Amelie

It all started a good six years back. The start of the second phase of my life as they call it. Ironically they give it the same name as the French give a certain act of pleasure. ‘La petit mort’. The little death. It was anything but pleasurable, or little, and in fact, had nothing to do with me dying. So having established the literary issues with the beginning of the second phase, perhaps I should explain the physical issues. My name is Dorian. My parents have a funny sense of humour. That and a penchant for reading literature by gay Irishmen. Dorian Grey. Thankfully we studied Dickens at high school, so my ignorant classmates were blissfully unaware of my narcissistic namesake. The name, though, was more appropriate than my parents could ever have imagined. I still haven’t told them, I can’t bring myself too. I haven’t seen them now for six months. They are under the impression that I’m travelling the world. Doing the whole student thing. If only that was the case. I’m feeling weak now, and you can probably tell by the sporadic, unhinged method of committing my records to writing. So I shall start at the beginning. Or as close to the beginning as is appropriate.1

It was a cold day in September. I had passed my GCSE’s with flying colours, as is the advantage of being an academic, and had applied to the best sixth form college in the county. Norton Sixth Form College. The prestigious place was moulded in the shape of the colleges of old. And I don’t mean frumpy West Country colleges; I mean the colleges of Science, Mathematics and Religion of eighteenth century Oxford. As the bus pulled in, rain sloughed of the flint slate roofs and spires, rendered in a gothic architectural fashion, so common in Oxford, yet so pertinent in one of the Home Counties. Alighting from the bus, I nearly slipped on the sandstone flags, lining the pathway down to the reception. Following signposts neatly blu-tacked to the lichen-coated yellow bricks, I headed for the sports hall. An obscene blemish of high tech modern society lumped inside this recreated corner of classic Oxford. Inside was large, basketball hoops on neat slides at either end, five side hockey-cum-football goals collapsed and stacked neatly against a wall. Fluorescent strip lighting, bright and harsh, compared to the grey dulled light outside. Inside were perhaps a thousand new students. All dressed in their casual best. An official looking man with a stupendous world war two pilots moustache, tinted grey by age, and orange through tobacco stood at a lectern, ramrod straight, eyeballing the growing crowd. I spotted the one person I knew in what felt like the whole world, and strode over. Before I continue, I’d better tell you about James. James is a wannabe playboy. He fancies himself as the new Hugh Hefner. Not a picture too difficult to imagine given that he is six foot two, chiselled features, slim, yet muscled build, and that most important defining feature of our late teenage years...the ability to grow facial hair, but choosing to shave it off. So you have the physical picture, but the mental picture is something quite different. Beneath the athletic, lithe, jock body, lies, quite frankly, the most brilliant mind I have ever had the pleasure of encountering. Quick, witty, cunningly precise in his observations. The only downfall of course being...he’s a pure mathematician. I am told, by people more in the know than myself, that Pure Maths is the root of everything in the universe. Pure Mathematicians study Maths, not for the practical use it brings about; say for example, in Physics or Chemistry, but for the abstract ‘un-applications.’ It is the study of Maths...for the fun of it. This is the closest I can come to articulating his mindset. That and he held the high school time record for ‘The Times Xmas Sudoku’ for four years in a row.2

“Aha, the prodigal Wilde returns.” James simply stated. It was his traditional greeting. A private joke, that I’m sure will become much more widespread in this place of higher learning.3

“And the Hawkings bids me welcome.” I replied. It was a greeting game we played. The two of us are fond of playing little games. The games started as being transformers, back when we wore dungarees. Then it became Tag, and shortly after high school rugby. Computer games, Risk, Monopoly, Pictionary, anything that the two of us could pit our wildly different mindsets against one another. 4

“How was the ride?” He asked. James, the bastard, was born on the first of September, and as such had been Seventeen for a good week and a half, and in that time had passed his test and driven to college. I on the other hand, had to take the peasant wagon. 5

“Long, arduous, tiring, the usual.” In three weeks time I was Seventeen and finally got to take my test. My choice of transport was slightly different to James’ and he and I had been working on getting it running for a good six months. A task, I have to point out, that James’ mathematical mindset was far better suited to than I.6

“A-hem. Welcome new students,” The moustachioed man began, “I am Principal Hawthorn, and I shall guide you through your next two academic years.” Hawthorn droned on for at least another half hour about his expectations from us, and what we could expect from his staff. James and I contented ourselves by playing a wonderful game of our own devising called the word disassociation game. It’s really quite simple. One of you says a word, and then the other has to say a word, instantly, that has no link or relevance to the previous word. If the first speaker can prove it does have a link, then he scores. If not, he states another word that is not linked. It sounds complicated on paper, but out loud it is extremely simple, and merciless. I shall give you an example.7

“Paper”8

“Umbrella”9

“Capricorn”10

“Match”11

“Ah. A match ignites to cause fire, and Capricorn is a fire symbol.” At this point James and I would usually descend into a good-natured argument over whether or not Capricorn actually was a fire symbol or not, and it would usually end in us settling it the good old fashioned way. The way you expect gentlemen to settle things. It was the proverbial pistols at dawn. Rock, Paper, Scissors. 12

Anyway, I’m, getting side-tracked. We were lead to our class-rooms and introduced to our tutors. We went about our business for the day. Tours and endless introductions. The only highlight of the first day, aside from beating James at the disassociation game three times in a row, was meeting our peer mentor. Amelie was her name. I can’t even begin to describe the girl, suffice to say she was a female Adonis. James and I were almost speechless, and therefore, decided now would not be a good time to attempt to chat her up. Instead we contented ourselves by listening to that silky, softly spoken voice, and dreamt of the day we could discuss the similarities between Marlow and Shakespeare, or the differences between Shaw and Wilde. Well, that was my dream anyway; doubtless James wanted an orgy of sequentially based Fibonacci-esque conversations. Alas, we were deprived of conversing with her for another fortnight, as we were kept busy socialising, fraternising and generally attempting to forge friendships, in our formative educating years. 13

It was at this point a third musketeer joined our little clique. Robin. Robin didn’t really fit into the way James and I worked, but for some reason, the three of us developed a comfortable friendship. I was the lit student, James was the maths guy and Robin did politics and sociology. Not the most sociable or confident young gentleman, but he had a way of bending people to his will that astounded James and I. He was a chap of few words, but he made them count. And he had a habit of sneaking up on people. He claims he didn’t do it deliberately; he just had a habit of appearing without warning. It was while James and I were supping a lager in the local pub ‘The Black Swan’ courtesy of his facial stubble, cunningly grown for two days to look like perma-stubble, when Robin appeared behind me, gripping me by the shoulder in way of greeting, and dropping a sizeable book on my lap, causing me to jump up. Through an unrivalled feat of dexterity, I narrowly avoided emptying the lager over James and his algorithms. 14

“Fuck me sunshine.” This elicited a narrow stare from the bar-maid, already dubious about our age, “at least give me some warning next time.” Robin merely smiled and shrugged, his typical response.15

“And to what, pray tell, do we owe the pleasure of your esteemed company, over the allure of the lunch time debating society?” Enquired the ever eloquent James. Robin sunk into an armchair, helped himself to a handful of nuts, and turned that smile upon James. Robin seemed to me to have the mind of a child wise to the ways of the world, or an incredibly naive old man, and this reflected in the almost patronising way he smiled at James and I, as though the answer was immediately obvious, but we were being too dense to see it.16

“It’s full of bloody liberals.” Was all Robin said, but it was enough. Raised by parents active in the local Conservative government, Robin had inherited his political views and outlook on life from them. James, a devout middle-grounder and general Labour supporter raised an eye-brow, wondering just what Robin meant by liberals and whether he should defend himself or not. I on the other hand, was under no illusion to whom he was referring. There was a group of self-proclaimed ‘socialists’, fuelled by the romanticism of the Communist ideal, intent on proving a society of equals could exist without corruption. Now, I may be a liberal, but I’m not so naive that I believe communism can ever truly work. I just think they’ve watched ‘The Beach’ too many times. James and I decided not to take the bait, instead, James sipped his pint and turned his attention back to the equations in front of him, and I picked up the book that was dumped so unceremoniously onto my crotch.17