This photo was taken towards the end of my first year at university. I don't remember whose idea it was but I think it was felt to be the thing to do, to somehow draw a line under the year in readiness for the independence of smaller shared accomodation. I think the first time I heard of it was when someone knocked on the door of my room at tea time. In case you don't know I'm standing on the very far bottom right with the long hair, the navy blue jacket, greeny-orange coloured shirt and blue jeans with dirt on the knee. Amazingly I'm not the unconventional one, although at no point do I remember this being the style of the early nineties. The creases in the photo are because this is a colour photocopy of the one original copy which we all clubbed together to buy.
I'm startled not only by the number of those faces which I recognise and can name, but also by the proportion who I never spoke to for whatever reason. When we all moved into the hall everyone seemed like they were friends with everyone else. We'd sit in each others rooms until all hours or have adhoc corridor parties. But naturally that was the first week. People interact that way so that they can get a feel for who they have the most in common with.
I didn't really understand that. It seemed as though that was how it was going to be for the rest of the year. So in the second week when people I thought I was getting along with suddenly seemed colder or in those times when I was in rooms and felt generally ignored felt less welcome. That cocktailed with my rampant homesickness and possible low esteem to turn me into a nervous wreck. I remember coming home from seeing Sleepless in Seattle alone and looking around the darkened hall and seeing lots of closed doors with light peaking through the doorframes and feeling left out. Until now this memory was blocked out, but I sat on the cold, concrete stairwell and cried, as everything decended, feeling even worse because no one heard me or came out to ask what was the matter. I seemed alone and unwelcome. That was the older version of me. Now, I would have picked one of the doors, given it a knock and engratiated myself. But I was overwhelmed by the experience and the fact that what support network I had at home then was gone.
In the following days and weeks I made friends. In fact, I replayed a pattern from school and which would continue right up until today. A collection of friends who were all different and would never connect together if they ever met but who I got along with. I could have gone further. I was actually fairly square at university. I didn't really drink then either and too many times I think everyone would be out clubbing and I'd be in the library studying or curling up in front of a video. But I was the first person in my family to go to university, and at school I'd had a certain work ethic drilled into me, so I didn't want to let my grades drop even in the first year when I would have passed to the second year automatically anyway.
Most students probably look back at their time at university with some regrets either because they wish they'd been less of a hellraiser or like me that they'd made the most of the time they'd had. There were people I could have got on better with because the channels of understanding weren't in place or we just weren't fated to be 'chums'. But I'm not much of a conformists (although to a degree less so then). Perhaps the Debbie Gibson poster on the wall of my room in the first semester might have been a mistake.
Dave Foster, middle top row, tall, curly hair. He'd be the person I would end up spending the most time with over the three years at college (we'd always keep finding each other no matter the different shared houses we'd end up in), my particular memories of him at Macauley Hall were the late nights. There would usually be four of us, him and I, Paul the hall president (directly underneath him with the beard) and Paul's friend Andy. We'd regularly still be awake at 3am -- I lost a lot of sleep over those eight months. It would either be marathons of Star Trek, or X-Wing (which was the pc game of the time) or just watching satellite tv (Paul was the only halls resident in history to have a Sky system in his room). Usually, eventually, there would come a time in the evening when they'd want to go to the kebab house, Raj Putts, which was open until 4am. I only ever went once (it was a long walk). I had planned to get the pitta full of meat and hot sauce. In the event, after I'd seen the spinning lump it was coming from I plummed for a salad pitta. A sign of weakness perhaps, but I still think I would have been getting over the event until this day if I'd followed everyone else into the meat and heat.
One row back from the front is Karen Lopez. One night I was in the laundry room reading and washing and Karen came in with a basket of clothes. We'd never been great friends, but we'd chatted in hallways and I think I'd been up to her room a couple of times (which describes my relationship to most of the people in the hall). Karen who was always happy and hyper, looked shaken and depressed. I asked her what was wrong and she told me. It was one of the best nights I spent that year. Before Uni, at school and out I had always ended up being a listener and problem solver. My mouth can run away with me sometimes, but when I need to shut up I will. In those first few months no one seemed to need me. I like being needed. So when Karen started talking I suddenly felt at home again. She'd had an arguement with her boyfriend (Andy, top row) and it seemed permanent. I just sat and listened, until long after we'd forgotten about the laundry. It's one of times when you don't remember exactly what was said, just the impression. I think I might have said some things about it not being the end of the world, about how two people love each other then can work it through. Whatever it was they got back together that night. I maintain that they would have done that anyway, but it just nice to have helped again. Just once.
But of everyone the one face which stands out is on the front row. Rosie Holt. She's the one in purple. Of all the people it would be nice to see her again. She's the one who on reflection was so unlike me and yet so close to who I think I am. She tried my patience sometimes, but equally I probably didn't give enough of a chance. I think we were friends, but too often she'd shock me enough that I'd run away and hide; at times I'd want to be quiet and Rosie would be there -- I'd think she was interupting but actually she was keeping me sane. Last time I saw her was ten years ago. I met her in the Merrion Shopping Centre in Leeds after I'd heard she left University. We didn't talk for long -- whoever she was with was hurrying her along (so mid-nineties) but there was something about her which made me worry. And I've worried about her for a whole decade. I've put her name in the 100 things I post in my user profiles online. Spookily, this exact day last year I posted on the weblog that someone had found the site by googling for the name Rosie Holt. Then tonight, as I was writing this, trying to remember someone's name, I inevitably looked on Friends Reunited. And there she was. Rosemary Holt now. Her entry says: "I am working in Glasgow, bringing up my 4 year old daughter and 'net surfing most of time!" Doesn't closure come from the strangest of places? Perhaps Rosemary might stumble on this sometime and we will see each other again.
This photo for me is about people, and memories of people. There's Phil Wynne who I'd chat to every night before I went to bed, and Andrew De Swarte who'd go the local supermarket a hairsbreath before closing so that he could gather up the reductions. Unlike a holiday snap which might remind the owner of a single moment, this is the record of an entire year of my life. Even if not everyone made it to the steps on time (Jess, Benoit, Anne-Marie) they're also there by association. I'd probably never known so many people at once before and at the same time not known them at all. But it also lets me see how far I've gone in ten years. Although my hair looks almost exactly as it did then, so something things aren't supposed to change.
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