Quinn Wilde - A Year In Fife Park

www.fifepark.com

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

A Year in Fife Park

First published in Great Britain by Willow Ink, 2010.

Ebook Edition

2000-2010 Quinn Wilde

ISBN: 0-9552269-2-9

ISBN-13: 978-0-9552269-2-2

(ISBNs apply to ePub version only)

For Ella

Disclaimer:

I remember absolutely every moment, detail and event written in this book. Sometimes the pacing is uneven. Some chapters are very short. That is because nothing has been altered.

That said, of course, all the characters, events and situations portrayed within this book are entirely fictitious and not based on any real experiences, persons, or places.

Except for Fife Park. That place really did exist, although I may for legal reasons be writing about a different one.

Contents

The Big Three Oh

I am a grown man. I have a house, and a well paying job. I am desperately unhappy.

Im unhappy all of the time, but that doesnt stop me from enjoying myself. If you cant see past that contradiction, you are probably one of the many people who would never guess that Im unhappy. You probably dont believe me, even now. If you knew me, youd believe it even less. Thanks a lot. This Oscar-winning performance is for jerks like you.

I am not having a mid-life crisis. I am thirty years old. As it turns out, that is not particularly old, and it doesnt make me unhappy. Just sometimes, I wonder how I spent the last ten years. But this is not an age thing. Im glad Im thirty. People take me seriously. At first, anyway.

I bought a house at the worst time in history, because it was the right time for me. I knew it was the worst time in history. Other people said it was the best. I waxed lyrical about it at the time sometimes, I said, you just have to do whats right for you. Its right for everyone, people said, houses only ever go up in value! Now that the crash has happened, everybody else saw it coming and Im the idiot. That doesnt make me unhappy. That makes me feel smug and unappreciated. Plus, I like owning my house. I would have paid double to end my hate-hate relationship with estate agents and landlords.

I appear to be good at my job because, frankly, most people are not. They are the smart ones. Being good at your job is an awful idea. You will only ever get extra work by being good at something, and you will be passed over for promotion because youre too damn valuable to lose. That doesnt make me unhappy. That makes me exhausted. If I end up having a breakdown, that will make me unhappy, but I expect that by then Ill be too far gone to care.

For a long time I simply had no idea why I was unhappy, and no notion to do anything about it. I thought there was just something wrong with me. But then I remembered that there had been a time when I felt differently. There was a time in my life when I felt happy, all of the time, even when I was miserable. Ten years have passed. Now mostly the feeling I get, when I think back to St. Andrews, is that I have momentarily lost something of great importance.

Sometimes these days I walk from room to room, looking for something I had just seconds ago. And sometimes, doing so, I find it. Thats the best explanation I have for what follows.

It will be a mess of memories, as best they are remembered. It will be a scattershot of histories, because I do not know what parts I can afford to leave out. There are mistakes and faux pas, damages and destruction, passions and revelations, longing and belonging, love, mystery, tragedy, respect, and just a tiny little bit of sex which has been romanticised and overstated to the point of hyperbole, and in any case was had by other people.

It can start like this: I spent a year in Fife Park. Nothing at all happened, and nothing ever changed me more.

New Term, New Quinine

Every year in St. Andrews had a different theme; every year had a different feel, a different texture, a different atmosphere. The year in Fife Park, which I will consistently refer to as Second Year, was a sophomore journey of borderline psychosis. Only an idiot could be nostalgic about some of the memories I will recount.

I am just such an idiot. I can still recall the lan of those days with a trip through my MP3s folder. Guided by Franks discerning taste, I still dearly hold on to The Delgados, Belle and Sebastian, six cover versions of Ahas Take On Me , and a funny mashup of Star Trek dialogue that makes it sound like Spock is boldly fucking Captain Kirk in the ass.

I was in new territory, all that second year, because Id been so lost in the first. Im not proud of the person I used to be. I didnt know much about the world, but I knew just about enough to be a douchebag. I used to blame everyone but myself when my blindnesses caught up with me. I used to scream and wail with entitlement. I used to be a little shit. And I am lucky, so very lucky, that I did not simply grow into the fullness of adulthood without being made aware of that, as most people do.

When I finally caught up with myself, at the end of the first year in St. Andrews, and at the beginning of this book, I was a damn mess. You should know this. I was happy, all of the time, even when I was miserable; its true. But I was miserable kind of a lot, as well.

I made more mistakes in that first year than Ive ever made. So many that it was sometimes impossible to tell where Id gone wrong, or what to learn from them. I am fortunate to have had friends who were in equal parts forgiving and critical, or else I might have never known.

A lot of Freshers died in that first year. Seven or eight, I think. A few fell off cliffs. One of them was one of us, though I never knew him well enough. There werent many other years like ours. For one guy, it was at the very beginning of the year, away on an introductory Mountaineering Club field trip, held even before any lectures had begun. His parents were still in town, in fact. I cant imagine anything worse. Then again, some poor chap got hit in the chest with a football and died on the spot. All of which goes to show that you can never tell how things are going to work out.

Home of Golf

I stood in the hallway of Fife Park 7, braced against the screams coming from the kitchen, but not yet braced enough to enter.

You fucking cunting bitching fuck. So came the next wave of expletives.

It was followed by a series of crashes, some isolated thumps, an almost comic tinkling of glass, and several further crashes.

You cunting fucking mothercunting shit fucker!

My hand hovered over the handle.

Whos he shouting at? Mart asked, behind me. Whats going on?

Nothing, I said. It is what it is.

Very Zen, Mart said, unimpressed. You should get in there. He might hurt himself.

I pushed the door, and a spray of porcelain flew past my nose, right to left. It was my porcelain. Another mug hit the door before it was half open. I poked my head around the door.

Hello, I said.

It wasnt any time for reason. It wasnt any time for smalltalk. Another mug was lightly tossed, and he spun the golf club round to intercept it. I pulled my head back into the hallway just in time.

Fucking bastarding shiteating cuntbreathing fucking cocksores.

When you use the word cunt as frequently as an angry Scotsman, it can be hard to find something stronger, for those special occasions.

Cocksores, huh? Mart said.

Are you okay in there? I called through, voice raised and strained - like hed been in the shower for forty minutes. Another fracturing crash.

Hello? Mart shouted after.

I looked in again.

The cupboard doors were off, and three more kicks took out the drawers, bam, bam, and bam. The 7 Iron came down hard on the edge of the work surface.

It cracked, shards flew off. It was chipboard underneath. I shut the door firmly.