Billygean.co.uk

“Okay, what have we got?” I say to Mike. We’re standing outside the Co-Op. We’re both so broke. But we do need to eat, and the Co-Op does prevent us going out for meals we are not supposed to.

“Right, I have ten pounds, ten pounds,” Mike says, counting. “So twenty.”

I open my purse. “Okay, I five, five, ten. And one pound and … six pence,” I say, emptying it into his hands.

“That shouldn’t be too bad, forty one pounds and six pence; dinner for tonight and a week’s shopping.”

“Ooh, I have found another pound,” I say. “For the trolley.”

We make our way around the supermarket. I manage to resist buying fudge although I do buy some smarties ice creams due to post-Rome ice cream cravings. We have a small tiff in the fizzy drink aisle because Mike does not feel coke is essential. I however know that coke is essential to my wellbeing but alas we return with none.

We reach the checkout and Mike begins loading it whilst I go in search of last minute bread. I come back with a miniature loaf which is so cute and looked lonely on the shelf. Mike rolls his eyes.

I survey the shopping. “What do you think it will come to?”

“I hope not over forty,” he says. I bite my lip. It looks like there’s an awful lot of shopping there. Chicken, sauces, naan breads, peppers. I watch it anxiously as it goes through the checkout, wishing there was a subtitle window.

“I’m going,” I say. “I refuse to be present if we have to put items back on the shelf.”

Mike kisses my forehead. “You are not going anywhere. Besides, it’ll be fine.”

He packs the last of the food away as the lady at the checkout opens her mouth.

“That’ll be forty one pounds and six pence,” she says. My mouth drops open.

“You added that up!” I say.

“I DID NOT!”

“I am very, very scared by you.”

I leant over the barre, my hair stuck to my forehead, and stretched my leg-warmer clad leg behind me.

“I completely can’t do ronde de jamb en l’air,” I said to Hannah. This is where you put your leg in the air to the front, and carry it round to the back. So you go from the position on the left and end in the position on the right of this post.

“I know, it’s impossible,” she said.

I took a sip of my water and thumped my leg over the barre to stretch it out. “It’s like, I can move it so far round but then I have to drop it in order to get round my hip.” I paused. “I feel old.”

“You know what that’s called?” Hannah said. “It’s called having a pelvis.”

I was walking home after my lecture today, freshly fallen leaves at my feet and my nose streaming with what feels suspiciously like freshers’ flu. The bright street was full of road works, builders, JCBs digging up tarmac. I walked past one of them just as the tray bit (?) of the JCB swung out. I ducked dramatically and one of the builders smiled at me.

I was so busy being embarrassed that I walked into a tree.

I stepped out onto the back garden patio after my bath, a towel still wrapped around my hair and my bare feet cool on the ground. I looked at the purple sky and fingered plants and herbs as the breeze cooled my face.

I write about the past a lot. I’m not sure at what point things become the past, but something definitely happens. The ridgid structures of facts and everyday events become unwound by memory; suddenly there is magic in scenes you saw, and songs and smells will forever remind you of what felt like moments but were simply pieces of time.

I used to think I remembered school too fondly. At university I have looked back longingly at mindless hours spent in the common room, playing cards, people watching, becoming people ourselves. I remember scrunching my nose up in physics, the smell of our tiny library, the first time I read Chaucer.

The summer before university was life changing. Full of secrets, and long nights, and gazing out of windows. Me and my friends drove miles to secluded pubs, where we would order wine for the first time, and sip and try to discern the fruits. I would sit in my bedroom after these nights, wonderfully nocturnal, and light candles and memorise tarot cards and run my fingers over runes.

I remember reading Woolf’s To The Lighthouse that summer. It conceptualised exactly how I felt. If I had an ocean, there would have been walking and painting, and shrubs glistening in moonlight. I walked a lot in the fields near my house. They felt like my first true home.

That summer cemented my English degree for me; it felt right, to be creative, to read other people’s deep thoughts. How wrong I was. What was right then, was not memory, of fondness or rose-tinted glasses. No, it was some direction. It was logic and reason in what I did. It was knowing where I wanted to be. It was maths, and physics and structure in my studies, which allows my mind to float above with thoughts of love, and candles, and magic.

I feel that magic again now, as I sit in lectures. I love it. Everything lines up.

I returned to my desk after my bath and resumed reading a case. I put my pen down for a moment and smiled.

This is exactly where I am supposed to be.

“I was asking Mike the other day about boats,” I said, at DoctorSisters’s birthday meal.

“Here it comes,” said my Dad.

“Yeah, well, we currently spend 9 – 5 with this contract guy who specialises in boating law.” I said. “In 1875 they actually made an admiralty court, because of all the boating cases.”

“Yes…” My sister said.

“So I said to Mike, why on earth is there an entire court for boats? I mean there are like, what, 6 boat owners in the world, and they’re yachts.”

My dad sprayed his drink.

“So Mike rolled his eyes and lost the will to live again, and in the end I learnt all about oil tankers.”

There was a pause.

“I would love Rob to be here,” my sister eventually said. “He always realises I’m not too bad when you’re around.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s okay. You see, there’s blonde,” she said, marking the air, and then, moving her hand about a foot down, she said “And then there’s Billygean.”

My dad applauded.

Last night Mike and I went to Las Iguanas.

During the day, I ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast and then starved myself (Hi, Dr. B!). Consequently I was actually having dizzy spells when we got there so I ordered most sugary drink in the world.

“Hi, are you ready to order now?” the waitress said, just as I took a sip of The Drink.

“Yes,” I said after swallowing. Oh holy crap. There is something in my mouth. Multiple somethings.

“I’ll have the erm… Quiso…” I decided to point. A) because I don’t speak Spanish, and, to waitresses, I barely speak English and b) because THERE WAS SOMETHING IN MY MOUTH.

“Mike,” I hissed after I had finished ordering. “What the fuck is in my mouth?”

I opened my mouth to show him the contents. He raised his eyebrows.

“Okay Billygean, a) this is completely gross in public and b) there are about 20 black round things on your tongue.”

I practically wretched and spat them into a napkin, which the waitress promptly removed.

“I can’t take you anywhere, can I?” he said.

I actually managed three courses. A parcel of melted Brie and mangos, a shoulder of lamb in coconut sauce and coconut ice cream with pineapples (so three deserts then).

And yes, my tongue did swell up.

And yes, it was totally worth it.

“Can we get a cat?” I said.

“When?” Mike said.

“Next year.”

He raised his eyebrows and shifted the co-op bags to his other hand.

“Please,” I said. “It would be so sweet. And called Keats.”

“I’m not convinced”, he said.

“Please can we get a cat, please can we get a cat, please can we get a cat -”

Mike dropped the shopping bags.

“You’re going to make a great lawyer.”