1994 – Tequila Summer

Thus begins a poem called Tequila Summer, which I wrote sometime in the autumn of 1994, amid the ashes of the great summer that had just ended. And it had been a hell of a summer, too.

It was a summer of parties and of partings, of cigarettes and alcohol, of music festivals and drama festivals, of acting and of real life, of love and unhappiness, tears and tomorrows, teenage romance and adult fears, yesterdays, tomorrows, and todays. It was the end of an era, everyone was eighteen, school had blown out for the last time, but whatever came next had yet to start, and we were determined to make the most of this final summer, knowing full well that there would never be another time in our lives when everyone would be at the same level, the same place, and with the same intentions. Everyone was bound by their past, and the promise of their future, but was prepared to live entirely for the moment - for those glorious hot afternoons, and almost endless evenings. For pubs, parties, nightclubs, and barbecues. For celebrating being young and alive.

Obviously, the poem isn’t even a hundredth of the story of the summer of 1994, just as this memoir isn’t even a tenth of it. It was a very different world back then, both for me personally, and for the planet at large. A decade has passed in which so many things have happened, and over such a long time memories fade, photographs lose their power and diaries read like fiction. However, I have some memories, a few photographs, and a diary to somehow try and bring clarity to the hazy pictures in my head of these great days, of perhaps the greatest summer of them all.

We begin, like the poem, at the moment that school ended for the last time.

Technically, school had already ended. The cessation of real lessons, and the commencement of A Level study leave had come on the 20^th of May, and already in the month that I should have spent studying hard for these important examinations, revision had been forsaken in favour of a brief fling with a beautiful girl called Lesley Jones (whose non-identical twin sister contemporaneously went out with a friend of mine), trips to the Students Union to see bands, trips to Echos Nightclub to dance, trips to the pub to get pissed, hanging around and chilling out. In essence, the freedom and fire of the summer began there. Except for the exams, of course.

I can’t remember exactly how many of them I had – I think there were two papers in sociology, two in theatre studies (all the practical stuff having already been completed) three in English, and two in general studies, but I may well be mistaken. All I know is that I wasn’t really interested in them, and saw them as a tedious chore to be got over and done with as quickly and as painlessly as possible, rather than the building blocks that were to shape the rest of my life. Stupid and immature attitude to have, I know – but that was then; that was me. I was in a band and we were going to rock the world, so what did I care for exams? Academia could go hang itself for all I was concerned with it. Of course, I know better now, much better, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Just ask any owl.

That final exam, on the 23^rd of June, was a theatre studies paper, and when we’d finished, the entire group went to one of the student union bars with our teacher, mentor, and icon Lindsay Ross to raise a glass to finishing school forever, but also to ourselves, our group, because through the immense time we spent together (over the two years of the course, the majority of us spent more time out of school working on theatre studies projects than anything else) we had attained a special bond that crossed all social divides that might exist outside the drama studio. That’s us, there.

As we sat there, drinking and smoking and chatting, I felt a brief tug of some strange, sad feeling. I pushed it away, not wishing to allow my mood to sink, and didn’t try to analyse it. It wasn’t to be the first time that summer that amid all the good times, I experienced such a feeling, a feeling that if explored, would be the sadness of endings, the inescapable knowledge that something was finishing forever, and that once it was gone, nothing could ever retrieve it.

Thanks to my diary, I can safely conclude that this July was the most sociable period of my life, except for possibly the following summer… but that’s another story. You could say that I lead a more social life now, in that I rarely if ever have a night in, and that is the pattern my life has followed for many years, but it’s more habitual now – back then, it seemed fresh and exciting to be going to a different party every night, with the odd visit to a pub or two if there was nothing else on.

Later that summer, a theatre company that many of my friends and I were a member of was due to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, of which a great deal more anon. But prior to the start of rehearsals, we were supposed to be starting learning our lines, so somehow line-learning had to be fitted in, too. But, rather like my lackadaisical attitude towards my exams, this had to take second place to that eternal pursuit of drink, girls and good times. I didn’t write many songs for the band, either.

So, where did we go, and what did we do?

On Saturday the 9^th, my parents went on a fortnight’s holiday, taking my brother and sister, and leaving me and the cat on our own in the house - the season of hedonism had officially begun. That night, I went to a party with my friend Matt Ball. Matt had been drummer in my previous band, was ostensibly drummer in my current band, was another former member of my theatre studies group, and was also in ByAct, the theatre company that was going to Edinburgh. Matt was a wonderful guy, laid back and easy going, fond of Guinness, tea, and the Beatles. Since he joined my school at the beginning of the sixth form, we’d become very close, and as he lived in Shepshed, a village a few miles out of Loughborough, he regularly stayed at my house on Friday or Saturday nights if we were going out. During July of 1994, he was there almost every day.

That evening, we were going to the house of a girl called Jacqui Mee, who had at one time been a girlfriend of mine. However, she was now engaged to a Greek man who was at the University. His name escapes me now, but she was shortly to be moving to Athens with him, as he had to do his National Service in the Greek army, and the party was a leaving do in her honour. I can’t remember much of what occurred, although I do remember being surprised at being invited, as I’d seen very little of Jacqui since she’d left school to go to another college two years previously. She barely knew Matt at all, so I can only assume I invited him along for moral support, as I supposed (correctly, as it turned out) that I wouldn’t really know many people there. So, Matt and I strolled down to Jacqui’s, a walk I had done many times previously during the time she and I were going out. For some reason, perhaps because I met her at the height of my Doors obsession, the song Universal Mind is very evocative of Jacqui, of our time together, and of that walk from her house to mine in particular. In my mind’s eye, when I picture Jacqui’s street, unpaved and bumpy, with the shop on the corner, I can hear Jim Morrison’s voice.

It was the last time I was ever to do that walk, I realised, and I got that sad feeling of endings again. As before, I pushed it away, and Matt and I went and got drunk and said our goodbyes to Jacqui. It wasn’t the last time I was to ever see her (that occurred in the Griffin in 1996, when she appeared out of nowhere, just to say hullo), but it certainly felt like that. Fortunately, the air was more one of celebrating her impending marriage, rather than commiserating over her leaving the country. Matt and I eventually left in the small hours and returned to my house, where Matt was so ill through drinking that I had to undress him, and put him to bed, bless him. He’d done the same for me in the past, I’m pretty sure.

The following morning, we awoke to find we had two things – stinking hangovers, and a distinct lack of cigarettes and milk. This was something of a crisis, as in those rather less liberal days, Sunday trading was practically non-existent, and I could only think of one place that was definitely open – a newsagent on Forest Road, which was a twenty minute walk across the University campus. With the hangovers we had, it would take at least an hour there and back, during which time our need for a cup of tea and a smoke would undoubtedly cripple us permanently unless… unless… And then was struck with a blinding flash of inspiration – my brother’s mountain bike was in the garage! It would only take a quarter of the time if I rode up there. It was a flawless plan, so I took the bike out of the garage, and rode off into the morning sunlight.

Flawless plan, my arse.

Somehow, I had neglected to remember that I hadn’t actually properly ridden a bike in about five years, and I had no real knowledge of cycling proficiency or what to when riding a bike on a main road. In fact, in my limited biking experience, I’d never even left our cul-de-sac street. Add this wretched lack of knowledge to a killer hangover, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Crossing the University itself was no problem, as it was the vacation, and the roads therein were in the main very quiet. However, when I reached Forest Road itself, things were very different. I had already elected to take a slightly longer route, as the road that led almost directly to the shop and avoided Forest Road itself almost entirely was a very steep hill, and I had some strange fear of brake failure and serious injury. Instead, I decided to avoid the slope, go a bit further down, and join Forest Road about a quarter of a mile away from the shop. Perhaps in my naiveté I’d imagined that it would be quiet, because it was Sunday. If so, I had been dismally inaccurate – there were cars passing on both sides of the road every few seconds, which, to my horrified eyes, made it as busy as the M25. I contemplated riding up the pavement, but there were a lot of people around too, and I had no desire to either a) mow any of them down, or b) appear an inconsiderate hooligan. So, I had to bite the bullet and grit my teeth, as Jim Hacker once mis-metaphorised. With no knowledge of signalling whatsoever, I pulled out, and teetered gingerly across the road to be next to the pavement. I wasn’t sure if I should stay to the left or right of the traffic, but there was no way I was going to ride in between the two lanes. Sweating out beer and nerves, I slowly made my way up the incline that was Forest Road, with cars whizzing past me inches from my handlebars. After what seemed an eternity, but could in reality have been little more than a minute and a half, I spotted the comforting sight of the Forest Road Stores and Post Office on my right. Once again, I had to negotiate crossing the road, which was the closest I actually came to real peril. I had a wobble, and felt I was going to come a cropper in the face of the oncoming traffic. Somehow, I managed to keep control of the bike, and pulled up onto the pavement in front of the shop. Never had a local shop seemed such a marvellous sight.

Having bought Marlboros, milk, and possibly some Coke too, I decided to take my original route home, which although it meant facilitating quite a steep hill, it kept me away from the traffic on Forest Road. The effort was well worth it, as I had no near misses on the way home, and soon Matt and I were sat out the back of my house, drinking tea and smoking fags.

That evening, there was a party in Quorn, another local village, that Matt and I had heard of the party from Dan Foley, a friend of ours who was earmarked to play bass in our band. Although it wasn’t actually Dan’s party, he had explained it was an open house affair, and the house was big enough for it to be very open indeed. A group of us went over from Loughborough – according to my diary, it was myself, Matt, and other friends Ben Jones, Karl Frisby, Anthony Dickinson, Neil Potter, and Alex Riddles. I didn’t really know Alex at the time, but looking back its quite ironic that although I haven’t seen or heard from any of the others for years, I see Alex every week, and he’s a really good friend of mine. We later shared a house, and also many good times, but again, that’s another story for another time.

Whether the house at which the party was being held was as big as Dan had implied, I can’t say, for the simple reason that the entire party was held outside, in the garden. However, judging by the Glastonbury-sized expanse of grass that constituted it, I would hazard a guess it was quite a palatial residence. In fact, the Glastonbury comparison didn’t end there – several people had bonfires going, and so we decided to do the same, and ended up sitting around it, not really mingling with anybody else, drinking beer, smoking spliffs, and sniffing amyl nitrate like it was going out of fashion. Although the majority of the gathering were strangers to us, there were a few other people there that we knew – some girls whose social circle frequently collided with ours, and whom we regularly saw at local nightspots. In fact, one of them, Kate, was Alex’s sister, and she was someone I had fancied, on and off, since the previous year. However, Kate wasn’t present at this party – her friends Kerrie Barrie and Celia Ukario were, though, along with Helen Westaway, someone who would also be in Edinburgh later that summer, albeit with another theatre group.

After a couple of hours, the party had gone a little flat for us, so we returned to the cars, and drove back to Loughborough. To this day, I still have no idea whose party it was that we attended, or whether I even saw the alleged host at all. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure whether what we considered to be an invite was actually an invite at all. Still, even if we were trespassing on somebody’s property, and invading a party that we had no right being at in the first place, we didn’t cause any trouble for anyone, and we had a good time. That was the unspoken credo of this party season, really – no trouble any time, and a good time, all the time. I quite like that – I wish life were still that easy.

TO BE CONTINUED