I Blame Morrissey

by Jamie Jones

  I also made twice daily visits to the Samaritans tent. They now offered a far more extensive menu than when I had first visited them at Reading 1992 and I would feast on tomato soup and a crusty roll for 60p, for both lunch and tea. A couple of times I was tempted to sit down and have a chat but even I had the self-awareness to realise that my relationship woes paled into insignificance when placed next to the comedowns that they were helping some of my fellow festival goers work through.

  The set that everyone wanted to see was the reformed The Verve. They had blasted back into life with the swaggering rock ‘n’ roll of “Bittersweet Symphony”. With Oasis championing Richard Ashcroft and dedicating “Cast No Shadow” to him, it felt like the world was theirs to claim. The festival organisers had stupidly refused to move them from their original slot headlining the Melody Maker tent on the Sunday night, which had been booked long before their renaissance. As I made my way over to the tent after watching a genuinely terrifying but compelling performance by Marilyn Manson on the main stage, I could see thousands of folks pushing and shoving their way in to get within sight and sound of the band as they took to the stage. I went round the far side of the tent, which was normally the least populated area but even that was packed solid. Over the years I’d been in plenty of football and gig crowds that had packed out a venue and left you wondering how you would get out alive if there was an emergency. None of my previous experiences compared to the crowd shoehorned into every tiny pocket of space awaiting Ashcroft’s coronation.

  During the opening song a girl, directly in front of me, passed out due to a combination of the crush and the unbearable heat. We didn’t notice until the end of the song when everyone put their hands in the air to applaud and she slumped to the ground. Thankfully an off duty nurse in a Radiohead t-shirt was on hand to give her some water and help her out into the fresh air. I had resorted to planting my arm at a 90 degree angle across my chest in order to enable me to breathe normally and, more importantly, to protect my pint. The Verve were exceptional that night but, to be honest, I was just happy to get out of the tent in one piece.

  Reading always signalled the end of the festival season and the end of the summer. On the grim, hungover, train journey back home the morning after The Verve’s resurrection, I sat and thought about the year that lay ahead. A dark, almost comedic, cloud descended as I contemplated my time at university coming to an end. Despite not always being full of joy during my time in Cardiff, the thought of it all finishing in 10 months’ time brought me out in a cold sweat.

  The major world event that year took place on 31st August. I got up as usual on that warm Sunday morning, took two paracetamol, cursed the fact that I hadn’t got in from 5th Avenue until 3am thanks to Doody insisting we stayed until last orders and poured myself into the driver’s seat of dad’s car. On the way to pick Doody and Jacko up for my first ever round of golf, I switched on the radio to find that Radio 1 were playing the unmistakable sound of Pan Pipes. Assuming that they were having some kind of technical problem, I turned off the pedestrian twinklings and instead concentrated my focus on driving in a straight line.

  It was only as Jacko and then, shortly afterwards, Doody, piled into the car that I noticed the lack of traffic on the roads. I tuned the radio to our local station to get a traffic update only to be greeted with a solemn news announcer telling us that Princess Diana was dead. With a simple, to the point, reaction of; “Oh” coming from each of us, we turned the radio off as it was starting to get a bit depressing. We weren’t being callous and all agreed that it was sad that she’d died, particularly as her kids were so young, but within 30 seconds we were back to talking about football and planning our day out.

  Upon reaching a deserted golf course, we were approached by an ashen faced club steward;

  ‘Are you sure you still want to play today, lads?’

  Doody: ‘Eh? Why wouldn’t we?’

  Steward: ‘Haven’t you heard the news?’

  Me: ‘About Diana? Yeah.’

  Steward: ‘And you still want to play golf?’

  Three of us in harmonic unison: ‘Yes mate.’

  Unbeknown to us, as we spent the morning hacking our way round the golf course, the world had gone into collective grief mode.

  Eventually we wandered back into the bar, with the lads taking the mickey out of me for taking a record breaking 8 putts on the 18th green. We were greeted by an almost deserted bar. As I attracted the barman’s attention to order the drinks, I asked;

  ‘Are you showing the football later?’

  Barman: ‘Football?’

  Me: ‘Yeah. Liverpool v Newcastle.’

  Barman: ‘That game’s cancelled.’

  Doody: ‘Really, why’s that?’

  Barman: ‘Have you not heard the news?’

  Jacko: ‘Why do people keep asking us that?’

  Barman: ‘Diana’s dead.’

  Me: ‘Yeah we heard that this morning. We’re sad and all that but what’s that got to do with the football being cancelled?’

  He went on to tell us, through barely concealed grief, that the football was cancelled out of respect to Diana and that the bar would be closing shortly for the same reason. We drank our pints, chatting and joking as normal, as the dark stares of the barman bounced off us. Finding no other pubs open on our way home we went back to our respective houses.

  Later that night I wandered round to Shin’s who had, very conveniently, just moved in around the corner from us with his girlfriend. Finding that the TV was full of coverage of the death scene and crying celebrities, we decided to watch a film and order a pizza. As Shin fed the video of “Escape to Victory” into the machine, I rang Perfect Pizza and ordered a Hawaiian and a Vegetarian Supreme.

  Having not eaten since that morning, I was a heady mix of hunger and annoyance when the film ended before our pizza had arrived. When the doorbell eventually pinged, a full 2 hours after I’d made the order, I sprang up from the sofa and opened the door with a theatrical flourish:

  ‘Did you get lost mate?’

  Delivery Guy: ‘Very busy tonight, very busy.’

  Me: ‘Really? On a Sunday?’

  Delivery Guy: ‘Have you not seen the news?’

  Jeez, not this again.

  Me: ‘Funnily enough you’re not the first person to ask me that today. Anyway not to worry, here’s your £13.50, no tip I’m afraid as I could have made it quicker myself.’

  As a long-standing vegetarian I had learnt that you always had to check your pizza whilst the delivery guy (or girl) was still stood at the door, in case they had made a mistake….

  Me: ‘I ordered a Hawaiian and a Vegetarian Supreme.’

  Delivery Guy: checks his note, ‘Yes.’

  Me: ‘Well you’ve given me a Hawaiian and some kind of Meat Feast.’

  Delivery Guy: ‘Can you not have that instead? I won’t charge you any extra.’

  Me: ‘No mate, I can’t. The reason I ordered a Vegetarian Supreme is that I don’t eat meat.’

  Delivery Guy: Now raising his voice in high pitched anguish: ‘The People’s Princess is dead and all you can worry about is meat on a pizza, what is wrong with you?’

  I couldn’t help but burst out laughing, whilst this guy broke down in tears on Shin’s doorstep muttering, ‘The People’s Princess.’ I gently took £6.50 out of his still open hand, put the meaty pizza down next to his moped and closed the door. It had been a funny old day.

  It was on the car journey back to Cardiff with my dad in mid-September, as I watched the motorway fly by, that I realised that I’d become totally institutionalised to university life. I was addicted to the Amy, studying, gigs and pub lifestyle. She was the most important part of my life but I wasn’t even sure if she loved me anymore. The thought of leaving that lifestyle without a plan as to how my life would be post-Cardiff sat at the back of my brain, churning away coldly like milk turning slowly, inevitably into butter.

  Amy returned to Wales, full of positivity thanks to
her time working for the National Trust. Her new outlook on life appeared to involve lots of studying, smiling and denying that we were in a relationship. I had hardly seen her all summer, Glasto and V fest aside, as she was always “too busy with things” to see me. I would react to such snubs by sending her endless letters explaining that my love for her was stronger than ever and include the obligatory Morrissey/Smiths filled compilation tape. I tried to at least make her chuckle by writing ‘The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get’ on my arm in black marker pen, taking a photo of it and posting it to her. She replied two days later with a postcard of Moz (that I had given her) and on the back was:

  ‘You will get ink poisoning writing on yourself. What a tragic death Moz would think that would be. You may even get a song dedicated to you for it!

  X’

  The worst part of Amy’s new outlook was that she had taken to treating me like a friend, purposefully avoiding doing anything that involved just the two of us. It appeared that my plan to put things right wasn’t going to be as easy to put into practice as I had thought. My one hope was that our new house would get me back into her good books.

  Since Amys breakdown in our damp, slug-infested house, I had resolved to find us a decent place to live. We had decided to invite Nic to join our happy gang and move in with us. Nic was a lovely lad from the West Country, who was obsessed with films in the same way that I was with indie music. Neil and I had met him at the cinema, when he turned around to giggle at our childlike squeals of fear during the opening scene of “Scream”. With Lou and Neil now a fully-fledged couple, we needed a house that had a lot of private space and 5 bedrooms. I had started the search in March, so we had the pick of the best available houses. With nobody willing to trust me to find a house after the previous years disaster, we went, as a group, to look at some absolute dives before deciding on a neat and tidy house in Coburn Street which had the distinct advantage of not having either damp or slugs.

  We were all set for our final year in Cardiff. It was a city that I had fallen firmly in love with. A fast growing metropolis that was starting to wake up from the battering that Thatcher had given South Wales throughout the 1980’s. With the Tiger Bay regeneration and a thriving, bustling city centre, it had become a place that people wanted to live in or visit. It also had some immense gig venues, from the pubs and clubs through to our SU Great Hall and St David’s Hall, as well as the gigantic Cardiff International Arena. With Cardiff Castle and it’s acres of lush parkland smack bang in the city centre and an abundance of record stores, including the legendary Spillers Records, I couldn’t get enough of the place.

  My problems all lay with the increasing bitterness of our relationship. After the first few days in our new house, I knew that we were in deep trouble. Something about Amy had changed. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what but something had definitely changed. Maybe she’d met someone on her working holiday? Maybe being away from me for a few weeks had convinced her that she didn’t want or need our relationship anymore? I tried to tackle her about it over a drink but she was having none of it:

  ‘I don’t want to have any serious conversations this year, let’s just enjoy ourselves. We’re young, free and I am determined to be happy. It’s up to you whether you join in or not?’

  I had absolutely no idea what that meant? Had she been to some kind of spiritual retreat rather than to work with the National Trust? I decided to use my default setting when confused and be exceedingly petty;

  ‘Errrr…we aren’t free. I’m not free, you’re not free, we’re still a couple aren’t we? Free? Have you met someone else? Is that you trying to tell me in your clever, subtle Cambridge way?’

  Whilst appearing to be sucking on a lemon to combat the effects of the tear gas that I had just fired in her direction, she retorted with, ‘Trust me Jay, when I finally find the courage to fall out of love with you and leave, I won’t be subtle in telling you. I will hold a bloody party.’

  We had done so much growing up together, shared so much joy, love and so many amazing times. The flipside was the ever growing list of tears, arguments and regrets. This is where we found ourselves in September 1997, with me accusing her of seeing someone else and her talking of leaving me. The sad thing was that, by then, most people thought we had already split up and were now just good friends. I think that even our housemates had started to assume that.

  As the term wore on, we would still go out for the occasional meal, to the pub or to a gig as a couple, but all the chemistry between us had gone. We would drink and talk for hours about anything and everything other than the 2 topics we really needed to address:

  1. We had stopped talking about the future. Back in the early days of our relationship, we had made grand and elaborate plans for our post-Cardiff future. Where we would live (Cambridge), what lifestyle we would lead (mainly based around holidays and going to gigs). Now, if anyone asked what our plans were, they were offered a mumbled, vague reply and a swift changing of the subject. I finally brought up the subject of our future as we ate a takeaway pizza, watching “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” on VHS in her bed, one night in November. It seemed like the right moment as we were happy, relaxed and watching Amy’s favourite film. Instead her response was short and heartbreakingly sensible:

  ‘Look, we both know we’ve got a lot of things to sort out. We probably need to have a lot of rows, tears and make-up sex, who knows, maybe even split up eventually, but can we not do it now? Let’s just get on with this year, support each other, be there for each other and then sort this whole mess out after our exams? I can’t face spending the next 6 months breaking each other’s hearts and seeing you moping around the house singing Moz songs to yourself. I just want to get my degree sorted, then we can work it out.’

  I didn’t say anything. She hadn’t asked me any questions or given me any options in her state of the union address, so I just carried on stuffing pizza into my mouth.

  She was right, of course. While we were in Cardiff we needed each other for support. We were the other’s safety blanket and our lives had become intertwined and interdependent on each other. For the first time though, one of us had mentioned the elephant in the room, the possibility that we might split up after we left university. I nodded along and agreed with her statement, mainly because I knew I didn’t want to even think about the possibility of us splitting up.

  2. We had stopped sleeping together. That wasn’t a good sign for a couple in middle age, let alone for a couple where one was 20 and the other was 21. We didn’t actually decide to stop having sex. It was never discussed or planned, it just seemed to happen that we went from every night, to once a week, to once a month, to only on birthdays or at festivals, in the space of two years. Over the course of the previous 6 months, we’d slept together less and less until we got to the stage where the end of the night was sealed with a quick hug and a, “see you in the morning”. I was even struggling to call up the mental images of the contours of her body when alone in the dark of my room.

  Poor old Nic had joined a house where Lou and Neil spent most of their time together locked in their rooms and Amy and I were becoming the most dysfunctional couple since Elton John and Kiki Dee. I wanted us to be Nick Cave and PJ Harvey whose dark, brooding relationship was driven through the centre of Cave (& The Bad Seeds) ‘The Boatman’s Call’ album. I saw us, like them, as having a love so intense and difficult to control that we would eventually walk inevitably down the road signposted ‘break up and gut wrenching, heart pulping pain’ but for now, still had so much to live for, so many experiences to get on and make. I was attempting to grow my hair, from its summer crop into a long, lank and interesting Cave style but it was still only at the hairy tennis ball stage. I wanted to be Cave, to be able to sum up my feelings in a haunting ballad like ‘Far From Me’. My logic was that if I could write songs like that, then Amy would fall back into wearing the comfy worn old slippers that was my love for her. I would spend whole days writing song lyrics in the pa
rk in the autumnal drizzle and in The Tavern drying off, chasing the illusion that such 6th form poetry would save our relationship. I was spurting out line after line, hour after hour, searching desperately for the answer. I never showed them to her. I knew they were awful and that my words, even when written in my blood as one song was, weren’t going to save us.

  The big, communal nights out of our first two years at university had disappeared by that winter. Instead Amy would be upstairs studying or out with her course mates, Lou and Neil would be out and about doing coupley things, while Nic and I sat in the living room watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer or The Simpsons. Often we would go the entire evening without seeing another one of our housemates, before heading off to our respective rooms at some ungodly hour, with a mumbled, ‘See you tomorrow.’

  It hit me just how far Amy and I had fallen when I didn’t get my traditional invite to stay at her parents’ house in the period between Christmas and New Year. For the previous 2 years, we’d enjoyed a perfect middle class family festive period with much eating, drinking and the playing of parlour games. Amy and I would walk the family dog around the snow covered fields that surrounded her village for hours at a time. Like some kind of modern day Waltons, we would then go home to sit with her parents and roast chestnuts on the open fire. Things had changed now, her parents obviously felt that I was fast heading for the door marked “exit” and didn’t need to put up with my uncivilised, Peterborian ways over the festive period any longer. They doted on Amy as their youngest daughter and had, quite correctly, drawn a direct link between her bouts of unhappiness and my presence in her life. I imagine that previously, Amy had stuck up for me and insisted that I be invited to family occasions. Now, it appeared, she had given up fighting for me. I couldn’t really blame her.