By contrast, people came and went with my room, and usually I liked that arrangement. [On the other hand, it smelled of man-sweat and smoke, which I could take or leave.] For all the time I spent in my bed, there would usually be at least one person sitting at my desk. The computer would always be doing something; if nothing else, it would be playing music. Second year caught Napster on the rise, and so we were never short on tunes. [Original Napster, yo.] Frank signed up for a Yahoo! ID at the start of the year, which he used to play chess and insult Americans.

  That came as something of an epiphany for me. I had always guessed that the vast majority of jerks on the internet were backwards twelve year olds, high functioning morons, puerile incompetents with nothing better to do with their lives than incite petty hate mail and create discord, future night-porters and garage attendants to a last man. In short, the very sort of people who are most unlikely to find themselves studying medicine.

  Frank McQueen was an above average chess player, and also an internet jerk extraordinaire. He’d go into teen chat rooms as ‘SonOfSaddam’, and insult three shades of crap out of anyone who was trying to be nice. He’d get on side with a conversation for a couple of minutes before turning tail, and insulting anyone who agreed with him. If there was a point or reason to any chat room, Frank would argue the opposite, with expletives on top. He even insulted people while he was playing them at chess.

  ‘Good move!’ he would say. ‘You fucking cunt.’

  I cringed with embarrassment at some of the propositions he made in the ‘Romance’ groups. I hid my head in shame when he infiltrated the ‘Book-Lovers’ group. And I absolutely could not condone some of the things he said in the Christian chat rooms, but hell if those Christians didn’t give as good as they got. Usually minus the swearwords; but not always. I guess that’s what Frank was hoping for and, against all expectations, it was pretty compulsive viewing.

  The mid-year implementation of ‘voice’ chat may have been Yahoo!’s most significant error of judgement. Buying a microphone was mine.

  ‘Dude, are you Irish?’ one confused debutante asked, shortly before being subjected to a tirade that might have reduced lesser ‘Girl Talk’ chatters to tears.

  ‘East Coast,’ Frank said, making a gang sign. ‘Of Scotland, bitch.’

  Pretty soon I signed up for a Yahoo! ID of my own. I made up my name from the side of a bottle of tonic water that was sitting on my desk, and then got down to some abuse of the service. It was liberating enough, but I could never get any conviction into my insults, and it didn’t feel like me, so I gave up and started to take it all seriously, instead.

  ‘You are such a fucking jerk,’ people would tell Frank.

  ‘I am the Eggman,’ Frank would say, if he was feeling mellow. Then he’d light up and put on a few tracks.

  Sometimes we’d hear Craig screaming wild obscenities from his room. At first we thought he was getting in on the game, too, but later it turned out that he was generally asleep at the time. Frank started locking his door at night for a while after that came out. Even people who don’t give a fuck have limits.

  I asked Craig recently why he thought he had been so anal retentive in Fife Park, whether he thought he genuinely had OCD, and whether he thought he’d mellowed out these latter years. He didn’t, as it happens. His exact statement, word for word, was:

  ‘If my recollection serves, you were a nut. 100% so. Lived in the dark, died your hair semi ginger, wore the worst clothes, smashed up your guitar, and had strange issues. So... it’s all down to interpretation.’

  It’s hard to argue with that comeback. For one thing, it’s all true – so it would be kind of an uphill struggle. For another, he’s right - this is my interpretation. Who else would I look to? Please understand, I’m not making any great claims to my own mental health, but if it’s really all down to interpretation we won’t be using Craig as the benchmark for fucking apple-pie ordinary.

  True, I did smash up my guitar, but not until much later in the year. Also true, I dyed my hair, with limited success, and this had a lot to do with the guitar getting smashed. But taken out of context, that gives kind of a false impression. It makes it sound like I was being pretentious and post-punk, but actually coming off like an asshole. In fact, I skipped the facade entirely – I was being a straight-up asshole, with no subterfuge. It was an emotional time, and I handled it with my usual aplomb. But I’ll get to that.

  Guilty as charged on most of the other stuff, as well. The clothes, for example. I was going through kind of a flamboyant phase that I’d nurtured during first year. It wasn’t about fitting in with any social group, or any style as such. I didn’t ascribe to any ethos regarding dress sense or personal politics, and if I’m honest it’s probably because I didn’t really know how. I had a lot of half-formed opinions; some of them might even have been interpreted as ‘strange issues’.

  Unlike Frank, I wasn’t out of control because I thought life was more fun that way. I was just one of life’s bad drivers, swerving all over the road, desperate to be in control. Fuck, I wasn’t thrilled to be all angles at all times. I was happy, but I was frantic. I was happy, but I didn’t think things were right. They felt like they were, but I knew that they weren’t.

  How can I even describe that feeling? I’m looking to get it back; I don’t even know what it is. It felt like calm, while I was raging round it.

  Craig doesn’t think this book tells the truth.

  ‘It’s all down to interpretation,’ he says.

  He must be right, because I think it does.

  Raspberry Canes, Nineteen Eighty-Six.

  You maybe think I’m a miserable person already, because of how I introduced myself. I’m actually kind of fun most of the time. At least, I hope so. Regardless, I’m pretty easy to entertain. And if the last couple of thousand words haven’t clued you in already, I’m pretty easily distracted, as well.

  For example, I’m going to talk about something that happened over twenty years ago in this chapter, which even the most patient of us would admit is almost completely unnecessary. On the other hand, I explain things best by points of reference.

  Where am I? Literally, right now, I’m thirty, I’m at my desk, in my flat, in Edinburgh, and I’m trying to remember being twenty, because I think there was something worth knowing back then. Something worth feeling, at any rate. You remember how I came in on that? Now, I know what you’re thinking, if you’re thinking at all, and if you’re anything like me.

  How do I know that what I am searching for was ever really there?

  You’re wondering, maybe, if I’ve deluded myself about the wonderful year I spent in Fife Park. Maybe you’ve even seen Fife Park for yourself. Maybe, you’re thinking, I’m just wearing my rose tinted glasses.

  That’s a good point. Sometimes, even I’m given to wondering if I was ever really as happy as I remember. After all, it’s been a while. And Oscar Wilde famously said that ‘Nothing ages like happiness.’ What if I’m only remembering the good, and discarding the bad?

  I’m quite sure that’s partly true. I don’t see that as too much of a problem. Good riddance to the shitty times, I say. There were a few of them, after all. But I’m also quite, quite certain that, perhaps against probability, I am not just making something out of nothing. There really was a special feeling to those days that underpinned it all.

  How do I know? Because I remember it, sure. But not just because I remember it, but because I have one perfect, unalterable memory of it - and it is a memory which is not subject to the usual distortions and the decay of time. This memory cannot lie, because it is as much a message as a recollection. It was constructed out of purpose.

  I have only a handful of such memories across the whole of my life, and they are all special to me.

  The first now seems to be almost from a different world. When I was seven years old, I wondered how memories might work. I knew that I did not remember everything, but that important moments were prone to stand out.

  Sitting on the low wall near our raspberry garden I felt the setting sun on my back, on my side, and the chill of the early evening pinching lightly at my bare legs. As I balanced on the wall, so I balanced between warmth and cold, day and dusk, aglow with contentedness. It was a beautiful moment, in an ordinary day. But it was a moment I decided to keep.

  So I committed to keep that memory forever. I took the moment apart, piece by piece in my mind’s eye, and swore to myself that I would remember it for the rest of my life. I made it the most important thing in my mind, and I sat there running it over and over in my head, till I felt like it was burning behind my eyes. I kept it going until long after the moment had passed, until it was nearly dark. But I don’t remember the dusk coming on, or how I went inside, or what I did before bed. I remember sitting there, in that moment, warmth on my back, making a message in a bottle, in a mind. And it’s funny because, though the time between then and now seems like twenty times forever, I know I am the same person.

  I also know how I felt that day. Not just because I remember the feeling, which could have been misinterpreted or glossed over with time. I know how I felt because I remember the process of remembering. I remember what I was trying to say, the message in the memory. I remember what I told myself I would.

  So there is the answer, in a roundabout way. I know that I was so perfectly content in St. Andrews, because I told myself so at the time, and I’m almost certain that I wouldn’t have lied.

  Surf and Turfed Out

  Freshers Week in the Second Year came and went almost without incident which, given the flatulent events line-up, you could have been forgiven for thinking was the plan. There was one oddly shining star in the week – an unofficial black-tie ball called the Surf and Turf, which was being openly condemned by the Student’s Association. That was the first point in its favour. The second was the venue: in amongst the fronds and fishes at the Sea Life Centre.

  The price for admission was pretty steep, but included unlimited cocktails. Craig was up for it, but I couldn’t persuade anyone else. I spent all day looking for a pair of formal shoes that would fit my monstrously large feet, and I came up with squat.

  ‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Craig asked, when we went to get our taxi.

  ‘Golf shoes,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, great. Fucking great. Maybe we’ll get a game in on the way home. Way to go, asshole.’

  The atmosphere in the Sea Life Centre was perfect. We had pretty much the full run of the place, wandering down dark corridors windowed with fish tanks full of tropical (and sometimes utterly hideous) fish. There were a few rooms large enough for people to mix in, and they had been converted into cramped dance floors. The drinks were free as promised and as freely flowing, at first. The place was on three levels, indoors and outdoors, and was, to put it mildly, sexy as hell. Everybody there was loaded.

  There was music pumping throughout, and a live band in one of the bigger areas. We bumped into a couple of the Randoms there and exchanged drunken greetings, even though we couldn’t remember each other’s names, or hear anything we said over the sound of the music. One of the guitarists broke a string, and carried on playing the song. Occasionally it would get in the way, making a scratchy, amplified rasping sound. It was exactly that sort of an off-the-cuff night.

  ‘This place is alright,’ Craig said. This was more praise than I had ever heard Craig use in a single sentence before.

  ‘It really is. The other half are in tonight, eh? I hardly recognise anyone.’

  [In St. Andrews there are only two explanations for not immediately recognising everyone within a hundred yards, and one of them is amnesia. The other is that you’ve stumbled head first into the old boy’s network.]

  ‘They don’t stay at the Park, Quinn, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Where do the fuck do they stay?’

  ‘Sallies. And big fuck-off penthouse flats hidden in the middle of town.’

  ‘No regrets on that front?’ It seemed like the right time to ask.

  ‘I spent a lot of time in Fife Park last year, too,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, but mostly, she came out to yours at night.’

  ‘Mostly,’ he said.

  ‘Cause Fife Park is shite.’

  ‘Yeah. God, it’s fucking awful.’

  ‘You think all this music is bad for the fish?’

  A bright yellow and blue fish in a nearby tank seemed to be swimming in time with the band. It was upside down.

  ‘Doubt it. They’d never have hired the place out, if it was.’

  [Later we found out that what was really bad for the fish was the sheer number of assholes emptying their cocktail glasses into the tanks.]

  ‘I’m amazed they did. This place is unreal.’

  ‘Cocktails are pretty low rent, though,’ Craig said, swirling his plastic beaker.

  [Colour by Dettol, flavour by blue Ice Pop. Or possibly the other way around.]

  ‘Listen, Craig,’ I said. ‘This year’s going to be different.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Potentially.’

  ‘We’re off to a good start,’ I said.

  ‘Best start ever.’

  ‘But I meant me,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be different this year.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m going to sort it all out, mate,’ I said. ‘All of it.’

  He shrugged, honestly.

  ‘Quinn, you think some things are important that aren’t. You don’t get what’s important to everyone else. You’re a total fuckup.’

  ‘I’ve got my issues,’ I relented, cheerfully.

  ‘Mate, everyone has issues, but yours don’t make any sense.’

  ‘Look, I’ve got a plan,’ I told him. ‘I know what I need to do.’

  I expected him to be interested. He wasn’t.

  ‘You know, you’re a lot more fun when you’re not getting obsessed over some shit that doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said.

  There was a wooden veranda outside which looked out over the half lit bay, and a barbecue setup with hotdogs and snacks. Craig disappeared at some point, and I was left standing alone with a hotdog in my hand. I stared out over the bay, taking it all in. The sights, the sounds, the dirty smell of the sea and the smoky taste of my junk food.

  It was a good night, but it came in on a good tide. The sweet mood was merely an extension, an expression, of what was already true to me; that I was in the right place, that things were going to be fine.

  Warm and homely, it also carried an electric note of excitement. It was anticipation, and joy. It washed over me like the lapping sea; it kept on lapping, kept on giving, in waves. It seemed to be almost never ending. I put the whole night on pause, as if to remind myself for a lifetime that such a thing could be true.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever felt completely at one with a time and a place, as if you could roll with anything it threw, and be prepared to throw yourself back knowing that nothing would hurt you harder than you could stand? I think it is a better feeling than even believing you will never be hurt at all. It would make such a state seem like sleep.

  I concentrated on the feeling, on the horizon, on the glow of the lamps, gold and black, shimmering and distorted in the crests of countless gentle breakers; a satin blanket of a night; warm and glossy, charged and potent.

  I don’t know how long I stood there. I remember it now as a single experience, suspended like a jewel in the evening, set apart from the minor events, the conversations, the passing of time.

  And it occurred to me that I never once felt out of place in St. Andrews. I felt like an idiot plenty of times, like I didn’t know what was going on all of the time, and like I was missing out on something most of the time. But, if anything, that only made me hungry to see, do, and live a little more. I never felt like I should be anywhere else, not for a moment, not even when I wanted the earth to swallow me.

  There were tough times, and melodrama, and I was stupid with my time and with love, and wrong about it, too. But that sponge-like faith in the rightness of it all cushioned every blow. I could shrug off the worst of it, and still feel nothing but harmony and that strange, hopeful, coy expectation.

  It was a slight pressure on my shoulder that finally brought me back to the night.

  ‘Are you wearing trainers?’ a girl in a long green evening dress was asking, with the peculiar nasal shock of the gaspingly rich. She put her hand to her chest, as if to calm herself after a nasty experience.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I sighed, wishing the earth would swallow me.

  When I found Craig he was chatting to a tall, blonde first-year. I left him to it.

  I went to the bar again, where they were now only serving one drink per person. Sandy Bertrando was there, getting outrageously drunk, and pulling out all the stops on his way to oblivion.

  ‘What do you want to drink?’ Sandy asked me, a little too showily for a place with a free bar.

  ‘Gin and Tonic,’ I said. Sandy frowned, and ordered something else. Something pink.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, as we left the bar.

  ‘Aha! They’re both for me,’ he said in his typical, mocking whine.

  ‘Of course they are,’ I said, with a sigh. I had forgotten what a prick Sandy could be when he was... well. All of the time.

  ‘Yaah! Fuck your system!’ Sandy shouted at the barman, downing one drink and running off with the second. His triumphant laughter echoed down the corridor.

  [Bertrando should be hermetically sealed in a vault somewhere in Paris, just to give the world a standard definition for the word ‘cackle’.]

  I couldn’t be bothered to join the queue again, so I went off to get another hotdog. I met Craig outside, and we went in together for a last look at things.

  ‘How’s your blonde?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s stuffy and rich,’ he said. ‘Even her name. Elizabethe. Elizabethe with an extra ‘E’. You know why? Because her parents can afford one.’