps did all of the rest of the time. That’s the person I pay tribute to today. He’s not gone, he will never die. Neither will his legacy in these thoughts of mine …

Let’s play never-have-i-ever and pretend the pretence of being a student. Yeah it was great, however also one of them times I was ruining myself. One dweeb who I foolishly befriended just making sure I didn’t get a single slice of the graduand’s prosecco cake. I’ll give you one for free, prior to the downage of the communal glass; this viscous black liquid made from all the cheap bubbly shit you can find in the reduced items on the campus shop

Once it was all over, I never looked back. I should have been clinging onto all the people who were going to come into success (and even fame) when I got that 2:1. I should have joined the Freemasons but I fucked that up before I even got there, that’s another story though… and I doubt they will have me now.

There was one memory of Lancaster I will never forget. The only time I really truly went there … My friend, my emotional rock at the time, needed me. One of the most courageous and honourable men I have ever met, that’s for sure, laid there in hopelessness …

Perhaps some of you may remember it all different. But – so caught up in the dire straits of my own way of looking at things – I knew a man, the likes of whom I know I will never meet ever again; in any measure… but my mate was no half-measure, he’s the real deal

Sometimes I think of the things we did together and how we both grew (albeit opposite ways in some respect) but he was always there for me. I didn’t know it for a long time because you can distract yourself from what matters most in little increments, but I pushed everyone away; and so I pushed him away and I will regret that for the rest of my life

No Regrets. No memories.

– Scott Sands

I never really understood that. There’s a lot I would do to put the things that I did / went through / whatever, behind us. Some people you meet in your life (and I can remember many a people, me) and – as ghostly a man as I became – the echoes of their wisdom bring about a smile and the odd teary-eye from time to time…

We were there for each other. And if he showed up I would drop everything at a moment’s notice. But what about me? Why can’t I do it? Sorry to tell you this, son, but one day when it’s all over … you will remember only this, these people, these times. And that’s one damn fine collection of shenanigans if you ask me. The kind beneath which all shenanigans aspire to reach upwardly towards …

I will take some mad shit that you wouldn’t even believe if I told you. One man might. He was there. Sometimes chaps, you don’t know how lucky you are…

They used to tell me that same rubric, everyone I properly spoke to all the time. It’s as though they were on their way up and I was on my way down. I would never swap sides, of course. If I could go down for them all I would live a lifetime for each of them people who enjoyed the lavish reward ceremony that begins once you wake up on a pool table having slept on it all night

I pay the price now for not being there. A piece of my heart that will never grow back. Maybe we will meet again; the world’s not that big is it? Should it happen godwilling, I existed a bit too much without that now

If you know me. Properly know me… you either know why I did it or why I’m probably well on the way to do it next; depending on how recently to me that you came into my general orbit, you may be feeling a bit left out “nice one for the shout-out, dick head” don’t despair

In some way I was ashamed. I don’t feel like it was anyone’s fault – don’t blame anyone. I need reaching out to a bit more than most of the people. Because my mate, he’s a giant. I say giant because no one person could stand against him with his wisdom, and distinguished countenance… But whatever he’s doing out there, wherever he is now, I know he’s still that lad I first met so many years ago … and I wish we could sit in that old house where we used to go