Rolling Back The Years

Blackheath

Boots Scribbling Diary, 1 July 1989

Walked down from Lee into Blackheath to meet C. It's nice to be living near a mate now that everyone else has gone all couple-y. Actually he might come and temp at our place for a bit now he's back. He is trying to persuade his dad to buy an albino fox from the weird stuffed animal shop in the village, who knows why! Went to his parent's house to scrounge some lunch as his mum is cordon bleu cook. Lolled by the ponds smoking spliffs all afternoon. It was hot. Even though we are both skint we had a couple drinks at the pub (saw Heather) and a curry at the place with all the leaves stuck on the walls. He has a crush on an impossible girl. Also I wish I had a boyfriend.
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"How far back would you have to go", I wondered this evening, "not to end up right here?"

I wonder this a lot.

"Conception", said my friend G, with certainty. "Maybe even before".

Wow. That's a long way back. He didn't hold with the idea that there are several possible routes to here, only the actual routes that were taken and the specific choices that were made to bring us here. That's an interesting angle.

"No. You can't end up in the same place. It might seem similar but it's not the same".

I ran through my theory, that you don't make these particular choices, but you would still end up making other similar choices that would bring you to a place similar to here. Still marry a graduate, still have a family, still do the same kind of things, jobs, hang out with the same kind of people, go on the same kind of holidays, all that.

"Yes. But you might be having really hot sex with them all the time".

That would indeed be nice. However according to his theory it was already decreed that this would not happen - from birth or even before. How crap is that?! There's one good reason not to believe in God, regardless of the singing and the ecclesiastical architecture.
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14 months after that diary entry I married a friend. I knew we weren't 100% suited but I was lonely and it felt like everyone else was getting married except me. I was worried I wouldn't ever meet anyone else who would marry me. I was 24.

C's wonderful charismatic talented parents took a one way trip to the Dignitas clinic last summer. Fortunately it's recently decided he will not be prosecuted for booking their travel and going with them on the journey (well, not quite the whole way). My cousin Heather is dead too: cancer last year.

Sometimes loafing on the heath feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes it seems like yesterday.