Correct.

'You know, University Challenge, on the telly . . . ?' Maybe they wouldn't take the p.i.s.s. Maybe they'd think it was a bit of fun - well done Bri - we are old mates after all. . .

'One more question, we win two quid!'

'Alright, concentrate . . .'

I'm definitely going to tell them about The Challenge . . .

'Star Wars was nominated for how many Oscars?' 'B - Four,' I say.

'D - None,' says Tone.

'I'm pretty sure it's four,' I say.

'No way. It's a trick question. It didn't get any . . .'

'Not win, nominated . . .'

'It wasn't nominated either, trust me Spence . . .'

'It was four, Spence, I swear it, B - four . . .'

And we're both looking at Spencer now, pleadingly, 'choose me, please, me not him, I'm right, I swear, choose me, there's two quid at stake here' and, yes, he chooses me, he trusts me, he presses B.

Incorrect. The correct answer's D - Ten.

'You see!' shouts Tone.

'You were wrong, too!' I shout back.

'You t.w.a.t,' says Tone.

'You're the t.w.a.t,' I say.

'You're both t.w.a.ts!' says Spencer.

'You're the t.w.a.t, you t.w.a.t,' says Tone.

'No, mate, it's you that's the t.w.a.t,' says Spencer and I decide that maybe I won't tell them about The Challenge after all.

The fourth pint of gin and lager makes us sentimental and nostalgic about things that happened six months ago, and we 149.

sit and fondly reminisce about people we didn't really like and fun we didn't really have, and was Mrs Clarke the PE teacher really a lesbian, and exactly how fat was Barry Pringle, and then, finally, finally, they call last orders.

Outside The Black Prince, it's started raining. Spencer suggests maybe going to Manhattan's nite-club, but we're not that drunk. Tone nicked a new video recorder for Christmas, and wants to watch Friday The 13th for the eighty-ninth time, but I'm too depressed and drunk, and decide to head home, in the opposite direction.

'You around for New Year?' asks Tone.

'Don't think so. I think I'm staying with Alice.'

'All right mate, well see you around,' and he smacks me on the back and stumbles off.

But Spencer comes over and hugs me, his breath smelling of lager with a gin-top, and whispers wetly in my ear, 'Listen, Brian mate, you really are my mate, my best mate, and it's

great that you're out there, meeting all these different people, *

and having all these experiences, and new ideas, and staying in .t cottages and everything, but just promise me something, will $ you?' He leans in really close. 'Promise me you're not turning '

into a complete c.u.n.t.'

I.

I.

15O.

19.

QUESTION. If a burn that affects only the epidermis is defined as first degree, what is the term for a burn that reaches the subcutaneous tissue?

ANSWER A third-degree burn No matter how predictable, ba.n.a.l and listless the rest of my life might be, you can guarantee that there'll always be something interesting going on with my skin.

When you're a kid, skin is just this uniform pink covering: hairless, poreless, odourless, efficient. Then one day you see that microscope cross-section in the O-level biology text-books - the follicles, the sebaceous glands, the subcutaneous fat, and you realise there are so many things that can go wrong. And they have gone wrong. From the age of thirteen onwards it's been an on-going medicated soap opera of blemishes and scars and in-growing hairs, spreading from region to region, taking on different forms, from discreetly corked pores behind the ears to lit-from-inside boils on the tip of the nose, the geometric centre of my face. In retaliation, I've experimented with camouflage techniques, but all the skin-tone creams that I've tried are a sort of albino-pink and tend to actually draw attention to the spots as effectively as a circle drawn with a magic-marker.

I didn't really mind this in my adolescence. Well, I minded of course, but I accepted it as part of growing up; something unpleasant but inevitable. But I'm nineteen now, an adult by most definitions, and I'm starting to feel persecuted. This morning, standing in my dressing gown under the glare of 151.

the 100 watt bulb, things are looking particularly bad. I feel as if I'm leaking gin and lager and peanut oil from my T-zone, and there's something new, a hard pad of matter under the skin, about the size of a peanut, that moves around when I touch it. I decide to call out the big guns. The Astringents. On the back of one of them is written 'Warning - may bleach fabrics' and there's a momentary anxiety that something that can burn a hole in a sofa might not be a good thing to apply to your face, but I do it anyway. Then I apply a final wash of Dettol, just for luck. After I've finished the bathroom smells like a hospital, but my face at least feels taut and scrubbed, as if I've been through a car-wash strapped to the bonnet of the car.

There's a knock on the door and Mum enters, carrying my best vintage white linen granddad shirt, freshly ironed, and a foil parcel.

'It's some gammon and turkey, for your friend.'

'I think food's laid on, Mum. Besides they're all vegetarians.'

'It's white meat . . .'

'I don't think it's the colour that's the issue, Mum . . .' 'But what are you going to eat?'

Till eat what they eat!'

'What, vegetables?'

'Yes!'

'You haven't eaten a vegetable for fifteen years! It's a wonder you don't have rickets.'

'Rickets is Vitamin D2, Mum, scurvy is Vitamin C, lack of fresh fruit.'

'So do you want to take some fresh fruit with you then?'

'No, really, Mum, I'll be fine, I don't need fruit or meat.'

'You might as well take it, for the train journey. It'll only go off if you leave it.' For my mother, the true meaning of Christmas has always been Cold Meats so I give in, and take the foil parcel from her. It weighs about the same as a human 152.

head. She follows me into my bedroom, to check that I'm definitely putting it into my suitcase, like a sort of motherly customs official, and I count myself lucky she's not making me pack the sprouts.

She's sat on my bed now, and starts neatly folding my granddad shirt.

'I don't know why you wear these horrible old things . . .'

'Because I like them maybe? . . .'

'Talk about lamb dressed as mutton . . .'

'I don't criticise what you wear . . .'

'Boxer shorts! How long have you been wearing boxers?'

'Ever since I started buying my own underwear . . .'

'Y-fronts out of fashion are they?'

'I have absolutely no idea, Mum . . .'

'I thought you preferred those cotton brief things . . .'

'I mix. It depends . . .'

'Depends on what?'

'Mum . . . I'

'So how long are you staying with your girlfriend for?'

'Don't know. Three days, maybe four. And she's not my girlfriend.'

'So are you coming back?'

'No, I think I'm going straight back to college, Mum.' I don't know why, but I've taken to calling it 'college', maybe because 'university' still sounds snooty to me.

'So you're not here for New Year?'

'I doubt it.'

'You're with her?'

'I think so.' I hope so.

'Oh. That's a shame . . .' She's using her martyr voice. The trick here is not to catch her eye. I concentrate on my packing. 'And are you back here afterwards?'

'I can't really. I've got work to do.'

'You could work here . . .'

'I can't really . . .'

153.

'I won't disturb you . . .'

'I need special books, Mum . . .'

'So you definitely won't be here for New Year?'

'Don't think so Mum, no.' From behind me comes an exhalation so mournful that I fully expect to turn around and find her lying dead on the bedroom floor. Irritated now, I say, 'You'll be out getting smashed with Uncle Des anyway, it's not like we'll see each other . . .'

'I know, it's just it's the first time you won't be here, that's all. I just don't like rattling round in the house all by myself . . .'

'Well it was bound to happen one day, Mum.' But we're both thinking the same thing. It shouldn't have happened, not like this, not just yet. There's a silence, and then I say, 'I'm going to get dressed now, Mum, so if you wouldn't mind . . . ?'

She sighs, gets up off the bed.

'It's nothing I haven't seen before.'

Recently too. New Year's Eve 1984/85, I came home so drunk that I managed to vomit in my own bed. I have a mercifully vague memory of my mother helping me into the bath at dawn, and rinsing off the Pernod and lager and half-digested chicken-and-chips with the shower attachment. That was just twelve months ago. She has never mentioned it since and I like to believe that maybe it didn't really happen, but I'm pretty sure it did.

Sometimes I think there aren't enough psychiatrists in the world . . .

Mum's cheered up a bit by the time I kiss her goodbye on the doorstep, though she's still trying to thrust groceries on me. I reject a loaf of Mighty White, a litre of Dry Blackthorn, a pack of mince pies, a 250ml pot of UHT single cream, a 5lb bag of spuds, a packet of Jaffa Cakes, a bottle of peppermint flavour Iced Magic, and a two-litre bottle of sunflower oil, and 154.

I.

every no-thank-you is a knife between my mother's shoulder blades. Damage done, I head off, dragging my suitcase along the road, and not looking back in case she's started crying. On the way to the train station I stop to get a fiver out of the cashpoint, then stop off at the newsagents to buy some wine for the Harbinsons. I want to get something nice, so in the end blow three quid on the one that comes in its own carafe.

155.

2O.

QUESTION What socio-economic term originally described the artisan occupants of walled towns in eleventh century France, occupying a position between the peasants and the landlords7 ANSWER The Bourgeoisie.

On the train from Southend I look out the window at the wet, empty streets, the handful of shops open in a halfhearted take-it-or-leave-it way. The four days in between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve are surely the longest and nastiest in the year - a sort of bloated, b.a.s.t.a.r.d Sunday. August Bank Holiday's the worst though. I fully expect to die at about two-thirty in the afternoon on an August Bank Holiday. Dead of terminal ennui.

I change at Shenfield, where lunch is a can of Lucozade, a packet of Hula Hoops and a Twix bought from the windswept newsagents, and then there's just time to check how my face is healing in the station toilets' mirror before I'm back on the train.

Leaving the suburbs and heading into Suffolk the rain turns to snow. Snow like this rarely seems to reach Southend. The combination of street lights and estuary air and ma.s.sed central heating tends to turn it into a sort of cold, damp dandruff, but here, through fields as the sun sets, it looks fantastically thick and clean. I read the first page of Ezra Pound's Cantos five times without understanding a word, then give up and look at the landscape. Soulfully. Ten minutes from the station I 156.