Was yesterday. And I hope other people took the time to celebrate but I doubt it because it isn’t as well known as it certainly should be.
I had a mild sort of almost-migraine when I woke up that morning. I’ve been full of flu, on and off since thursday so I’m not very strong and I’m all snuffly and my face is being overtaken by my sinus. It was a real effort to drag myself out of bed. But I did it. Because there’s no point sitting around moping and whining and missing out on opportunities, because then you’ll just mope and whine about how rubbish your life is, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the connection is. I don’t have much sympathy for people who make it worse for themselves.
And so, at quarter past twelve I find myself at Guy’s Campus. This is a place that feels like home; where I
One entrance to Guy's Campus
lived last year, where I conquered myself and university life and all that sort of thing. And I ran into someone I used to live with and haven’t seen all summer, called Akash but everyone calls him Manchester (no prizes for guessing where he’s from) and we had a chat and he helped me find the place I was going. I was late for what I was doing but it was worth it.
Guy’s Hospital names its big open spaces after the human heart, so I was in Atrium 2. I kind of think that is a nice touch. It was a high ceiling quadrangle effect with plants and seating and a walkway. Inside there was a free poetry … thing. I don’t know what you’d call it. A reading, almost, except it was all about music and poetry. There was a jamaican poet called Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze a name some may recognise and more should. She’s a dub poet and one of the first to do so in Britain, and it is an especially male-dominated sub-genre. She spoke of her childhood and her poetry, of Jamaican family and religion, and she sung with a deep beautiful voice. Clicking on the link will take you to some of her poems.
The poets present can be found on the Apples&Snakes website, along with a whole host of talented other people. Stolen from their website (it is their poem of the month) I give you the first piece of poetry I heard, humourous and touching in turns;
These are my old jeans now
These are my old jeans now.
Which means I don’t think twice about wiping my hands on the back of them.
Even when it’s cold
and, finding no tissues about my person,
I’ve tried to do that thing that footballers do
when they shoot snot
out of one nostril,
but failed
and had to wipe snot off my upper lip with the back of my hand.
Even then.
And as for the front, first let me say – it’s a jump, I’ll explain -
I eat a lot of oranges
satsumas, clementines, tangerines, I’m not picky – but when wearing new jeans,
I make a conscious effort to eat citrus fruits over a plate.
So, I am somewhat ashamed to say
that, as I look down now,
I can see several tell-tale yellowy orange stains
around the left upper leg and crutch
that tell me unequivocally
these are my old jeans now.
However, what I would most like to discover,
is for how long that has been the case.
Am I the last to know?
Surrounded by people too polite or afraid to mention
that I’m rocking frayed and faded denim,
the sort most won’t do the garden or paint the fence in.
If only I’d paid attention!
That said, in their heyday,
I proudly admit that I would wear this pair for seven or eight days straight.
Not because I had no other jeans,
but because these jeans were the ones;
the go-to-pair with the look that you like,
that look right when you look down from above,
or when you walk past a mirror and cast your glance up -
they sag right, they hang right,
and crucially the size of the ankle works with every pair of trainers I own.
Because as we all know,
there’s nothing worse than what appear on first sight
to be a good pair of jeans turning out to be the type,
that either totally obscure your footwear,
or worse still bunch up too tight round the ankle,
leaving my size elevens looking like clown shoes.
I would never have dreamed,
of doing an eight day consecutive stretch in these jeans when they were my new jeans,
and no way would such a feat of endurance be expected of them now.
Because now they’re my old jeans.
Old pockets, old hems, old seams.
And crushingly, they begin to look soiled within the first two days of wear.
Not that they’re spoiled, but the light blue looks grey on the upper thighs,
like my dark brown hair looks grey on the sides – at twenty five!
The curious thing is,
I cannot pinpoint the exact moment that these jeans became my old jeans,
only the moment that I realised.
I was sitting on the toilet when it came to me, and I have to admit I was surprised.
My new jeans had turned old in the blink of an eye. Either that or time flies.
Not that I mind.
Just sitting there on the shitter with my newly outed old jeans round my ankles.
These are my old jeans now I said to myself,
these are my old jeans now.
– Simon Mole
I too, was wearing old jeans that day.
After the poetry I headed down to Guy’s Bar, a key social hub of all the GKT MedSoc sorts. I was hoping to bump into Manchester again but instead found most of the medics from my halls sat around, so I ended up staying there until 3pm just chatting, before heading to my Romanticism lecture,
The author of A Vindication of the Rights of Man and Woman
which was significantly more interesting than last weeks, studying and contrasting Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft (I’m reading Vindication of the Right’s of Woman, which is rather a worthwhile read even if she much couch everything in a hefty thwack of, “GOD! See, I’m not a dirty atheist I promise.”)
After that I headed to the Oxfam society meeting, and had a chat about making the world a less shitty place. I’m pretty much on board. I’d like to do some campaigning. I’ve had a feeling lately that I’ve not acheieved anything; certainly not this summer, but more generally – I blame my birthday coming up. 20 years old. I’ve been on this earth two decades and I’ve not done anything particularly extraordinary. I can fit my achievements into a box of grade certificates and sentimental photographs, and my life into my dad’s carboot. I don’t feel like I made enough effort last year. I’m a firm believer in you get out what you put in, and I just didn’t try at university. And it’s far too easy to dismiss it as, I was sick so I missed out on some stuff. I was sick yesterday and yet I still went out, and I was rewarded with lively poetry and seeing friends. So I’m on the Creative Writing for sure, and probably now Oxfam. They’re doing things all the time, which can actually make a difference to the way the world is run. I’d like to be a part of that.
And when I got home I had a long Deep And Meaningful with my housemate Lindsey. She irritates me, a lot of the time, but I’m finding as I get used to her she’s got a lot of good qualities I missed first time round. We’re very different people in many ways, and some of her attitudes to things make me quite angry. But when you get past all her funny little quirks and frets and bizarre ideas, you’ll have a good laugh with her and watch Star Wars together and talk about your crush on Spock. You heard. Spock, bitches.
He means business.
So I think everything will work out alright afterall. Maybe I’m still on a high from performance poetry, or the sensation of motivation, or maybe I just needed a little extra faith in another human being, but either way, ‘Don’t Stop Believin” is no longer the first song I put on of a morning.
But that might just be because I bought new bedsheets and a fleecey blanket so I wake up cosyhappysnuggled.
