ross « [last year's girl]

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

Don’t laugh. When Tommy Sheridan was a proper, honest-to-God politician he was a good sort, the only one who’d make time for student journalists after parliamentary debates and give them quotes for their assignments. Which they would then fail for giving too much of a socialist slant rather than a balanced viewpoint!

26th March 2004
Expediency demands that my creativity be sucked out of me and ploughed into ever-more-worthy pursuits than this record of my thoughts. While the thrill of speaking to Tommy Sheridan – a real-live-honest-to-God-politician! – in my capacity as a student journalist the other day reminded me of what I am in this for, the reality is hours spent hunched over a laptop. I fruitlessly search the Internet for a gem of worthwhile information, try to pull an argument from thin air and make up cups of coffee so strong I describe them to my flatmate Pam, with a wry smile, as “poisonous”.

That bloody Microsoft paperclip mocks my discomfort at every turn. It occurs to me now that I don’t actually remember ever being discharged from physiotherapy – I can’t just have stopped going, can I? A combination of childhood bad posture, years of heavy backpacks, a life spent latterly almost entirely in front of a computer screen and a hell of a lot of stress has fucked my back up, given me the most incredibly tense neck muscles you could possibly imagine and the delightful aftereffect of hellish migraines every couple of days if I don’t get enough sleep. The thing is, whether it’s what Ian jokingly calls ‘the Edinburgh time difference’ or something else entirely, my body’s notion of what constitutes enough sleep has changed dramaticaly since last year. I remember when I was writing my first dissertation, chatting to friends on other continents until two in the morning and then getting up at eight to catch them before they went to bed and get started on my work before the day was too old. I feel so out of my own personal loop here, and perhaps my exhaustion is a direct result of that displacement.

I don’t know. I’m trying to combat the discomfort by taking regular breaks, talking to my mum on the phone or watching the news lying on the floor and trying to keep my back straight. Fairy lights, believe it or not, are an excellent relaxation tool. Sometimes I just stare at the ceiling until my mind brings itself back into focus. I have scented candles which help too. I was using lavender incense, but I had to leave my bedroom window open for a full day afterwards before it stopped smelling like a brothel in here.

The Legacy Edition of Jeff Buckley’s Live at Sin-e is absolute genius, and has been keeping me company during some of those breaks. I turn it up loud enough to drown out Edinburgh: the roadworks, the drunken teenagers spilling out of dirty nightclubs at three o’clock in the morning and the zoo that is Block 123. With the reality of this plane of something resembling but not-quite existence all but melted away, I could almost be there and then in New York with him.

I was back home on Mothers’ Day and we sat and played some old cassette tapes; the songs of people long gone – or long grown from four-year-old me and my two-year-old brother in a tuneless rendition of “There’s No-One Quite Like Grandma”. My mother and I both welled up as we heard Grandma and Grandad duetting on an old lovesong through the static of my first-ever tape recorder, the one that ended up in the kitchen when I got the threeCDautochangerfivespeaker monstrosity my sister was relieved to discover I’d be leaving at home.

There’s something sacred about those voices kept for posterity on tape. The people behind them are gone, or changed – one a sweet-scented, curly-haired memory of mini Mars Bars, Lego and little dolls in the bathroom named after the grandchildren. The other is so much older now, but he can still hold a tune – not so long ago on a Sunday visit I asked him to sing for me, and he did.

I think that’s how you know the people you love are never really gone – their afterimages remain, a smile permanently burned on your retina or a song on the tip of your tongue. It’s Ross in the picture on my wardrobe, the one I showed Seymour when he saw me in Edinburgh and he couldn’t get over how young we looked. It’s my grandparents, still in love and harmonising on tape. And it’s Jeff Buckley, and the art that was his legacy to a world he spent so little time in.

And with that – tangential even for me – I’d better get this essay printed out and head up the hill. I have birthday presents to buy today for Very Special People, I do.

With T in the Park this weekend, this post about my first year at the festival seems timely. And it means Ross has been gone for six years.

14th July 2003
I’m just back from Ross’s funeral but I don’t think I need to talk about it; only to say how on earth is a twenty-minute service in a conveyor belt crematorium, in one door and out the other while the next set of identikit mourners file in, supposed to give you any sense of closure? I can’t say it-was-a-lovely-service because it’s too easy to get the impression the minister is reading out directly, changing only names and the occasional “her” to “him”.

I had been there before but it’s still the opposite of what I’m used to and I don’t ever want to get used to it.

I only cried, privately, when I realised how many people I didn’t know had heard my name.

I suppose you could say the thought overshadowed my weekend, not in a bad way or to detract that I have had the BEST FUCKING WEEKEND OF MY LIFE (TM), but of course you can’t just forget. Ross was there when Feeder dedicated “Just The Way I’m Feeling” to their drummer who committed suicide a few years back, he was there during “Everybody Hurts” – but he was always going to be.

But the Best Weekend of my Life – a weekend of meeting new people (new person who will be at the Manics signing tomorrow and who has been promised bootlegged Ryan Adams, if I remember correctly, damn the wine that tasted cheap and yet wasn’t), learning new lessons (how to ~~put up~~ get someone else to put up a tent for you, that by the time you get to the end of the queue you will wonder what all of the fuss is about and, most importantly, that it is in fact possible not to go to the toilet in twenty-four hours), spending way too much money on stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time and probably even more over-using my mobile, oh and apparently there were a few bands playing too. It’s over (until next year – definitely an annual event in the Pixie Calendar) and I’ve nothing to show for it bar the sunburn from hell and an REM setlist saved into my phone pending being turned into a mix CD. And some cute beads. And a belt. And a Ryan Adams bootleg. And a hat, which for some reason seemed to be a target for evil boys to steal.

REM as an experience was nothing short of spiritual – as close to the front as two little girls who were only half an hour early can be, Patricia (who shared the obsession with me in high school) and I held hands throughout and sang every word. I emerged from the crowd, tears streaming down my cheeks, realising nothing has or will ever come close to the way I was feeling at that very moment.

Other highlights then. The Flaming Lips – ample substitutes for the White Stripes and an amazing show. I stand converted. Idlewild – a couple in their forties jumping around with myself and Patricia’s friend Joanne as no-one else in our bit of the crowd was quite as mad as we were, and sticking my phone in the air to send good vibes and song snippets to the other side of the world. The Raveonettes with Steve on Sunday morning, as he’s right about bands eightyninemillion times out of eightyninemillionandTWO (now I realise who The Coral are and it hits me they were already on my shit list). Everyone going mad when Supergrass played “Alright” – their set seemed almost like the Proclaimers, play what you like but there’s only one song everybody wants to hear and they won’t be happy until they get it.

We got a relatively early bus home, the bus so obviously full of people who have “overdone it” as my mother says, either in the sun or with drugs (to employ an overused cliche if I never smell hash again it will be too soon, I just don’t see what the attraction is). My brother had sunstroke and what was there to stay for anyway, fucking Coldplay?! So i watched the highlights on TV when I got home, and giggled and chattered to my mum.

I feel as if I could sleep for a week, but every time I try to lie down I find something else that hurts.