peripathetic

Old friends. New times.
Last week was magical. Ending yesterday, I had a visit from Patrick, a great friend of mine, who I met at university in Aberdeen. We were sitting in a seminar one day and started to talk. I can't remember what about; it wasn't anything special. Then, slowly, we started talking more often, and more deeply, and within weeks each had discovered that the other was a writer. That really kick-started things. Then, as we got to know each other more, I relaxed into my usual quirky self, Patrick relaxed into his slightly less quirky and more grounded self, and we had ourselves a friendship.

Summer came and went, and everyone was back at Aberdeen once more. Walking through the students' union in Fresher's Week, I bumped into Patrick again. He was sitting behind the desk of the Creative Writing Society. Not joining up again wasn't an option - in fact I can't even remember if there was a Creative Writing Society or whether I was a member of it during my 3rd year. Anyway.

So began a year of magic. Short stories, poetry, the intimate cosy and often frustrating sharing and development thereof. Nights of toil, pleasantly lubricated with Guinness, upstairs in the Red Lion. Nights of warmth, protected from the cold outside by the roaring fire of the Illicit Still. Nights of dinner, and films. Nights of conversation. Nights getting to know newer people: Anita, Steph, Lara, Iain... I write these names not because you'll have the faintest who I'm on about. (Although you may, someday.) I write these names, - and leave out many more! - because these people were the stars, asteroids, and black holes I orbited around that year.

Those nights, and days, with them. Nights of debauchery in Club 2000. Nights when everything was too beautiful, or too involved, to meet anyone else, and you kept in touch by phone. (One of those, a bitter, ice-slicked, snow-filled night in the park, I went back home and wrote. It was too much to talk about.) And days and nights spent travelling. Travelling to Edinburgh, to the countryside, to other towns. Travelling with writers through Scotland in the middle of winter, ending up in a cosy hostel on the Isle of Skye. All freezing white and silver in the day. All warm dark and star-flecked at night, sliding by slowly with glasses of amber fire. Travelling, also, to Edinburgh, a magical, cathartic, escapist's city - where Patrick and others were to settle later.

And then, slowly, things wound down and stopped. It was the end of university, of course. The end, certainly, of an era. We all knew, those of us who thought and wrote and spent time together, that the luxury of living so closely entwined and surrounded by academia and mental rigour, would change things. Might damage things. Not between us, but creatively. It didn't. But it could have.

And if there's one thing I take away from Patrick's visit, aside from the renewed covenant of friendship, it's this. It's never too late to remember what you loved. It's never too late to reclaim what keeps you alive. Essentially: I swear to fuck I'm gonna write more! :oD