University - The Final Part...finally.

And now an update on the cottage, well a back date, because currently it’s finished, but you know what I mean.

Inside the builders have finished, finally. My stove has been installed and in use for a while, but now I have a sink, a wide deep trough of thick porcelain with a single, perfect pump, cast iron, above it. Experimentally I ease the greased handle down and water gushes from the sculpted mouth of the pipe, pattering into the sink and down the drain. A few moments later I hear the water splash into the water butt outside. Perfection. By the summer by campsite facilities will also be nearing completion, as the builders have agreed to begin work a week before I arrive. The house will also have been re-plastered, so that I can get down to painting it and doing the small jobs that I am capable of doing.
On our last night in the cottage we eat steak and drink cheap screw top wine, the elixir of the camping man. Inside the walls are bathed with light from the cooking fire and the candle on the floor, outside my garden rests, recovering from its makeover. Between us are the thick, glossy folders of samples and a piece of paper covered in calculations.
“Maybe this -” Vikkie points to a piece of cabbage green slip proof flooring “I think the last site I went to had that.”
“I want something…interesting.” I complain, taking another sip of wine “Something glamorous but homey, pretty but still masculine, something that say’s I’m a serious camper but…”
“I wear a tutu under my combats?” Vikkie snorts into her glass “You can’t have everything, so just choose something.”
Eventually I select indigo tiles, which we agree are both pretty and masculine, aged wood flooring for the sink area and dark blue anti-slip covering for the showers. I fall in love with plain curved copper pipe taps and choose flat showerheads to match, alongside basins like the one in the house.
Reluctantly we pack up our bags the next morning, leaving behind a house bare except for the bed and the jars in one of it’s notches. I close the door, locking it with a large old-fashioned key, and walk down the path, shutting the gate behind me. We stop briefly so that I can talk to Pam, who wishes me good luck in my final stint at University, then board the boat back to the mainland. I haven’t seen that man since the day at the garden centre, and I don’t particularly care. Not one tiny bit.
Anyway, back at university it was hard to think about the island without suffering cravings usually associated with drugs.
　
The time goes by like a very heavy bus dragged by five overweight snails. I lie on the bed in my sweltering dorm room trying to concentrate on my work, which isn’t easy when all I can think about is what I would be doing at the cottage right now. To top that off my parents keep calling, asking if I need help moving my stuff to where I’m staying for my research project, which makes me feel like a lying snake.
Something impacts messily on my window. The boys from across the hall are outside throwing water balloons, very mature.
It’s not like I don’t know how to have fun, I like fun god damn it! I like reading on the grass in the sun, and eating ice-cream and walking around the lake, I really do. But it seems that my definition of fun is different to that of around 99.999% of the entire teenage population, making me the minority in a minority culture. Brilliant.
Vikkie has already buggered off with Greg to an afternoon at the pub or something, and I don’t begrudge her it…Ok so I do. I wish that there was another me somewhere, not exactly the same, but someone who understands the difference between difference and alienation.
I sigh a cloud of stifling air back into the room. I have one exam, one exam left, and then it’s over. Around the room my things sit accusingly, I haven’t even started to pack yet. Suddenly my laptop gives a blip and I shake away the screensaver to reveal my eBay homepage and its lengthy list of “Selling” items. It was only when I returned from the island that I realised how much stuff I own, and how little space I had to work with, so I put a load of things on eBay and so far have managed to get rid of loads of excess baggage. I watch the bidding numbers go up in the last few seconds with satisfaction.
With sudden inspiration I grab an empty white box and scrawl “Bookage” on top in sideways black letters. Even though I’ve managed to sell around half of my books, I still live in fear of people stumbling in and assuming my room is a conveniently placed library. There are books on shelves, on the windowsill, under the bed and the desk and balanced above the door. It’s also impossible to find a specific volume because they are ordered by colour and not by title or author. It was only last week that Greg pointed out that I had three copies of “Cat’s Eye”, each one a different colour. I have always hated Greg.
I stack books in the box carefully; piling others on the floor for listing on eBay, when I have finished the room looks bare, as though I have stripped the insulation of my little world from the walls. I grab another box and write “Clothes” on it. This one is easier to fill, I take out all my plain T-shirts and baggy over shirts, stuffing them into the box and topping it off with armfuls of bright gypsy skirts in every imaginable colour and pattern. Satisfied that I have packed every garment I will ever need, at least until winter, I open all the drawers in my bureaux, and nearly faint with shock at the mess within. I take another box and write “Misc.?” in big letters, then sort through the mess of notes, cosmetics, underwear and jewellery.
I have already stocked up on food to take with me, and called a haulage firm to drive all my boxes to the dock where I can get them onto the boat, then lug them up the hill at the other end…in theory. To be honest I’m a little fuzzy on the details at this point. I click off of the eBay page and check my emails, opening one from the builders, dated yesterday and showing a picture of the beginnings of my toilet block. Scrolling down I scrutinize a second picture which shows one of the men kicking the bucket off of the cliff whilst the others raise the new toilet aloft. Mister scowly won’t like that. Oh yes I haven’t forgotten him, and I’ve never been one to back away from confrontation. As Vikkie once put it “You hang on for that last word no matter how much you get hurt in the process.” I intend to live up to this reputation proudly if he so much as turns that Neanderthal brow in my direction.
I load a few more boxes and then return to my exam preparation, one tiny paper to get through and then I’m free, it’s a totally glorious thought. My mood has improved drastically now that the end is finally in sight, not to mention that over those two weeks of gardening I lost four pounds! Life it seems has thrown me a bone after all my complaining, and soon I can enjoy it with nothing to distract me but the buying of chickens and the devouring of as much chick-lit as I can handle.
The exam goes quite well, I have my usual panic that everyone is still writing when I have stopped, but I think it’s ok, though I can’t help but remember my GCSE English teacher’s maxim of “quality not quantity are the words of lazy people”. I have scribbled a few fairly insightful pages on Chaucer, coupled with the usual examiner prescribed bull that was drilled into me by text books and lectures. Suddenly it’s my last day, and I’m oddly nostalgic. I walk around the lake, stopping at the small sandstone building with its columns, where Vikkie and I hunted swans semi-seriously in the autumn. I gather up my university texts, all the Austin and Shakespeare, and bag them up for eBay. Whilst everyone else is shipping out to their flats or home for the summer, I pack my overnight bag and go over my boxes again before they are taken by the “Mighty Movers” to the “Mighty Movers Machine”.
Saying goodbye to Vikkie is the most difficult part about leaving, or to be perfectly honest, the only difficult part. We stand in the empty space that was once my sanctum, both packed and ready to leave.
“Well, glad that’s over” I say, picking up my bag.
“Yup, awful, totally gruelling.” Vikkie agrees.
“You’ll write won’t you, with your new address?” I ask as we head downstairs.
“Yup, and I’ll send you some chocolate”
I smile.
“I got you something” she says, pulling out a small paper wrapped package.
“Me too!” I hold out my own gift. We exchange them and there is some mutual rustling as we rip them open to reveal…two identical candle holders.
“We need to spend more time apart” groans Vikkie, shoving hers into her bag.
“I’ve been saying that since we met.” I pat her on the back and she climbs into her car, I wave her off and catch the campus bus for hopefully the last time.
That was a month ago, we’re nearly there guys, stay with it.