I remember the first month vividly. It began with a picture of the moment we entered 2013, next to two of my closest friends and champagne. The just about summarises 2013, amigos and (an overload of) booze. Cliché but that’s what 2013 was, in the most beautiful way. The first day spurred a short love affair of Chinese lanterns which I tried to fulfil a few days after but it failed miserably but in all honesty was replaced with a funnier and more memorable occasion of falling of laughter on the heath. January was fast paced and filled with rehearsals and early mornings of buying energy drinks, and dressing as Abraham Lincoln. It was the true beginning of getting over the first person I thought I had been in love with. This process somewhat panned the whole of 2013. Then came the performance of Oliver, the endless shared meals and impromptu song-singing. It also included a moment of discovery, an intrinsic desire, that my life would be wasted if I did not write. So I began. I remember a bath where I felt so hard done by (as much as a middle class white girl can) and just wrote about my feelings (always a classic) and the first part of my novel was written.
The next few months were a constant GCSE panic, which lead me to talking to a teacher and divulging all my life problems, a weight of my shoulders, I was free. The months up to June were diluted with memorable occasions. A rowdy dinner conversation at Harvesters which concluded in a, badly dressed girl telling us she was having civilised conversation and that ours was not and should be kept down. Our drama GCSE performance and rehearsals often turned into discussions about life, and was the base of the beginnings of a great friendship and I will never forget the rush of performing and after it. One GCSE down! The following day was the last in uniform and the sense of unity pacing down the Avenue, bamboo sticks and water guns in hand, chanting as we entered school, is one I will never forget. It was scooters and war paint galore. Tears were gushed and meaningful hugs exchanged, but at the end of the day the tears fell to the ground and watered the ground with hope.
The dreaded run of exams were bestowed upon us with grace, and looking back, in the good old retrospective, were not bad at all. The constant chatter of, almost, excitement before exams and the slur and unanimous groan and whine after exams were comforting. A terrible drunken evening ending in a manic run towards Canary Wharf, was the beginning of what seemed like a blur of endless intoxication. But who cares, I was 16, that is what that age is for.
A car ride where I felt my youth in its fullest, a car ride up to Manchester, filled with Ben Howard listening and writing. As we plunged further north I felt my legs running myself into months of freedom. Summer has not yet arrived for me but this feeling of anticipation was almost as great as the feeling of freedom which I did eventually feel.
Exams finally ended. My last exam was the final exam for the entire year, and the glances of prosperity we shared in that room reflected that. Smiles could not be controlled. My fingers patting the desk in buzzing thrill, the feeling of unknowingness of what lay before us. But in that moment we cared very little. We paced out of school. We listened to I Love it. We drank rum and gin, mixed. We were summer. I remember distinctly being stood on platform 5, waiting for our train, and singing I Love It with everyone and I all I wanted to do was see that song live before the close of summer. A dream which would be realised.
It was an excellent start of summer, sat in an open, deserted field, talking, singing, eating, drinking. As I walked home I felt like everything was eternal. I was hope. Grace was inevitable.
The summer was glorious. It was a rich mix of everything. Dance shows, BBQs, shopping, sun, pizza with friends, getting done up, parties, drinking cider and pimms in the afternoon, first kisses, first dates, cloud watching, picnics (an endless stream of them), festivals, meeting new people, appreciating current friends, frantic nights, bright lights of Monaco, heavy lunches and French wine, swimming, disastrous drunkenness, meeting new bands, spider man and batman face paints, castles, beaches (and never wanting to return to a particular one), making brunch and Sunday roast, first (more than) kisses, screaming at concerts, wild fires, little sleep, madness, roaming London at night but most importantly: seeing I Love It live. Energy over flowed, I was raring to never age. I shared it with someone very important to me and it made it even more unforgettable.
After the exponential high that was summer, school was a shock.
My lessons ripped me apart from my friends, and began to feel lost. The first weekend we celebrated a birthday, and in true teenage fashion, we ended up drunk in a park. I was worse for wear to say the least, and spewed atrocities from my lips and my eyes. I ruined a birthday but it was an important event. It was the turning point. I was finally over it, the elephant in the room.
The rest of September was filled with more birthday meals, one for my Gran, which was spent with family and the beginning of my never-ending rant against the patriarchy, and the trigger for my now never-ending love for fine red wine. September ended on a high, a big bang, of meeting my spirit animal, and high energy night of dancing in the rain.
October was filled with birthdays and parties. It also spurred my enthusiasm for crazy alcoholic women. Within three days I saw ‘Blue Jasmine’, a tale of a crazy alcoholic woman descending into more insanity and deeper alcoholism, Streetcar and realised that ‘Blue Jasmine’ was deeply inspired by it, and as I walked down a platform of Charring Cross I remembered the night before being filled with thoughts of Streetcar and unstable women and I thought of poor Antoinette. Perhaps I became obsessed because I thought I was losing control as every body I saw in London with dark hair assumed the face that I always wanted to see. A face that I still want to see.
The rest of the year was festive and filled with getting to know all the newbie’s in the year. Getting a job. Having hilarious nights of resembling a monk gone mad and a candle lit dinner. Seeing I Love It live again: bright lights, strong and sharp movements of the body, and having an unexpected wild night. Hudson Taylor on my birthday and their emotional performance after announcing Mandela’s death. Up close, unplugged and personal. A poignant moment. Another evening filled with music and dancing and talking too openly, revealing too much but ultimately, not regretting it. Endless festivities with school Christmas meals and dancingly loosely to Christmas songs, going to the Panto and waiting an hour to be served dinner but the conversation that the wait evoked was better than a fast service. A late morning and early evening filled with even more food and drink and conversation in the garden with my best friend. The end of the year felt very conclusive.
Overlying all last year was my constant writing. Some of it has been questionable other pieces I am highly proud of. But all of it was practice, and the thing I love to do the most. This year felt as if it meant something, I felt that even though I was not in control of it, it controlled me to write something and that writing I was in control of. It was inspiring and filled to the brim. And as I stepped out of 2013 and into 2014 and in someone’s arms, I realised I had not been succumbing to London Grammar’s fear, because I am not definitely not wasting my young years.
germansingergirl
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
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