Trinity Blues 1

I, seemingly in common with most people in these islands, have been watching 'Normal People'. It has assumed the status of cultural icon in our household – all domestic chores must be done and dusted by 9pm on Monday evenings, and if I am still filling the dishwasher, or scrubbing out pots, tough!  My wife sets the box to record, and settles down to watch it.  I can watch it later, in my own time. 

While most of the world seems to adore the series and the book on which it is based, there is a persistent undercurrent of commentary that has been less enthusiastic.  A few weeks back there was an article in the Guardian by some feminist warrior, than could only be described, and I apologise for this in advance, as bitchy. My immediate response to this was “it's ok lads, the patriarchy's safe. Sisters are sticking it to themselves”. 

I read the book, pre Covid, at my wife's urging, and because of the effusive commentary from critics not only in Ireland, but internationally.  I did not get why it was so great. I did enjoy it.  I thought the amount and the variety, of sex was unrealistic, but maybe that was just intergenerational envy.  I felt some empathy for the protagonists.  But in the final analysis, it was just another 'boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl get back together again' story, except that in this book it happened three times. By the end I was irritated by their failure to see what was at the end of their noses.  “Get together, already!”  I inwardly bellowed at them.

I felt the same about the TV series.  But it is beautifully done, with spectacular scenery, and the two leads deliver sensitive and nuanced performances.  It is a bonus that they are so easy on the eye.

However, one episode, the  10th, moved me greatly.  The story of Conall's depression brought me back to my time in college, and to the depression I succumbed to there.

I went to Trinity a few decades before Conall and Marianne, to take a 4 year arts degree.  I deliberately chose to go there, on the basis that all of the rest of my Leaving Certificate class who were going to university chose Cork.  I had always been the subject of bullying in school, most of it low level, but some that was quite vicious.  So I saw Trinity as a chance for a new beginning, a chance to forge a new me, in a place where no-one knew the old me.

Back then the university took their duty of pastoral care seriously.  Students who were not living at home or in college rooms were obliged to stay in approved lodgings. I was allocated to a house in Clontarf, run by a weapons grade battleaxe, who regarded the students staying with her as nothing more that an income source.  There were rigid rules.  We must vacate the premises at or before 9am each day, and not return before 5pm,  Dinner was served at 6.  Once the dinner things were cleared away we should study, sitting on hard chairs at the dining-room table.  There was no TV, or any other form of diversion.  Weekends were not included – we must depart on Friday evenings and nor return until Sunday evening.  During the day,  the bedroom windows were thrown wide open, so that, by bedtime it was like an icebox.  Showers were only to be taken on specified days.  

Once, one of my fellow lodgers took a shower on an unapproved day, and the landlady's husband, who was both shorter and less substantial than his wife, threatened to beat him up. The lodger, a strapping country lad looked at him in bemusement, in the manner of a Dobermann looking at a snarling handbag dog, straining at his masters lead in a laughable attempt to attack him.

College did not forge a new me.  It became obvious from the start that most of the students were Northern, with their full UK grants,  or from upper middle class Dublin  backgrounds.  They knew more, had more money, and were more worldly and sophisticated than me. From the first day I felt intimidated by them.  And what had formerly been a mild shyness soon grew into a crippling social phobia.  From one day to the next I spoke to hardly anyone. The allowance my father gave me paid for the lodgings, for the cost of the train home each weekend, and for a basic lunch at the dining hall each day.  But I had no other resources. I could not afford to saunter over to the Buttery for a cup of coffee during the day, much less a pint at night.

My room-mate at the lodgings and I did not have much in common.  Tom was studying law, and curled his lip at Arts degree students.  A friend of his from his boarding school days, Adrian, was staying at another approved lodging, a few streets away from ours.  Before Tom had come to fully realise how little we had in common, he had invited me along to meet Adrian.  And being a well brought up lad, he continued to do so thereafter, perhaps seeing the longing for human contact in my face. 

I jumped at the chance.  The atmosphere in Adrian's lodgings was the polar opposite of ours.  The landlady, a young widow, was warm and welcoming.  And rather attractive.  The lodgers had the use of a living room with comfortable couches, a television and a record player. Studying was at your own discretion.  Adrian, unlike Tom,  was friendly and open, with a genuine curiosity about other people. 

About half way through the first term Adrian came up with an idea.  We should all get a flat together, and tell the college that were living with relatives.  I was on for it immediately.  I had an aunt living in the suburbs.  I could ask her to take any post for me. Tom also agreed.

Adrian returned early after the Christmas holidays, and found a basement flat in Ranelagh.  He wrote to me with the details.  It was a two room, two man flat.  Tom had backed out, afraid of getting in trouble with the college authorities. So it was just me and him.  The rent was a pound less per week than the lodgings had been.  Which meant that I would have a pound a week more for food, unless I found a part time job.

The flat was situated in a terrace of two storeys over basement. Entrance was via the front door, three steps up from the street.  Once inside, there was a flat to the left and a flat to the right, and past them, one staircase going upwards, and one curling down to the basement level.  The original owner of the house, Adrian said, lived in the flat to the left on the ground floor.  He was old and eccentric, and used walking sticks to get around. If you met him in the hallway, with his two large, elderly Alsatian dogs, he would not talk, not even to say hello.  Sometimes you could hear the dogs claws skittering on our ceiling, since our flat was directly under his.

Our flat consisted of a medium sized living room, with a window out to the basement well at the front of the house, and a bedroom with enough space for two single beds, lockers
and a wardrobe at the foot of what was to be my bed.  There was a small , barred, pillbox style window high up on the back wall, which gave a limited view of a small, concrete yard.

The living room contained a cheap old couch, a small kitchen table with one rickety chair, a half-size fridge, and a baby belling cooker,  The cooker, Adrian explained, blew the the fuse every time an element was switched on.  To get around this he had been using the folded over top of a yoghurt pot, several layers thick which he wrapped around the fuse.  This would last for two or three days before the silver foil burned through.

One more thing, Adrian said.  I might hear some strange noises during the night.  A scuttling sound in the walls or the ceiling.  It was probably just mice.

Adrian had spent the summer prior to Junior Freshman year working in the US. This had enabled him to purchase a rather good cassette tape player, and he had a collection of recordings of albums, both his own and others, as well as some he had made from radio stations.  Over the five months we lived there, he introduced me to artists liken Santana, Crosby Stills and Nash, James Taylor and Loudon Wainwright.

The first night in the flat I awoke at about 2am.  There was a scuttling noise in the ceiling, as if 20 or 30 mice were milling about,  Suddenly the scuttling raced across the ceiling and down into the wall my bed was set against, as if coming for me. I jumped out of it, scared half to death. Adrian was awake also.  He looked at me.  
“It's just mice.”
“But how could mice move so fast?”, I asked.  He shrugged his shoulders.
I stayed awake the rest of the night, in a blue funk.  At first I lay on the couch in the front room.  But it was so uncomfortable that I eventually went back to the bed.

The noise recurred every night.  I never grew comfortable with it, but it would usually quieten down about 3am, and I would fall into an exhausted sleep.

I needed to find a part time job.  I longed to have money for the basic luxuries my fellow students took for granted, and, who knows, even to save enough to buy a cassette player like Adrian's.  So one evening I walked over to Leeson Street, and starting at the canal end, I called into every restaurant along the way, looking for work.  About half way down I hit paydirt.  A basement restaurant, La Belle Epoch, were looking for a dishwasher.  Could I start straight away?

 The work was not too hard. Being a bit OCD,  I tended to wash everything very thoroughly, and they were pleased with me,  eventually promoting me to comis chef.  In this position I got to make the cassata, sampling the icecream as I went.  I stuffed the escargot inro their washable shells, sealed the opening with garlic butter, and grilled them.  I deep-fried the potato scallops. Every evening, after the last patron had gone, the chef would cook steak and mushrooms and serve them with my potato scallops for the staff.  After this feast I would make my way home through the cool night air.  Tiredness helped me sleep despite the noises.

However, college was not going well.  I began to miss classes, spending my time at home in the flat. Towards the end of the second term I realised that I had completely forgotten about one module, and had not attended a single lecture.  At home during the day, things were still weird.  Once I heard a strange rustling noise in the corridor outside the flat.  I opened the door to have a look.  At the same time the girl who lived in the flat opposite ours  opened her door.  She had heard it too.  But there was nothing there.

In college one day, and I noticed a sign for student counselling. I made an appointment and two days later I met with the student counsellor.  She told me I was depressed, and made an appointment for me with the college psychiatrist.  Thereafter, I had weekly meetings with the psychiatrist, where we talked about my sex life (non-existent), my relationships with my parents and siblings, and whether I was experiencing any auditory or visual hallucinations. I was prescribed Valium and antidepressants , the latter coming with a long list of foods to avoid.

/Continued