A Younger Version of Me

Life We've been reorganising the framed pictures at home lately and I noticed this picture which must have been sitting on the top and back of a cupboard for a decade. I've been trying to remember exactly when it was taken. I've always been the kind of person who hoards and tends to collecting things until I have too much, have a clearout then start again. The problem in this picture is that everything's reaching critical mass and some of it hasn't been touched in some time.

The Edward Scissorhands poster and the advert for Debbie Gibson's Electric Youth single, are both from Smash Hits and both a few years old. I will have read that quote on the other wall from sci-fi author James Blish at school (he suggested that this was the one question any writer needed to ask themselves before commiting to a piece of work). I seem to be playing Computer Monolopy but using the cards and money from a real set from the fifties which is exactly the kind of thing I('d) do.

I don't seem to have many LPs (this is pre-cd at least for me) and they're all Hits and Now That's What I Call Music which seems about right -- I only ever listened to chart music (and some folk) in those days. The orange office chair lasted for many years until it bent when I leaned back on it one night. The lovely brown MFI desk was bought for me to work at in junior school. Big hair. Big forehead. Black jeans (which I still have somewhere). Black jumper (which I hope isn't the same one I have somewhere).

Dating the photograph will have to be based on three things. The jars are filled with small jars of cotton wool with 'bottled snowballs' on the side were put together for a school christmas fair. Apparently my mum and dad gave me the alarm clock in Christmas 1992. which would tally with everything else. I'm still using the Commodore 64c here but I was trying to get some sense out of an EGA 286 PC by the time I went to university so I think this was early 1993 and I was 18 and a couple of months away from starting my first degree.

Here is what I wish I could tell this young man who's half my age: Don't change. Yes, your time in halls was hard and you could have gone out mopre than once in a while -- but if you had you might not have watched all of that world and independent cinema which would be so useful later. You tend to be obsessive but you were right to work hard enough to pass your first year. You were also right to make lots of different friends rather than just sticking to a couple. I have but one word of advice. On your second night there, after the party, when that French girl Kirsten asks you to join her in her room, you go. You do not say -- whatever it was you said -- say goodnight -- and walk away.

Nutter.