Right you are, Alice Cooper.
So then. This is the end. I started formal education at the age of five and haven’t really let up since. Now I’ve got no more excuses – I’m officially an adult. Soon to be a professional, if fate and my determination have their way. There’s a lot to be done, of course. A flat ignored through weeks of redrafting needs spring-cleaning. Notes and contact details gathered over ten months need collating. E-mails need to be sent and fingers crossed. Most of all, though, this milestone needs celebrating.
We make a good start yesterday, at the submission of our complete Work & Research Journal, our final assignment, and the last class with Brian. It is more of a debriefing than anything else, with the sort of informal air you get in High School in the last week before summer break.
Brian sings a Scottish standard about tramps, and I’m pleasantly surprised by his voice. While he sings we pass around £30 worth of malt whiskey, each of us giving a short toast before taking a shot. “Dat de zon altijd op je rug mag blijven schijnen”, I say. ‘May the sun always shine on your back’. It’s not technically a Dutch proverb passed down through the generations, but it sounds good.
After we empty the bottle we leave behind our sheltered Annexe and head down to the school proper for the finger food and wine in plastic cups assembled there. As far as I can tell, and I was listening for it especially, London Film School head Ben Gibson does not mention us Screenwriters in his end of term speech, which is nothing if not symbolic.
The student union have organised an afterparty at St Moritz nightclub, which is basically a basement bar and a couple of light effects set up underneath a Swiss restaurant of the same name. The place is tiny enough to be a fire hazard even if it wasn’t so crowded. Getting to and from the bar is a battle, which may play a part in why I don’t get nearly as drunk as intended. I do get threatened a bit, though, when I whisper my curt opinion of a woman who insists on staying put in front of me even though she already has her drink. The remark, something about a female dog, is overheard by the man on her arm, who offers to smash my face in. “It’s far too pretty a face to smash”, I say, and he leaves it at that, but a part of me is suddenly keen to find out what a bar brawl would be like.
The advantage of getting merely tipsy is that we can spend a good amount of time saying goodbye to all our classmates as one by one they check their watches and decide to head to bed. This even though I know I’ll see most of these people again in the near future. At least half our class of twelve is staying in London, even if they are heading home briefly for respite. After we too weary of the Swiss dungeon Paul and I wander down to Trafalgar Square, where we began our friendship at the beginning of the course, both new to the city, marvelling at all we saw and excited about all that was to come. It’s not hard to be a little melancholy.
Then I walk on to Oxford Circus, where my night bus will depart. On the way there I overhear a fiery middle-aged black woman searching for the right direction to to the same place and I tell her I’m going there anyway. As it turns out she’s heading for Ealing too, is an actress who toured Greece with ancient tragedies and played in Mother Courage like I once did. I get her number and we promise we’ll be in touch – I could use her talents, but also any contacts she may have. It’s a networking occupation.
Waiting at the bus stop, a guy angrily demands an Orange phone to call from. His has just been stolen. “Yeah, that’s very funny,” he bristles as some people next to us can’t control their mirth – why does it have to be an Orange phone and why is he acting like it’s our responsibility to have that provider? I jokingly ask a man I see on the phone if he’s with Orange, and a bit later he, more off his head than I had anticipated even at this hour of the night, hands me his phone and tells me to tell his girlfriend, who is apparently at the other side, that he loves her. So I do. Twice, before he’s satisfied. Finally, on the bus itself Pat the actress and I sit across from a man who entertains us with trivia about comic books, prison, and the Glastonbury festival. I close my eyes as politely as I can manage.
By the time I get home it is dawn. A new dawn.
1 Comment
July 21, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Before you plunge headlong into an actual bar brawl, may I advise to first go and see Barbet Schroeder’s Barfly?(http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0092618/)? Mickey Rourke (= Henry Chinaski = Charles Bokowski) manages to get into what well may be one of the most memorable one on one fights in the history of cinema. Check it out, and then, and only then, decide if you want to actually experience it yourself.