Another cup of jasmine tea

chapter 1

I used to have ambitions of being an airline pilot, walking through the airport in a suave suit with people looking admiringly in my direction. I’m not exactly sure how my life became so different!
My family moved around a lot when I was a child. My dad’s job I’m the prison service saw to that. He had been picked out as having the potential to rise to governor level, so he had to move where the promotions were available. We moved every three to five years. As an only child, it was not easy settling in, in a new school, in a new area, having to make friends all over again.
The most difficult move was when I was eleven. Until that point we had stayed in the north... Durham, Cumbria, Yorkshire. Then we had to move down to Devon, because my dad got a job in HMP Exeter. We got financial help to move and resettle, but it didn’t help me much.
I found it difficult to understand my fellow pupils’ accents at school and they found it difficult to understand my East Yorkshire one. I had to quickly adapt and learn. One good thing was though that I was not the only new starter at this school. It was my first year in comprehensive, so we were all starting the big school’ together. They still knew each other from their junior school days, but our uniforms were all crisp and new. We had all gone from being the biggest in school to being the smallest.
I settled in all right, I made friends, I got good marks for my schoolwork. Everything was as it should have been.
When I was thirteen the hormones started to kick in and I started to rebel a bit. This coincided with my dad having to entertain his senior work colleagues at home as he tried to butter his way into a new promotion. Some days, I would come home from school and be told to make myself scarce until nine o’clock. I had time to have something to eat and get changed, then I had to vacate the house for three hours while they had their dinner party. By the time I came home, they were all drunk and very loud. It was pointless trying to converse with them, so I’d just go to bed.
On some of those evenings, I was lucky to have a neighbour-friend, who’s mother would take me in and we would sit and watch the telly together. On other evenings, we would sit and do our homework together, or play football in the garden.
But then on a Tuesday evening, he would go to visit his grandparents in Mortenhampstead. On those evenings, I would take myself off to the park and amuse myself on the swings, or have a walk along the canal until it got dark and I could go home.
I think he got sick of me hanging around all the time anyway, because we fell out and I made friends with Ken.
Ken was my age, but his mother and father had a more relaxed attitude about parenting. He lived on the same estate, but higher up the hill. I could relax in his house in a way that I couldn’t at home. My dad was a strict disciplinarian and my mum hated mess. I was always getting into trouble for not keeping my room tidy. There was no such worries at Ken’s house! You didn’t get told off for having your feet up on the sofa when watching the telly. It didn’t matter if Ken didn’t make his bed in the morning.
When I was fourteen, my dad got news of another promotion. This time he was going to be an assistant governor at HMP Portland in Dorset. I had not long started studying for my ‘O’ level exams and they thought that it was too disruptive to my schoolwork for me to move again. So we stayed in Exeter and my dad commuted. He left for work very early on a Monday morning, then came home on a Friday night.
He got sick of all the toing and froing after six months. Another solution had to be found. I thought I was going to have to move to Dorset, but Ken’s mum said I could stay at her house in term time. I could see my parents in Dorset in the holidays. It would be fine!
The adults discussed the details amongst themselves, but it seemed like the ideal solution until I finished my exams. It was only for a year or so, then I could join my family in their new house in Weymouth. I could go to sixth form college down there for my ‘A’ levels.
I thought moving into Ken’s house was great! I could wear whatever I liked and not be told off! I could stay up as long as I liked, I could sleep in in the morning and be late for school! Freedom!
After a month at Ken’s I had started smoking and had my hair cut very short into a ‘suede head’ cut. I started to grow what sideburns I wore my old flared jeans with big turn-ups so that they say mid calf. I wore coloured or stripy socks, doc Martin boots with a capped sleeve tee shirt and a bomber jacket. I thought I looked ‘cool’. I wasn’t quite a skinhead, but couldn’t afford the smarter ‘mod’ look.
Now I looked the part, I started attracting the girls. Most weekends Ken and I found some party to go to somewhere and often came home drunk, even though we were two years under the legal drinking age. If there wasn’t a party to go to, we would ‘borrow’ some of Ken’s dad’s old hippie gear, get dressed up and try to get a drink in a pub without getting thrown out. I think I was barred from half a dozen pubs before I reached the age of sixteen!
Going into the autumn term of my final year, I got my ear pierced. When I went home, I took it out, but my mum still noticed. She hated it! She said I would never get a proper job wearing earrings... unless I wanted a job as a pirate that is and sadly that was not an easy job to find.
Of course my schoolwork suffered. I didn’t do my homework, I didn’t study. I skipped some lessons because I was too damn hungover. In other lessons I didn’t pay proper attention. When I started the course work, I was predicted to get straight A’s. I was lucky to come out with mostly B’s. I’d still passed, but it was not as good a grade as it ought to have been.
By the time I got my results, I had moved back in with my parents full time. I enrolled into the local sixth form to complete my ‘A’ levels. I should have been taking biology, chemistry and history. I put my name down for what I though might be the easier options - art, geography and English literature.
At home I was struggling to comply with my parents’ constraints. My mum hated my suede head look and made me wear clothes that made me blend in more. I didn’t want the blend in. I wanted to stand out!!
I hated having to sneak outside every time I wanted a fag. I hated having to make new friends - again.
I still kept in touch with Ken in Exeter. He even came down to Weymouth for the weekend. He came up with an alternative for going back to school. We planned it all like a military operation. I was over sixteen. I could leave home if I wanted to. I put as much money as I could aside to pay for a my train fare to my new life.
On the day I was supposed to start my new school in the sixth form, I did not go. I headed to the railway station instead and caught a train to North Wales. Actually it was two trains, because I had to change at Bristol, where I met up with Ken. It was his parents’ idea to take a year out of school before settling down to study again. They had come up with where we were going and made all the arrangements. I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. All I knew was it was a good place to go, I could take a year out from my schooling and do my ‘A’ levels later. In the meantime, I would be learning about nature and ecology and living in a co-existent manner.