I spent most of the day a quarter of a century in the past, reading through the diary I wrote on my year off in 1985-6. I am trying to work out if there is a comedy show in my adventures, but it mostly made me feel a little sad and unsettled. It's funny up to a point, though not quite as cute as the diaries I kept at school. The transition between childhood and adulthood is a difficult time and it made me feel uncomfortable reliving it all, as well as a little bit sad for the confused, well-meaning, but ultimately flawed young man I was reading about. There are some cringe-worthy bits about how I suspect I might be a genius, who will unite the world in peace (though I am somewhat sketchy on the details of how I will achieve that), made more amusing by the fact that I claim that selflessness and lack of ego are the keys to this state, whilst clearly relishing in the fact that this would make me famous. And throughout runs my obsession with and terror of sex. I want to believe that I am somehow purer and more sensitive than the other young men, but really I am just as desperate as them, but largely too afraid to do anything about it.
It's particularly hilarious as every time I am going away somewhere I break up with my childhood sweetheart, who I then begin to miss (usually when no other girls are interested in me) and then who I start going out with when I come back. On my first trip away, an archaeological dig, like a Somerset Miranda, I fall head over heels in love with the first girl I meet, who I try to impress by listening to classical music and reading poetry. Whilst I am there I am convinced that this is an adult relationship and that the two years I have spent with my girlfriend have been a childish frippery, but within a week of getting home (when it becomes clear that my dig girlfriend is not interested in keeping things going) I am dismissing the new romance and heralding the old one. I don't think this makes me very different from any 18 year old, but the relentless predictability of my actions is a bit wearing, rather than out and out amusing. It's all heart-felt, but it's a mercurial heart.
What's remarkable is how short a time most of the trips were. I am on that original dig for just three weeks, and not only do I fall head over heels in love and become a vegetarian, but by the time I come home, Cheddar seems like an unfamiliar, almost alien place. And in my memory that dig seems like a bigger part of my life than just 20 days. Those experiences were so exciting that they are heightened. It's such an exciting time. And yet still I am a child who runs off home when he is missing his girlfriend or when bad things happen. I am not criticising the 18 year old me for that. In fact now I look back at it I can't believe I was allowed out of my house at that age, let alone allowed to head off to Europe alone. I had no fucking idea about anything. But that, I guess is the only way to learn. I feel sorry for parents everywhere - but my own parents mainly- it must be awful to see these barely formed human beings heading off towards danger and humiliation.
Most tragically many of the concerns I had then I still share now: worrying about my weight, trying to exercise (I could run around Cheddar reservoir in a little over 15 minutes, so I was a lot fitter than I remember being - and thinner I would imagine), worrying about wasting my time and being propelled into action by my own disgust at my own inertia. I was also massively oversensitive (I am a little less so now, but that blighted a lot of my life), yet clearly insensitive to others and concerned about whether people like me. My group of friends was going through various ructions and changing of allegiance, the repercussions of which are still felt today. I am terrified of dying before my time. I was trying to be funny all the time, largely by pushing things beyond the point where they become unfunny in the hope that they will eventually become even funnier.
It's a great resource to have these diaries, but if I could visit this young idiot I would encourage him to be more honest - there's things I remember doing that I don't dare write about - and more thorough and to document the boring days too. I miss out big chunks and barely documented my Camp America trip at all - but I suppose it's better that I was living it rather than writing about it then.
And always present, especially with hindsight, is the battle between the person I wanted to be as and the person that I actually was. Not that unusual in a teenager, or in a human being, I think you'll agree.
But it's disconcerting to be taken back to that time when emotions ran so high and then could turn 180 degrees and be just as strong in a totally different direction. Just as it is to think that all the people I mention then - my friends and work colleagues and all the people I met inter-railing - are now in their 40s. I wonder how life turned out for them all. I probably have a lot of addresses from that time still. Part of me would like to chase them up now, 25 years on, when we will all really have forgotten each other. It would be hard to track them all down and if I did they would have no idea who I was, but what became of those people who my life briefly intersected with in Youth Hostels and campsites in the mid-1980s. If I wasn't so lazy I would track them all down for a book. It would be worth it just to see the confusion on their face and have to explain to them how they knew me. I can't remember most of the things I wrote about in the diaries and have trouble picturing even the people I worked with for weeks. It's almost worth it for the awkwardness.
But maybe some of you reading this met me at some point in the long distant past - and probably have forgotten it or made no connection. In Reading on the 1st November 1985 I was on a second archaeological dig and me and my fellow diggers went to the pub, where some punks were also drinking. Two of them had a baby with them. I went to talk to them (because I was a punk too!) although I comment that it was sad to see a baby in such a situation saying "despite his late nights I shouldn't think his life will be absolutely terrible or anything (but who knows?)"
I think I was worrying too much. But perhaps that young punk baby is now reading this. I imagine his mum and dad, now in their late 40s, are probably not punks any more (or at least not dressed up). The baby was called Kye. Let me know how you got on and whether being in a pub as a baby had any adverse effect on your life.
