One Chance

by Paul Potts

  The more I thought about it, the more I felt that sooner or later Alli would find someone better. It got to the point where I didn’t want Alli to go to a party in case she met someone else. Just a little bit of harmless flirting would be enough to set off my insecurity, which came across as jealousy and possessiveness.

  Being apart and having these demons to deal with meant that our relationship was doomed. I was back in Bristol as I had a lecture-free reading week, when Alli gave me a letter explaining that she wanted us to be only friends. I took it badly. I didn’t want to accept it, and tried to discuss the situation with her. I was quite pathetic and even threatened to do away with myself. This upset her, and was possibly the most unpleasant thing I’d ever done. It didn’t make any difference, and a week later Alli started going out with the person I had always seen as my rival for her love. I didn’t blame her for that; I realized I had driven her to it.

  I returned to university after that reading week absolutely devastated. I had the cuddly monkey Allison had given me at the start of the university year for me to imagine it was her while we were apart. As the coach made its way to Plymouth on a grey, wet early Monday morning, I held it close and cried. I felt quite alone.

  ***

  One of the most important parts of university is the social life. For me this was still difficult, as I didn’t want to get too overdrawn at the bank, and I still didn’t have a clue how to handle myself in large groups. But after my relationship with Alli had ended, I made an effort to get involved in all sorts of activities.

  On Thursday nights, I went to the Union Street area of Plymouth. This was student night, so beer was cheap and the club’s admission was free. I was (and still am) hopeless at dancing. I didn’t have the confidence to just get up and not care how I looked. So I only danced to music like Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen,” “Happy Hour” by the Housemartins, and “Love Shack” by the B-52’s. The reason for this was that in these songs, the “dancing” was basically just flailing your arms and legs about, so it didn’t matter how terrible you were!

  Occasionally some of the girls at uni would feel sorry for me and ask me to sit with them, but I had no idea how to ask them out. They always looked so good moving to the early-nineties techno music, whereas I found it impossible to dance to. That didn’t help my confidence. Alli was no longer around, but I was unable to pluck up the courage to find a replacement.

  Away from the club night, I threw myself into music and sport, although I was still struggling with the injuries from my bike accident in Bristol. I tried unsuccessfully to start running again, but found that my knee would seize up in no time at all. I turned to swimming, which was easier, but it bored me rigid. In the end, I started playing basketball.

  That might sound strange—a five-foot-seven basketball player with a dodgy knee—but it’s true! I played for the mixed basketball team for Marjons and was quite successful, even if for the majority of the first year I hobbled round the court. I never jumped up to the basket to tip the ball in like someone twelve inches taller than me would do, but in spite of my temporary disability I managed to find a way to move round the court, and was pretty good at snatching three-pointers. I got great satisfaction from scoring from very unlikely positions.

  Once my knee had healed, I also represented the university at the UK student cross-country championship in Sunderland. I had always been successful as a runner in my teens. I used to run for Bristol Athletics Club in the Gloucester and Gwent Cross Country Leagues, and also represented my county. So I was keen to show what I could do.

  My knee had only just healed properly by the time of the championships in January 1992. On the way up to the northeast, we got stuck in heavy snow in Richmond, North Yorkshire, and had to push our minibus for over a mile through the snow, which did my knee no favours at all. As a result, I had a very poor race the following day, only just managing to finish, and that was the very last time I ran a cross-country race. I was disillusioned and disappointed. It wasn’t the end of my running and certainly not the end of activity, but it was the end of my days as a competitive athlete.

  Towards the end of the summer term of 1992, I took part in a long-distance walk that started in Manchester. It was called the Bogle Stroll, named after a local ghost. “Stroll” was a bit misleading: it was sixty-three miles walked nonstop in a circular route that started in the centre of Manchester and went through Wigan, Standish, Parbold, and Chorley. We got some abuse as we walked past some of the pubs at closing time, and some participants were even beaten up. There appeared to be no reason for the hostility—our attackers were simply louts who’d had too much to drink. I completed it in just over sixteen hours, having to run the last two miles, as my legs were seizing up and I had to use different muscles to complete the course.

  In terms of music at university, there wasn’t really much of a choral tradition to speak of; Marjons only had a tiny choir. I became a member of Plymouth Philharmonic Choir, joining them for one of the most challenging choral pieces ever written: William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. This is a brilliant piece of music, full of great drama and wonderful orchestral interludes. We were fortunate to be accompanied for the performance at Plymouth Pavilions by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Andrew Litton.

  My creative output also encompassed a pantomime held in March 1991. I played the part of a salty sea dog, a young version of Captain Birdseye in the students’ interpretation of the fairy tale “Aladdin.” There were many dodgy jokes (as is normal in the British pantomime tradition), and I panicked the directors by waiting until the night before the first performance to learn my lines. I didn’t miss a single line, though. My parents recorded the performance, and I have since confiscated the VHS tapes—so they are never ever seen by anyone else!

  As the end of my third year approached, the mark I got for my dissertation was going to determine what degree I’d come away with: a high grade coupled with good final exams results would give me a 2:1. Getting an upper second meant better job prospects or qualification for a higher degree. The dissertation had to be fifteen thousand words long and handed in, fully bound, at one o’clock on a Monday afternoon. By the Saturday morning before the deadline, I still hadn’t written a single word.

  I was no different at university than I had been at school. I always did the required reading, but started the work at the last possible moment because that was how I worked best. It was as if I thrived on the sense of urgency, where there was nothing for it but to pour everything into it right up to the wire.

  I would do much of my work at night in the days approaching a deadline. At one point in my final year, I had four three-thousand-word essays that had to be in at the same time. I left them all until the last week, which meant I had to work through the nights to get them completed. Every night that week, I went for a four-mile walk to clear my head and then sat down to work. I drank several cups of coffee and had music playing very quietly on a tape deck. It wasn’t the caffeine in the coffee that kept me awake, but instead the trips to and from the toilet!

  I completed all four essays just on time, with next to no sleep over the period. I handed them in and went to a theology lecture, where I’m told that my snoring was a source of amusement to the class. When I got home and sat in front of the TV, I soon fell asleep again. I woke up two days later with a very sore neck. It was all worth it, though. When I got the essays back, they were the highest marks I’d received in my three years at Marjons, and made getting a 2:1 a real possibility.

  My dissertation was in philosophy of religion, under the title “Which Way to Theodicy? A Study of the Solutions to the Problem of Evil and Suffering in a God-Created World.” I read widely, and ended up arguing against the original sin doctrine of Saint Augustine, since I didn’t think it fair that people should pay penalties for things their predecessors had done.

  The subject was more than just a philosophical issue for me. At times while writing and preparing my dissertation
, it left me asking myself, Why me? Why did I have to go through the physical abuse at school? Why did I have to go through the sexual abuse by Burton-Barri? I really struggled to accept the necessity of suffering. Where was the greater good? How was my suffering helping others? How was it meant to help me?

  I kept searching for answers, but never found anything satisfactory—just more and more questions. I was torn. Despite my strong arguments against the Augustinian idea of blaming mankind for its suffering, I still blamed myself for the abuse and for my own suffering. Blaming the perpetrators for what I had been through didn’t work, as to my mind there had to be a reason why they did what they did. I thought I was the common denominator.

  By the Saturday morning before the dissertation was due, I had written up all my notes by hand and was ready to type them up on the university computers over the weekend. As I made my way to the sports block, I passed some workmen outside but thought nothing of it. Once I got to the computer, I’d written about four thousand words when suddenly it went dead. The workmen, it turned out, had drilled through the network cables and everything I’d typed was lost.

  Because it was the weekend the library was shut, so I couldn’t use the computers there. I went to the porter’s lodge and explained the situation.

  “I suppose you could use the computers in the history section,” the porter offered. “But only until I finish my shift, as I’ll have to lock up then.”

  Immensely grateful, I started typing again. By the time the porter came to lock up on Sunday evening, I was close to completing fifteen thousand words. This left me the next morning to finish the typing, put all the chapters into one file, spellcheck the full document, get it bound, and hand it in.

  I got up early on the Monday and made good progress. I was looking good to hand in the work, bang on time. I set about putting the chapters into one document and was just saving it before spellchecking it, when . . .

  Blink!

  To my horror, there had been another power cut! For the second time in two days, I had lost power as the document was saving. I had lost all my work, which meant I had to retype the whole dissertation from start to finish. I was never going to be able to do that in two hours, so I went to the humanities office and spoke to the staff. I begged for an extension, and was given until ten the following morning to get the dissertation in.

  Thankfully, the same porter who’d been helpful before was on a late shift and he again allowed me to use the computers in the history section. This time, I managed to get it all typed out. I just had time to spellcheck the document, but not to grammar check it, before I had it printed and bound. I handed it in just in time.

  In my final exams, my luck appeared to have turned: two of the essay questions on my philosophy of religion paper were on areas I had covered in my dissertation. Having written and rewritten my dissertation, I was able to remember many of the sources and quotes to use in arguments. I got first class honours marks for the paper, and when I got my dissertation marks from my dissertation supervisor, I was overjoyed. I had scraped a first class grade for that as well.

  Adding in my previous marks, I was right on the border between getting a 2:1 or a 2:2. As a result, my dissertation was called in for external assessment. The external examiner agreed with my dissertation supervisor’s grading for the content, but took seven marks off for typographical errors; mistakes I would have picked up if I’d had time to do a grammar check. I was very disappointed, but a 2:2 with honours was still a good degree.

  The question now was, what was I going to do next? Having concluded that a professional singing career wasn’t possible, my plan while at Marjons was to go into retail management. When I graduated, however, the British economy was not in great shape. In 1993, it was just coming out of recession, and although they were just beginning to fall, unemployment levels were still extremely high. Jobs were scarce, and every graduate opening was heavily oversubscribed.

  At the end of my degree, I was £1500 overdrawn and under pressure from my bank to repay it. I returned to the temping agency I’d worked for during the holidays and ending up doing a string of manual jobs. I worked in a dairy and then a food factory in Ashton Gate. I was then moved to a company called Bristol Bending Services, which made car parts for Honda and Rover. It was hard and dirty work; I was put on the lathes, and would be black with dirt by the end of the day. Mum and Dad were disappointed that I couldn’t find a job more suited to my qualifications, but were proud that I wasn’t content just to mope around on benefit.

  With no permanent jobs opening up, I decided to continue my studies. I was accepted onto the master’s degree in applied theology at Marjons, for which I would be studying part-time, travelling down to Plymouth once a week. With work for the temping agency proving inconsistent, the main issue for me was financing the course.

  Help came from an unexpected source. Around this time, I represented All Saints Church at a Deanery conference, which was led by the resident theologian canon of Bristol Cathedral. I had a chat with the canon afterwards, and learned that the cathedral was looking for a temporary verger up until Christmas. He very kindly said he would recommend me for it, and after a short interview I was accepted for the job.

  The verger role was mainly a ceremonial one: leading the choir in and out of the cathedral. It was great for me, as it meant I was able to sing every day I was in work! The cathedral was a very special place to sing, with its ten-second echo (it has a very long, high vaulted nave, which means the sound takes a long time to travel to the back of the church). This meant that leading the choir in from the back of the church, we were only just hearing the start of the processional hymn when the organ was already halfway through the verse! We would play catch-up all through the hymn.

  At the end of my tenure at the cathedral, I got a similar job at St. Mary Redcliffe Church, where I had spent much of my youth in the school religious services. There was more manual work required here, especially after windy days when I would have to sweep the churchyard. It was a very satisfying experience working in these fine buildings. I have always sat in wonder at how hundreds of years ago, people were able to build such huge and beautiful buildings with their hands, using only wooden scaffolding and pulleys.

  This job, too, was only temporary. It came to an end in the spring of 1994, and although I came close to a permanent position at Bath Abbey, it wasn’t to be. I struggled to find work and started claiming unemployment benefit—something I hated doing. I continued to apply for lots of jobs, but many of the employers felt I was overqualified.

  Although I passed my first year’s exam with distinction, I was behind with my term-time work, and my essays weren’t of such a high standard. I was also behind with my payments to the university, a situation that got even more difficult when the benefit office threatened to cut off my money if I used it to pay my college fees. This struck me as very strange: I was trying to improve myself and yet they were punishing me for it. I ended up with a county court judgment against my name, and then the college disallowed me from continuing my studies because I had failed to pay the fees. At the time, I was living with my parents and therefore not eligible for housing support, so the money I was receiving on benefit was for my personal use.

  My academic career was over, but I did finally find work. In October 1994, I got a temporary six-week contract at the Tesco supermarket chain. It was retail, if not retail management, but that was okay by me. My degree wasn’t such that I could simply walk into management, and I was fully prepared to get my hands dirty and work my way up the ladder. As it turned out, I was to spend the next ten years working for Tesco. It was very physical work and I enjoyed interacting with the public. However, often I had to work nights, which was very difficult to adjust to.

  As I settled into my new job, I began to take an interest in local politics. My younger brother, as well as Mum and Dad, had already become involved in the Liberal Democrat Party locally, and were helping with leaflet drops. I wanted to be more involved an
d started to write articles for Focus, the local Liberal Democrat newsletter. Since I was used to writing academic papers, my writing style had to change dramatically in order to be effective on a local newsletter. I was told I would need to write as though for a younger reading age, and use a tabloid style.

  In 1995, I decided to stand as a candidate for the local elections, since I had become interested in politics and Mum, Dad, and Tony were already involved as well. I had no chance of winning, as the Liberal Democrats had done nothing in the area, Eastville Ward, for a long time. In the run-up to the elections and on election day itself, I helped out in the neighbouring ward to my own, in order to get someone elected there.

  I’d had to do canvassing for a few weeks in my first-year holiday, but it wasn’t something I’d originally enjoyed. Then I found my own way of doing it: rather than simply asking what party someone intended to vote for, I began by asking if there was anything the local party could do for them. This made canvassing less of a sales routine for me, and was a method I brought into my local area when it was time to start campaigning in my own ward.

  In the first elections in 1995, I finished in fourth place, behind a local independent party. I bided my time, and my opportunity came when the sitting councillor resigned her seat. I flung myself into the canvassing, and after a busy campaign I was elected in May 1996, leaping from fourth place to win.

  Having both a full-time job with Tesco and being on the council meant that I was very busy. At first, Tesco management was unhappy, as it meant I would take paid time away from the store: company policy was that local community work was given as paid leave. They became more supportive when I interceded between them and a local pub over the return of shopping trolleys the pub had collected because they weren’t being picked up in the area.