I Blame Morrissey

by Jamie Jones

  The 2nd big event of the summer of 1995 was mine and Jacko’s long planned month-long inter railing trip. Thanks to my ever strengthening belief in “Braggism”, I was desperate to go to the old communist bloc countries. Jacko was keen to visit Prague and Budapest, mainly because he had heard you could get a pint for the equivalent of 20p.

  We planned our trip in extensive detail, well at least we thought we had. It was to be a month of adventure and exploration. Two childhood friends having a “Stand By Me” style trip before embarking on university life. In reality it ended up being 3 weeks (we ran out of money) of adventure, coupled with long train journeys, visa problems and me trying to explain to Slovakian waiters that vegetarians didn’t eat bacon no matter how small the chef chopped it up. We returned to this Sceptred Isle a little wiser, with stories to tell (bribing a policeman to avoid prison in Romania was the best of them) and with a lot less money in our pocket.

  Being back in Peterborough with only a couple of weeks left before my departure to Cardiff, I needed to get myself organised. This mainly involved having long, emotional conversations with Jess about the future. I was convinced that going to Cardiff wasn’t going to change me. I was a fully formed adult who had held down a job, been to festivals, inter railing and, thanks to the teachings of Doody, knew how to handle my beer. What was university going to teach me about life? I was going there to read, learn and watch live music. As our relationship had survived the previous 4 months of long distance romance, I was convinced that it would survive me going away again. Jess was starting 6th form that September so we both had lots of studying to be getting on with. We made a decision that we would stay together and ring/write everyday to keep the romance alive.

  I didn’t really prepare for university life at all. I daydreamed a lot about it. I spent weeks deciding which CD’s, books, posters of Morrissey, Orwell and Star Wars I was taking to put up in my halls of residence room. I bought tickets well in advance for Pulp and Black Grape gigs at my new student union and splashed out on what, on paper at least, looked like the dream ticket; David Bowie supported by Morrissey at the Cardiff International Arena. What I didn’t think about was the impact that moving away from my family, friends and beloved football club would have. I had been to Hereford and convinced myself that going to university for 3 years was just the same as a 4 month stint teaching football to privileged kids.

  As it turned out, my life was to change in a way that I hadn’t foreseen at all. For the first time in my 19 years, I was about to fall in love.

  Cardiff, Here We Come

  ON a burning hot day in September, I said my goodbyes to my nearest and dearest. Stood on our driveway, I felt unusually devoid of emotions as Jess and Mum wept into their sleeves. It was no big deal. I was just going off to study and would be back home soon enough. I wasn’t going to change. I was me and would remain so for better or worse. With our trusty Cavalier packed solid with my stuff, Dad drove me to Cardiff for the first time.

  Upon arrival, we quickly located my halls of residence, which were called Talybont North (re-christened ‘Talybronx’ by the students). I unloaded all of my gear from the car into my room and said a neat, enemotional goodbye to Dad as he reminded me in time honoured style to ring Mum in the next hour;

  Dad – ‘You don’t need to speak or anything, just go to the phone box, give her 3 rings and put the phone down. She will know that we got here safely, you’re happy and I am on my way home.’

  Me – ‘Blimey, Mum should work for MI5 if she can deduce all that from 3 rings.’

  Dad – ‘Jeeez, Jay, you really need to work on your jokes if you are going to get a girlfriend whilst you’re here.’

  Me – ‘I’ve already got a girlfriend Dad.’

  Dad – chuckling – ‘We’ll see how that pans out son, we’ll see.’

  With that he gave me a huge hug, the likes of which he hadn’t given me since England’s World Cup semi-final defeat in 1990. As he let go and the air returned to my lungs, he said quietly:

  ‘I’m very proud of you son. You are going to have a tremendous life and this place is going to be just right for you. You belong here, don’t let anyone ever tell you that you don’t, ok? Have fun, keep safe and remember that me and your mum love you.’

  As I burst into a tsunami of tears and dived to hug him again, he turned away, already moving back to the safety of the car. The moment was fleeting and had now gone. As always, Dad had a peerless way to kill the emotion of the situation;

  ‘You better wipe your eyes and stop crying. The lads in your flat will think you’re a right nancy-boy crying because your dad’s leaving. Go on, get inside and listen to your Morrissey tapes, and I will see you soon.’

  With that he was gone and I ran to my room, shielding my tear-stained eyes in case anyone saw me and got to work rigging up my stereo. Within a couple of minutes I was blasting out “Your Arsenal” as loudly as the speakers could take. I was marking my territory.

  The other 5 lads that shared my flat (no mixed sex flats in Talybont), were all sat in the kitchen chatting when I ventured out of my room. Over quick introductions, I found that they were all about to begin a Geology degree course and were all very much into their rugby. Months before we were assigned our rooms, I had filled in a questionnaire about my interests in order, I thought, to be placed in a flat with students that also loved Morrissey and Peterborough United. Looking around the kitchen, I concluded that my questionnaire must have got lost. Despite their collective love of the oval ball, they all seemed decent enough and we spent that first afternoon sat around chatting about our lives and asking the standard university starter question, “What A-levels did you get?”

  The only one of my new flatmates that really stood out was Matt. He arrived on his motorbike with the accompanying leather jacket, trousers and an openly Hells Angels attitude to women. His first words to me were;

  ‘Alright mate, where are all the fucking birds eh? I thought this place would be full of fanny!’

  My inner Braggism was just formulating a modern feminist response denouncing that sort of misogynistic rubbish when he slapped me heartily on the back, took the un-opened can of Fosters out of my hand and walked out of the room. He returned 10 minutes later draining the can and, upon seeing my proudly displayed PUFC badge, informed me that he liked football but didn’t support a team. That instantly made me suspicious. Little did I know the impact that this grease-monkey was to have on my first few weeks in Cardiff.

  My first meal at university was all set to be the traditional beans on toast. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring a can opener, so decided to prise off the lid from the tin of beans with the sharp knife that Mum had insisted on me packing. As I plunged the blade downwards it took an angled bounce off the can and embedded itself into my left thumb. With blood squirting out of the gash, I refused all offers of help from my concerned flatmates and instead went to my room and used a whole roll of the sterilised bandage that Dad had liberated from the first aid box at his work. At this point, with my thumb pulsing in pain, I decided to give up on making tea and go to the Halls bar to get drunk.

  First I had to pick which band t-shirt to wear for my first social interaction with my fellow students. Such items of merchandise were a badge of honour, showing which clan I belonged to and where my allegiance lay. I pulled on my old faithful “The Queen Is Dead” shirt and made my way to the dark, bunker-like Talybont bar. I ordered a pint of lager and looked around, disturbed to see that, of the people in the room, one was wearing a Levellers long-sleeved top and the other two were sporting Welsh rugby shirts.

  Due to a combination of nerves, fear and the fact that it was £1 a pint happy hour, I downed my first lager and greedily set about my second. Taking another furtive glance around the bar, I noticed a lad who, even sat down, looked about 8 foot tall and was sporting a Depeche Mode “Violator” t-shirt. Being from East Anglia, I wasn’t used to being around tall people and I wasn’t a fan of Depeche Mode but this was fast becoming
a case of any port in a storm. I casually wandered over to this towering giant and gabbled an introduction in the standard new student manner, quickly listing: name, course, A-levels. Thankfully we were able to gain an instant insight into each other’s music collection via the logos on our respective t-shirts. We quickly established our football fan credentials and that was it. Neil, the Depeche Mode and Spurs fan, was my first university mate.

  After an hour talking music, football and a couple more pints, we plucked up the courage to ask the barman if it was always this quiet. Looking delighted at the chance to get rid of two of his tiny band of customers he gave us directions to the main Student Union bar that was a mile up the road. We trundled off in pursuit of our first big student night out, all the while keeping an eye out for any folks that looked like they might be suitable to join our newly formed indie music and football clan.

  We made it to the union building and joined the snakelike queue, only to be quizzed by freaks and weirdo’s about such varied subjects as: Star Trek, where to buy E’s and whether the rugby lads drank in the Union bar? Those first few hours (and days) were like a gang recruitment drive. We had to make hasty, usually ilinformed decisions about whether someone was alright or not and whether we wanted to spend time drinking with them. We eventually got talking to two girls in the queue when we saved them from the clutches of Star Trek boy by pretending to be old friends of theirs. One of our new friends was a short, dark haired girl in a Manic Street Preachers t-shirt, who introduced herself as Louise in an accent that was unmistakably “propa cockney”. My Grandad Bill had always advised me: “Never trust a cockney, they are always trying to sell you something or rip you off, the mouthy sods”. So, despite Louise having the requisite band t-shirt, her cockneyness made me wary. My gaze then moved to her mate. I thought I was having a heart attack as she turned to face me and her exquisite mouth split into a show stopping smile. I had never experienced chest tightening pain when meeting a girl before and was beginning to scramble for breath and consciousness. She ignored my descent towards certain death and told me that her name was Amy. Even as the air mercifully made its way back into my lungs, I stood gormlessly staring at this vision of beauty with her English rose face, alabaster skin and dirty blonde bobbed hair. Thankfully Neil, seeing that my tongue had been stapled to the roof of my mouth, stepped in and introduced us. I was slowly regaining control of my functions as Amy looked at me with the kind of ‘what the hell are you doing?’ look that I imagine she usually reserved for close friends who decided to put their genitals in a clamp and then set fire to them. Both pity and disbelief were apparent in her voice as she said:

  Amy: ‘Errrr…. excuse me John, but you’re dripping blood on my trainers.’

  Me: ‘What? Oh shit, sorry’ as I looked down at my injured hand ‘I cut my thumb opening a tin of beans with a knife earlier.’

  Amy: “They were new trainers as well, Adidas Gazelles. I only got them yesterday.’

  Me: ‘I’m really sorry. I’m sure I’ve got a tissue here somewhere to clean it off.’

  At this point, I reached into my jean pocket and pulled out a wad of blood encrusted kitchen roll. Amy looked at me with a mixture of disdain and a desire to never see me again and, without saying a word, turned away to talk to Louise. I’d blown it. Only I could fall for a girl and get her to hate me in less than a minute.

  As Neil wet himself laughing at my entry for that years ‘World’s Worst Flirter’ title, Louise and Amy reached the front of the queue and the bouncer ushered them into the SU Building. A couple of minutes later, Neil and I reached the stairway to student heaven and I attacked the bar the second we got through the door. After feeling the soothing chemical tang of lager in my throat, I calmed down a little and took in my surroundings. Although everyone we had met so far had called this place the SU Bar, it was set out like an old man’s pub. It had low beams, dark corners, crap furniture and a ground in smell of fag smoke and disappointment. I had fallen for Amy and “The Tavern” all in the space of 10 minutes.

  We found a table and I tried to put into words how I had lost the plot when meeting Amy. Neil just laughed and then laughed some more when recalling the fool I had made of myself in front of the first pretty girl I had met at university.

  At 11pm, the last orders bell clanged and everyone in The Tavern made their way next door to the SU nightclub. I chuckled in quiet despair as we reached the front of the queue and were invited to hand over £1.50 to enter the “FUN FACTORY”. As we walked through the doors, I could hear the first bars of Whigfields “Saturday Night” and felt like I had never left Peterborough. Neil found us some seats and I got the drinks in whilst scanning the crowd of fresh faced students, hoping to spot Amy.

  As my fellow students drunkenly coupled off to begin their first regret filled university fumblings, Neil listened to my miserable complaining about it being: “Bloody awful in here” before spotting one of his flatmates across the dance floor and seizing his chance to get away from me. I found the darkest, dingiest corner and wondered if the feeling that was holding my stomach in a knot maybe wasn’t about Amy or being in this club. I was homesick. I’d only been away from home for 15 hours but I missed it, suddenly felt very alone, far removed from everything and everyone that I loved. I thought about how much I missed Doody, Jacko and my folks so sat and planned my first trip back home to ensure that it coincided with a Posh home game. As I supped on my warm pint, I realised that I hadn’t thought about Jess since I had waved goodbye to her that morning. In the days before I left for Cardiff, I’d had a nagging sense that it was time for me and Jess to split. We’d had some good fun but we were both heading out on completely different adventures. Of course, I didn’t say any of this to her, I just constantly reiterated my “it will all be ok” mantra. Now, here I was not thinking about her and instead daydreaming about a girl whose trainers I had bled on a couple of hours previously.

  Eventually Neil came back to find me and I told him that I needed to split up with my girlfriend. I had only known the poor lad for 3 hours but he summoned up his best advice for the occasion, “I’ll get us another pint in then.”

  We spent the rest of that night propping up the bar talking football and music, watching the blur of student life fly around us. I was keeping one eye out for Amy but she didn’t pop back into my life that night.

  As we wandered home, I was full of giddy exuberance and fantasies about this beautiful girl whose trainers I had managed to ruin. I thought what a great story it would be to tell our kids about how we met. I was already planning that far ahead and was determined to find her again the next night and attempt to engage her in normal, non blood related, conversation. With this in mind, I made what ended up becoming a long-standing arrangement to meet Neil in our Halls Bar at 7pm the next night and went back to my flat.

  Upon opening the front door, I was greeted by the noise of raucous dogs having sex in Matt’s room. My flatmates, who were huddled in the corridor like naughty kids at a boarding school sneaking out for a midnight feast, informed me that Matt was in fact in his room with a girl. I just wanted to get to my stereo, to my new sanctuary and daydream about Amy. Over the next half an hour, the noise from Matt’s room, which was 4 doors away from mine, got louder and louder. Even when my next door neighbour, Huw, shouted “Oi Matt, can you quieten it down a bit pal, I can’t hear myself wank in here”, the chuckles from my flatmates only masked the porn film soundtrack for a few seconds.

  In order to get some sleep, I put Pulp “His ‘N’ Hers” on the stereo and held my headphones like a vice against my ears until I drifted off. I had some mad old dreams that night about pink glove wearing joyriders having babies. Just as I was dreaming that Jess’s Dad was strangling me, I woke to find that the headphone lead had wrapped itself around my neck in the night. I glanced at the clock and seeing it was 8am thought that I might as well get up and find a shop that sold The Guardian and a local café that made a decent vegetarian breakfast. These were two important elements
to my life and I needed to establish where I could find such things in this city as soon as possible.

  As I was locking my door, I turned to see Matt opening his. Dressed in only his Mickey Mouse boxers and matching socks he looked down the corridor towards me and leered; ‘Christ, that was some night, sorry if we kept you awake but some things just need to be done, know what I mean?’

  I had no idea what he meant but smiled and said; ‘Yeah mate, no problem.’ As he moved aside to let his sex marathon partner out of the room, I caught a glimpse of a blonde bob as I finished locking my door. My heart realised who it was before my eyes did and went into spasm. As he slapped her now jean clad bum and lustily spat; ‘Maybe see you again tonight luv for round 2?’, my knees buckled and I had to hold onto the door handle to avoid sliding to the floor.

  As he shut the door behind her, she and I exchanged an embarrassed “Hi”, as the lyrics to Morrissey’s “Oh Well I Never Learn” rumbled around my head. To avoid us both leaving the flat at the same time, I mumbled something about having forgotten a book and retreated. Safely inside my room, I put “Kill Uncle” into the 2nd hand Sony Discman that Jess had bought me as a leaving present, took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to calm down before opening the door and striding quickly out of the flat. It takes a certain type of melancholic 19 year old to spend his first morning at university wandering the wet Cardiff streets and feeling a deep affinity with a song like “(I’m) The End Of The Family Line”. I had only met Amy the previous evening but, in my dream world, I was already planning our first holiday together. I’d known that Matt was going to be a pain in the arse from the moment I met him.

  After locating The Guardian and some perfect welsh rarebit, I perked up a bit and spent the rest of the morning wandering around the SU Fresher’s Fair. By lunchtime I’d had enough of the forced fun on offer and walked back to Talybont. Through the haze of the previous night, I managed to recall which flat Neil was in and went to give him a buzz. It took me all of 5 seconds to persuade him that an afternoon in the pub was a good idea.