It Was A Very Good Year

24 July 2013

THE SON:

Last night at the dinner table the subject of conversation turned to living conditions and dealing with mess etc. I can’t remember whose house I’d said was atrocious and how could anyone live in such a disgusting place but my mother cut me off and was swift to remind me about my house in Leeds three and a half years ago and what she thought of it, on the one occasion that she saw it. And she saw it on the day that it was easily its cleanest! My housemates had hoovered & cleaned the whole place while I was out to lunch with her. They also washed all my clothes and washed and changed my bed sheets, none of which I had washed in the 6 months since I’d moved in.

Anyway, I got to telling my grandparents about 5 Pearson Grove and what it was like to live there.

They know that I was on drugs during that whole year in Leeds so I think it was relatively easy for them to picture the place I was describing. I actually have some of the fondest memories of my life during Leeds because it was literally a year of complete hedonistic pleasure without having to worry about studying for Uni exams like most of the people I knew there. Also, it’s where I met Hannah, now my ex-girlfriend, as well as loads of really good people, some of which have become very close friends. I didn’t end up paying any rent for the year although I got stung with council tax and quite a few Virgin Media bills (my dad got stung, rather, not me, as I had no money) but I ended up getting my housemate, Charles, a 1st for his Music Technology degree because I did his main piece for him which was to make a complete song from 5 seconds of some weird xylophone music.

To be honest it was a whole year of solid partying, my ratio of being awake:sleep was 8:2 and I consumed an insane amount of heroin plus all the other shit that you expect to find among student wreck-heads in Leeds.

One weird thing to come out of all that was I found it amazingly easy and inspiring to create music when in that environment and truth be told I haven’t had that same constant creative spark since then, which is slightly troubling.

I’m getting a bit off topic but as I explained to the grandparents last night, I would order cheap Chinese take-away every night in Leeds and then eat a few bites and be full so my friends would normally always finish it off but near the end of the school year, my two housemates moved out a month or two earlier than me so the takeaways would pile up round my shithole of a house, the plates would stack up, the rubbish would stack up, the front yard was like a refuse pit as I used my window of my bedroom as a garbage bin. The whole place was generally a depravity but it was home and I had all my stuff there and I had my heroin so I just wasn’t fussed by it.

Also a bloody funny thing happened before the start of summer when my friends and I put on a rave at the West Indian Centre, after which I decided to sneak home on my way to the after-party and the sight that greeted me was the strangest thing I have ever experienced. I came to the conclusion that for the entire year we had obviously pissed off all the houses on the entire street with our constant techno blaring out of 5 sound systems and constant house parties, so, as payback, every house on the street, of which there were around 30-odd, had dumped their wheelie-bins in our front yard and piled them on top of each other, making a mountain of bins. It was an incredibly funny sight but it actually turned out to be very helpful because I’d lost one of my keys at the rave and could only get through the cage (metal security door) but not the actual front door so with the aid of the bins I was able to shimmy up one flight and squeeze through my bedroom window which was one of those that doesn’t open all the way but because I was like Skeletor, I easily slid through and was able to get down to my usual business.

Anyhow, by the end of that summer I was pretty much living at my girlfriend’s house, a few minutes away, because 5 Pearson Grove wasn’t habitable. Eventually, after I was back at my parents’ during summer, Charles called to say the lease ran out the next day and I needed to go clean it and move all the stuff out. I think Mum may have told you about that. She refused to go do it. My dad, unfortunately for him, offered to drive up with me for the day (three hours each way) and deal with it. I think he almost suffered a stroke when I opened the front door and the sight, plus the smell hit us. It was like out of some horror movie. I went up to my bedroom to try and get rid of all drug evidence and discovered the smell was emanating from under my bed. I pushed it up and saw a 3 month old Chinese takeaway swarming with maggots and flies that had rotted through the carpet and into the wooden floor. It was a rank day but I had to do it, although I ended up leaving loads of shit there like random peoples clothes and posters etc. I feel sorry for the people that moved into there next.

THE MOM:

No comment. Too busy throwing up.