Bugger

And so we return to blunder number eleventy-billion.
“Why did you say a campsite?”
“I don’t know!” I yell into the pillow covering my face. Vikkie sits at my laptop, trying to make sense of my excel spreadsheets and all the documents of research.
“Well, it’s not a terrible idea…”
I flip the cushion into the air and sit up, annoyed.
“I know it isn’t a bad idea, why didn’t we have it before? That’s my point! How dumb are we?”
“You’re only just asking that now?” she smiled “it looks like you’ve planned everything to death and back, it should work out fine….when are you going to do this anyway?”
I suddenly feel very sheepish.
“Well…I’m not exactly coming back next year….in the strictest sense.”
“What?!”
“I decided to finish this year, because I already paid the tuition and it would be stupid to just drop out, but after this year I’m moving to the island fulltime.”
“Have you thought this through? What if it all goes tits up and then you’ve got nothing.”
I toss a cushion at her and scowl.
“Thanks for all the confidence, and if breasts do become upwardly inclined, well then I’ll figure it out then.”
“All I meant was, what about university, you’ve barely even given it a chance, after all the effort actually getting here.”
“I shouldn’t stick with something based on the amount of time I wasted over it. If that was how the world worked divorce wouldn’t exist! And neither would rubix cubes.”
For a moment Vikkie appears to have given up. She closes all the computer files and opens the internet, bringing up YouTube and searching for “Frasier”
Finally she swivels on the chair and sighs.
“Ok...I’m alright with that”
Surprised, I gawp at her.
“Well, not relishing the idea of being on my own, but I’ll be fine, and you were really, really starting to get on my nerves with the whole I hate university thing.” She cracks a smile and nudges me hard. I nudge back, then push her off the bed.
“You know the only problem with my master plan.” I say to her slumped form on the floor.
“Your parents?” her muffled voice replies. I nod, realising too late that she can’t see me. There is a brief pause as she rights herself and flops onto the bed.
“Well, I’m not telling them” we say simultaneously
Vikkie and the nasty admissions lady were one thing, telling my parents that I was leaving university? I might as well announce my conversion to Satanism and confirmed teen pregnancy. They had been so into getting me into university, they had even got me into going, so much so that I hadn’t paused to consider whether I should go. Well, that’s not entirely fair, I don’t blame them for my situation, but for people who never went to university they were awfully quick to extol it’s virtues.
I therefore made the highly mature decision to put off telling them as long as possible. I waited out my time at university like a prison sentence, throwing myself into my work, there were assigned texts to read and discuss and an enormous university library to abuse. I spent whole hours writing scripts for the web cartoon that myself and Vikkie voiced and animated. But the world I had created for myself was slowly changing. I used my free time to amble around second hand shops looking for things to fill my home with, spent all my time at work planning out what I was going to do to the house. I phoned contractors and suppliers of solar panels and old stoves, trying to set up some renovations on the building itself.
The campsite too was taking up a lot of my time. Aside from finding someone to build the toilet block that was required; I still had to build a website and actually make some money.
Strangely though, I wasn’t stressed. Well that’s a lie; I was stressed, but also excited. I felt as if I was finally doing something that was to do with me, something that I wanted. I knew that at the end of all the little problems and the dark tunnel that was telling my parents, there was a life waiting for me, one I couldn’t wait to get to.
At long last a holiday came, the last one before the short stretch of time that would lead to the end of the year. I packed up a bag, with much more care than last time, and Vikkie drove me home.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before but Vikkie’s car is the best car in the world. For a start it’s purple, the kind of purple that, when it passes you at forty miles per hour makes your eyes water. It’s a beetle, one of the only types of car I know, the others being round, square, red and shiny. Inside it has really beaten up black seats and a few strings of fairy lights shaped like orchids.
As we speed down the motorway I lie across the back seats, seatbelts holding me in place as the car judders over bumps in the tarmac. My sunglasses are perched on my nose and my MP3 player is playing Kate Nash to drown out the voice of Vikkie’s guidance system, which she switched to Eddie Izzard especially for the trip. It’s an oddly sunny day for this time of year, but it has done little to lighten my mood. I was going to be spending a week at home, and sometime in that week I would have to tell them about Ilensay. I just knew they were going to go crazy.
Apparently Vikkie sensed this too, as she dropped me off at the end of our road rather than coming in for a cup of tea. I extracted myself from the car and tugged my bag after me, slamming the door closed. I waved at the retreating purple streak as she shot away towards the main road that would take her to her parents house. Sighing I began to trudge towards my childhood home.
I spent most of my life in the tiny village of Benington, it has one church, a small primary school, a playground and a large supplier of farm machinery….and that’s it. The houses all follow the main road and sprout off in branches, the expensive cottages that surround the village green give way to the affordable housing and small blocks of flats, which lead onto the very expensive houses at the other end of the village. My parents owned a three bedroom terraced house in the middle sector, with a grassy hill in front and an enormous fallow field to the side.
I hop up the two wide steps at the front and bang on the blue door, for a moment it feels as though university was just a weird dream and in fact I’ve just been out walking the dog. The door opens and I’m dragged into a hug as it slams behind me.
“Welcome back!”
I hear Mum’s voice from above my head. The stairs to my left rattle as my younger brother Jake comes down, still clutching a wireless Xbox controller. I wave awkwardly at him, simultaneously batting Alfie away from my legs. Alfie is my parent’s terrier, they bought it when our collie died, which was when I still lived at home. I had no idea if he even remembered me, or whether he just thinks I’m a pleasantly scented stranger. Finally Mum releases me and I can’t help smiling, it’s nice coming home to a friendly family.
We all go into the living room to chat and have some coconut cake. I get caught up on the latest gossip from school and home. Apparently my old maths teacher had just come out of the closet, causing quite a stir, and someone had dropped some lighting equipment injuring a girl in the year below who I had always disliked (apparently buying all the spices etc was sometimes worth it). I produce the presents I’ve brought, A copy of Bioshock 2 for Jake and a book each for my Mum and Dad, who isn’t around because he‘s working a shift.
“And this is for you” Mum proffers a wide, floppy package.
I open it to discover a crochet blanket, half the size of a single bed and done in greys and blues with shots of stormy violet. I remember her starting this blanket the year before I went to uni, and she finally finished it.
“It’s beautiful!” I exclaim, draping it across the arm of the chair, where Alfie sniffs it’s sheepy smell appreciatively.
“So, how is it at university?” She asks, refilling my teacup.
I have to tell her
“Mum..”
I can’t tell her.
“It’s fine actually” I smile “couldn’t be better.”
“That’s good” Mum smiles back, and refreshes my tea. “We were hoping to come and visit your flat soon, you know, when you move out of student accommodation at the end of the year.”
Oh crap! Why does God hate me so much?!
“Well, I won’t be there, the thing is Mum…”
Inspiration…inspiration…damn I knew I should have taken creative writing.
“I’ll be out…in the field.”
Well technically just a field, but still.
“I’m doing a research thing on John Clare, the poet? Which means I’m going to be staying near where he lived for a few months, to get a feel for the place that inspired his poetry.”
“That’s wonderful!” says Mum, interrupting my please to the Goddess that my lie be received blindly.
“It is, isn’t it?” I smile, sipping hot tea and burning my tongue. I have the unsettling feeling that this is some kind of divine punishment.
In the brief silence my Mum switches on the TV and finds a re-run of “Have a new life in another country or this one who cares buy a house and make a fortune flogging antiques from the attic in Spain” or whatever. That’s the slightly annoying thing about my parents. In all the years I was at home they never once did anything spontaneous or anything that they dreamed of accomplishing, they just stayed in watching other people having their dreams come true.
“Can I just go upstairs to my room? You know, unpack and get things sorted?” Mum nods and numbly I leave the lounge and go to my room.
I know, I’m a filthy liar, but I am going to tell her at some point, just not right now.