A Man Down

In early 1998, some time around his birthday, a friend of mine left New Zealand. I hadn't seen him much for the past few years. We'd become friends at the Uni Club, that great bastion of my first year at Auckland University. After that, he'd slowly drifted away from university and I didn't see him very often.

I don't remember how much I've written about the Uni Club and my university years on this site, but now seems like a good time. Once again, I'm on a train out to Ipswich, the bane of my existence. It's a nice day, and I can see it'll be a few days before I recover from the weekend's exertion.

The Uni Club was a moment in time. For first years, it was a godsend. Two dollar handles* for the first week of the year and a few hundred people all keen to meet each other. Short of desert island strandings, I can't imagine many environments where a sense of community could develop as quickly. The staff were liberal with allowances and free with oversights ("Did I already put vodka in that? Better do it again just in case") and scarcely older than us, and just as well. The reason it was almost solely populated by eighteen-year-old first years (and a few notable younger exceptions) is that the Uni Club operated on a cafe license. The ridiculously lax system of requiring underage patrons buy meal tickets at entry was required because the legal drinking age was twenty at the time.

It was in this kitchen that Jacob and I found myself roughly six months later, deep-frying oranges and throwing chips at the punters. The management was always keen to pay the minimum wage necessary to secure casual staff, and not averse to breaking the sensible rules of not giving work to those most likely to give away the product, or indeed retrieve cash from the ice-cream container used to hold the proceeds and spend it on shots at the bar. I think one night we turned over about $45, and went through at least that much worth of grease and produce. That only lasted a few weeks, until I got myself fired. Jacob and I sat there with Nic**, and composed his resignation letter (out of solidarity). I don't remember what it said, but it took us a couple of hours and several handles so it must have been good.

One of the best nights of that era was when I was still working in the kitchen. Jacob wasn't working that week for some reason, and I shared the kitchen with Simon, one of the best barmen I've ever known. Much more 'one of us' than 'one of them.' That night was the night of the Ski Party and everyone was walking around in snowboarding boots and goggles. Simon had been working all day and was knackered, so he started drinking at the beginning of the shift. At about eight o'clock, the lights went out.

The police had been suspicious of the Uni Club's dubious operation of the cafe license for ages, and had showed up taking ids and checking ages on several occasions. Usually this resulted in smuggling all the 17-year-olds*** out the back and into Albert Park for an hour or two. This night, the owners and management had decided that the takings weren't going to be enough if we couldn't serve alcohol half the night because of the power cut, so they brought out some candles and got on with it.**** The punters exercised some rare caution (the police had been standing outside on the lawn for a few hours now) but the staff saw no point in that. Simon and I spent the rest of the night sliding around in the chip fat all over the kitchen floor wearing our socks.

At the end of the year, we found out the place was being sold - it wasn't profitable, the owners were getting too much shit from the police, it had to happen. We were pretty cut up at the time, but in retrospect, it seems better that way. The music was completely dodgy, the place was full of first-years, and by second year most of us could get into the main campus pub anyway. Memories sometimes are best locked away. So that's where the Uni Club is, untainted and brilliant.

Time passed. In early 1998, I found out that Jacob was about to leave the country. I went to his farewell party and two other friends, Ben and Claudia, were there. They were near the end of their relationship and Ben was going to move to England. We didn't stay for long. After all I didn't know Jake too well anymore. Six months later I left as well. Four years or so later, I wound up in London. Ben left London the same week, and Claudia arrived a few months later. It'd been four and a half years since I'd seen Jacob. We met up at Piers's birthday bash overlooking the Thames a week after I arrived, and a few months later, Claudia showed up.

Over the past year and a half, Jacob, me and Claudia and our respective partners grew pretty close. Something happens when you're in London - the bonds you form with people seem so much stronger. Claudia knows what I'm on about. But the constant late night sessions and all the time I spent crashing on Jake's couch while I was single and never sobre invariably led to Jake's favourite pasttime: vocal introspection. Something I've noticed in life is that you get to University, and you've no idea what's going on. You spend the whole time there learning who you are. Then you get out into the big bad world, and so many of us seem to go head-over-heels into our careers, working ridiculous hours and just losing touch with everything. Philosophy is out the window and you think you've got it all figured. I remember a real arrogance at that time. Feeling like I didn't need to wonder about my own nature or the nature of the universe. How much later on, then, is it before you question yourself, and the path you've taken in life? I find it hard to reconcile that everyone seems to think it's when you hit 40. I tend to believe Douglas Coupland's version of events, having been caught in theh bullshit fireball of the Dot Com crash, which I suppose makes Outside my bar in the desert. You'll see that, but some of the product you'll never see. It was wasted in hours of stupidity and excellence in the Bug Bar in Brixton. And in weekends where I saw the sun come up more often than come down.

So this month, I wave goodbye to my buddy Jacob. London absolutely wouldn't have been the same without him, and nor would his friends. Good luck on your travels, and I'll see you soon.

In a few weeks, just in time for my birthday, Ollie arrives, fresh from Japan and the Matrix. Thank God everything goes in circles.

* 'Handle': The unit of beer currency in most bars in Auckland. Smaller than a pint or a schooner. In English terms, it's like paying a pound a pint. Though a pound Sterling is roughly a down payment on a house in New Zealand.

** One of those most notably under 18, though only by a year. Most notably because every male, and certainly several of the males were crazily in love with her. Notwithstanding that plaudit, even then one of the nicest people I've ever known. Ironically, some years later she showed up in Wellington, living on the same driveway as Ollie, the day Ollie moved out. Keep reading, this story gets even more circular.

*** By this time including my girlfriend and soon-to-be fiance (no, really) Tiina.

**** The Uni Club management was in fact notoriously dodgy. The guy running it went on to get knocked back in his application for the police and joined the army. He was basically a bouncer who'd worked his way up. At some point through the year, he ended up shagging Coralie, a girl I'd gone to high school with, who wasn't at university but working at a bank branch on campus. This is remarkable in that she and her friends had been devout Jehovah's Witnesses at high school, frequently debating how stupid people could be not to believe in God. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that she'd gone with him to legendary fetish night 'Cheap Sex' in a latex nurse's outfit.