NOTES ON
1967-1971 - Our
University of Kent Years
http://comp.uark.edu/~dsears/photos/1967-1970%20UKC/
Kent
was a surreal place. I used to think
that one week at the university was six outside, so much activity, so many
things to do, so many people to deal with, each their own attitudes and
desires. So many emotional ups and
downs. There were rich people’s
children, so confident, so in control.
Then there were the sons and daughters of the working class, trying so
hard to be confident and in control.
Clinging together for mutual support.
And being very successful in doing certain things, running student
newspapers, clubs, impromptu activities – like the time we filled a coach with
students and took them to see Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” in London. Then there were the romantic encounters,
with Sue Hewitt who hurt me badly, and Barbara Higgs and Anne Fry who I think I
hurt. And there was Audio Rutherford, a
radio station started by electronics students like Chris Dawson, transmitted
through the central heating system and received by anyone who would agree to
have wires with crocodile clips attached to their transistor radios. It was a turbulent, exciting, heady time,
with student politics, ambitions, egos, and sex in full measure.
In
the second uncertain year I met Hazel.
I don’t know what to say about Hazel.
I met her and the universe changed.
Not in a breathless, romantic, way, but in a truly substantial every day
way. I would survive this life without
the daily shelter of parents; I had my oxygen.
We met at a pancake party; and ended up in my room in Keynes
College. We saw each other every day
for a month, skipping lectures without regard.
Then we soaked in the prospect of a life together. It was perfect. In a life full of confusion, she was freshly
cut cucumber; refreshing, happy, uncomplicated, desirable, unsullied by the
adolescent affairs of the student union full of rich people’s offspring. It was
no longer “I” but “we”. I had a friend
who I trusted absolutely. I had a
friend whose happiness was all that mattered to me. There was strangeness and comfortableness about the way we met,
and dated, and got engaged, and got married.
When Malcolm painted romantic images about his new fiancée, perfume
bottles, hairclips, beautiful combs, I thought of piles of potato
peelings. Hazel always peeled potatoes
on a kitchen towel: never in a bowl of water.
It fascinated me. She fascinated
me. There was no proposal, just
plans. In between bouts of sex, we
discussed married life. We took it for
granted that marriage was inevitable. There was no other future. It was perfect, and I would survive.
Go to documents relating to Audio Rutherford