A-Z Challenge 2018

Hedonistic

I went away to school and discovered drinking for pleasure, to accentuate a mood pretty early on. School was tough and I could not just waste my time there, I was, after all, there to learn, to play sport and to excel. Did I succeed? It’s a good question. Academically I did ok, I passed 10 GCSE’s, 1 O’level (in Divinity of all things, look it up, I did it a year early) and I got 3 A’levels, just.

I was caught smoking cigarettes at school on numerous occasions and drinking a few times, mostly by prefects, the one time I was caught red handed with a bottle of cider behind the computer block with some mates and some cigarettes on the way to RocSoc, the school rock concert. I never made it, Mr bastard Flory sent me to my housemaster and I ended up having a letter sent home to my parents. They couldn’t believe I’d ended up like this, turned out a rotten penny, what had gone wrong? My Dad called me a Twat and didn’t talk to me for a week when I went home for the summer holidays.

I went to university but my grades weren’t good enough to get into Bristol, Bath or Nottingham so I had to go through the clearing system. I was in India at the time as my Granny had brought me a round the world ticket so I could see a bit of the world before I knuckled down to university. I remember my Dad calling me up, I was in some shitty phone booth in Goa, stoned out of my gourd, and he was asking me which college I wanted to go to as he had to tell the clearing people ? My future education and future future, decided with a spliff in my hand. I ended up travelling the world in 1991, leaving the same day the first gulf war broke out, and on occasion on train rides pretending to be from New Zealand, a neutral country with no troops on the ground or any interest in sending any to Iraq.

I travelled to Goa, and took my first acid trip; I continued to take acid whenever I could get my hand on it for the next 3 years, when I couldn’t get acid I got hold of speed, when you mixed these two together they were better and cheaper than E and lasted way longer. All the time in the background there was ganja, solid, rocky, bush, leb, whatever. If I couldn’t get high I would get drunk, I rolled around the world’s clubs, bars, beaches, town centres, record shops, pubs. I slept in beds, on the floor, I woke up in sainsbury’s once, I woke up in the rain in strange gardens, I slept under a car and was woken by a man with a walking stick, I woke up in a ditch filled with nettles after taking magic mushrooms and saw myself getting a bit out of control so tried to regulate by drinking rum; this made me pass out against the Rayburn at my friends hut. I grew dreadlocks, I shaved my head, I wrote rude words on my t-shirts and shaved rude words in my hair. I didn’t wash, I played pinball.I was invincible. No one could stop me doing what I wanted. I loved cricket but stopped that when I got chicken pops (thats what my kids called it!) I realised that because I was adopted, the world owed me a favour, I had survived my childhood, my wonderful childhood and nothing had gone wrong, so I assumed nothing would go wrong, ever.

I loved the world, and the world loved me; FACT. But I treated my parents house like a cheap hotel, the times I was there and I was rude to them and I really regret that. I was a shitty teenager and an even worse twenty year old waster student, and now I am a father with kids of my own I know that the teenage years and onwards are a time of real inner conflict, angst and turmoil. I was given everything I needed to make it in the world and I spent it all on my hedonism, my pursuit of fun times, my selfishness and awfulness to the ones who loved me the most. I have never hit anyone, I’ve been hit and head butted, I’ve passed out thousands of times, and spent quite a while not wearing shoes, I think I lost my mind there for a bit well maybe about 20 years, but finally I think things are starting to shift.

I think good behaviour started when I got a job, got married, had kids and began the process to find my Biofolks, those are all good things.

I sometimes have thought I could blame this attitude, these habits on my adoption, but then how the hell can I? I have no other life, nothing else to base this on other than my peers and what I see happening around me. I might be cross, I don’t know really and sometimes I’d like to know why I am who I am, nature and nurture or nature or nurture, or a bit of both?  I still love a bit of Hedonism, who doesn’t? But I think I’ll try not to piss anyone off this time, I’ve probably done that more times than I can shake a stick at.

Love to you all.

Today a confessional, tomorrow’s a belter!