I remember that room. The first room I had when I left home. Ground floor, back of the house. Never got any light, and the view from the window, muted by white net curtains, looked out onto a claustrophobic yard; a garage, and by the side of that garage, a garden overgrown with too much green. In summer anyway, I can't remember winter, and that's what I'm remembering now.
That room, remembered as being dark and quiet, a place of first-cigarette smoke and heavy, heavy sleep. Deep November 1993, and I'm 21 years old, and eight months on from leaving home. I'm feeling for the first time since leaving school that my life is on track, -I'm studying a one year foundation course in art and design at Langley College, a bus journey away from the heart of Uxbridge where I live. We finish our lessons at 5:00pm, sometimes later. After the clocks go back in October, I am always back long after dark.
Though I get on with (at the time) and like the people I live with, when I think back to that autumn, it is of the emptiness of that house, the heavy space of my room, crammed my belongings, too many for a room that small; hundreds of records and CDs and comics and books. One of my wardrobes is permanently out of my reach thanks to one yellow storage box, stuffed full of 1980s thrash metal records; Sodom, The Accused, Celtic Frost, Kreator, Holy Terror, Voivod...
I remember it beginning sometime in November, and I'm not sure what it was. A sense of something lost and somehow beguiling. I'm listening to 'The Red Shoes' now and whatever it is is recorded in those songs. A strange and heavy hypnotic feel, like sleep and being folded in the wings of something grey and desolately comforting. Imagine a photograph of a drizzly seaside road out of season. A sense of things passing, of saying goodbye. Perhaps I was. By this time I knew few people in Uxbridge - I had moved on and lost contact with most, and others had moved on and lost contact with me, and I hoped to leave Uxbridge itself the next year to continue studying - which I did when I started my illustration course at Southampton. back in those weekends though, I would seemingly be locked in the suspension of that room, deep, grey days passing by outside and longer, black-cold nights, heading down into winter. A kind of kind and caressing claustrophobia, breathing smoke that promised sleep and substation dreams. Daydreaming to songs 'And So is Love' 'Eat the Music' 'Rubberband Girl' 'Lily' 'Song of Solomon'...
One snapshot from one lost Saturday - October? November? December? I can't know any more. Sick of breathing that deep smoky air of the room, threaded through with too many hours spent inside (Where were my housemates? I can't remember.) I had a cold, I remember that, my head full of presence, and not remembering what breathing clearly was like. Never without a handkerchief or box of tissues. I remember launching myself out of that room, and the next thing I recall was being on a carriage in a tube train at Uxbridge station, terminus of the Metropolitan Line. Then watching the grey and nowhere suburbs pass by; Ruislip, Ickenham, Hillingdon, watching the grey wash away like washing machine wheels, replaced with the promise and nepenthe of London, of second hand shops at Notting Hill Gate, of Tower Records at Piccadilly, the Virgin Megastore at Oxford Street Reckless Records down Berwick Street. Temporary relief from the strange ennui my room back at 83 Belmont road sometimes created.
That fragment, being on the tube train, waiting to leave. White cold, tastes like ice-cubes, cutting through heavy mist; oh let me breathe London, let me breathe away from there, let me move, let me move, let me move... That whole mildly ill weekend, listening on scratchy vinyl, not Kate Bush, but a single song 'The Darkest Hour' by the old punk band the Amebix.
Then, one afternoon, -later, perhaps December. 'I'll not forget this afternoon as long as I live'. That's a quote from some book read sometime - perhaps even read back then. Yes, 'The Secret History', it always is, but I don't know why I'll forget that afternoon. Nothing happens. It always does.
I had the day off from college - though was due in that evening, probably because I had booked the photography darkroom to use - and I was spending the day just drifting, as one is liable to do when there are plans later on that day. For once I put my time to good use and tidied my room, which was no doubt in its usual state of disarray. There was no-one else in the house - they all worked during the day- and as I tidied, it got dark. As night gathered, I was at that phase when tidying reaches that incredibly pleasant phase of being nearly done when you can hoover and spray air freshener. The smell of that air freshener, green and chemical, a refreshing and somehow tidy smell. Just before having to turn the light on and I suppose I was gathering the stuff I needed for college. I remember the stairs. Rather I remember thinking about the stairs, and when I think back to that day, I think of those stairs, and the brown carpet of those steps, and the pooled shadow-light of the hallway; sleep, heavy corridors, dreams, drifting, lost keys, a noticeboard in the hallway; 'Helen, please ring the police about your stolen handbag', the coin operated telephone, fried eggs and sausages and toast, Charlotte Bronte's juvenalia, the colour brown, attic-glass, bathroom-cold, the Our Price record shop and the huge Sainsbury's just across Belmont Road, and waiting for the bus outside Uxbridge Station in ice-blue mornings, the yellow 458 to Langley, and those days to lead me away from the deep shadow-sleep contained in rooms like the one I had when I first left home.
Though I get on with (at the time) and like the people I live with, when I think back to that autumn, it is of the emptiness of that house, the heavy space of my room, crammed my belongings, too many for a room that small; hundreds of records and CDs and comics and books. One of my wardrobes is permanently out of my reach thanks to one yellow storage box, stuffed full of 1980s thrash metal records; Sodom, The Accused, Celtic Frost, Kreator, Holy Terror, Voivod...
I remember it beginning sometime in November, and I'm not sure what it was. A sense of something lost and somehow beguiling. I'm listening to 'The Red Shoes' now and whatever it is is recorded in those songs. A strange and heavy hypnotic feel, like sleep and being folded in the wings of something grey and desolately comforting. Imagine a photograph of a drizzly seaside road out of season. A sense of things passing, of saying goodbye. Perhaps I was. By this time I knew few people in Uxbridge - I had moved on and lost contact with most, and others had moved on and lost contact with me, and I hoped to leave Uxbridge itself the next year to continue studying - which I did when I started my illustration course at Southampton. back in those weekends though, I would seemingly be locked in the suspension of that room, deep, grey days passing by outside and longer, black-cold nights, heading down into winter. A kind of kind and caressing claustrophobia, breathing smoke that promised sleep and substation dreams. Daydreaming to songs 'And So is Love' 'Eat the Music' 'Rubberband Girl' 'Lily' 'Song of Solomon'...
One snapshot from one lost Saturday - October? November? December? I can't know any more. Sick of breathing that deep smoky air of the room, threaded through with too many hours spent inside (Where were my housemates? I can't remember.) I had a cold, I remember that, my head full of presence, and not remembering what breathing clearly was like. Never without a handkerchief or box of tissues. I remember launching myself out of that room, and the next thing I recall was being on a carriage in a tube train at Uxbridge station, terminus of the Metropolitan Line. Then watching the grey and nowhere suburbs pass by; Ruislip, Ickenham, Hillingdon, watching the grey wash away like washing machine wheels, replaced with the promise and nepenthe of London, of second hand shops at Notting Hill Gate, of Tower Records at Piccadilly, the Virgin Megastore at Oxford Street Reckless Records down Berwick Street. Temporary relief from the strange ennui my room back at 83 Belmont road sometimes created.
That fragment, being on the tube train, waiting to leave. White cold, tastes like ice-cubes, cutting through heavy mist; oh let me breathe London, let me breathe away from there, let me move, let me move, let me move... That whole mildly ill weekend, listening on scratchy vinyl, not Kate Bush, but a single song 'The Darkest Hour' by the old punk band the Amebix.
Then, one afternoon, -later, perhaps December. 'I'll not forget this afternoon as long as I live'. That's a quote from some book read sometime - perhaps even read back then. Yes, 'The Secret History', it always is, but I don't know why I'll forget that afternoon. Nothing happens. It always does.
I had the day off from college - though was due in that evening, probably because I had booked the photography darkroom to use - and I was spending the day just drifting, as one is liable to do when there are plans later on that day. For once I put my time to good use and tidied my room, which was no doubt in its usual state of disarray. There was no-one else in the house - they all worked during the day- and as I tidied, it got dark. As night gathered, I was at that phase when tidying reaches that incredibly pleasant phase of being nearly done when you can hoover and spray air freshener. The smell of that air freshener, green and chemical, a refreshing and somehow tidy smell. Just before having to turn the light on and I suppose I was gathering the stuff I needed for college. I remember the stairs. Rather I remember thinking about the stairs, and when I think back to that day, I think of those stairs, and the brown carpet of those steps, and the pooled shadow-light of the hallway; sleep, heavy corridors, dreams, drifting, lost keys, a noticeboard in the hallway; 'Helen, please ring the police about your stolen handbag', the coin operated telephone, fried eggs and sausages and toast, Charlotte Bronte's juvenalia, the colour brown, attic-glass, bathroom-cold, the Our Price record shop and the huge Sainsbury's just across Belmont Road, and waiting for the bus outside Uxbridge Station in ice-blue mornings, the yellow 458 to Langley, and those days to lead me away from the deep shadow-sleep contained in rooms like the one I had when I first left home.
I've been listening to 'The Red Shoes' a lot recently, and it got me thinking about that autumn. Eighteen years later now -the length of a childhood- but that autumn, like all autumns, seems no more than a few afternoons away.
