Avebury

I like this reminiscing thing so we are going to have some more tonight. We are going to go back to when I was 18. I had moved out of home for a gap year placement. There were other teens on the same scheme. It is a strange time for people our age to be away from home. Everyone has gone off to Uni and suddenly everything is different...

I became friends with a chap on the scheme who was local. We often used to go to the cinema because he was a fairly silent sort of a chap and my constant chatter used to get a bit much for him sometimes. He was a bit of a hippy sort and had an escort van with a mattress in the back, little cupboards built in either side of the wheel hubs and multi coloured scarves all over the sides and as curtains between the seats and the bank and over the windows.

Back then neither one of us had ties or responsibilities, if we wanted to go off and do something we could and somehow money was not an issue, even though we were not paid a great deal. We had a lovely ground spread across the region and we met on training courses. We would travel to picnic and play frisbee in the sun in one city, go to a house party with vodka jelly somewhere else, get the train into London and go shopping in Camden, whatever we fancied.

My friend wasn't single, she lived off near the coast and sometimes we would go off for a house party at hers. I remember setting off on a trek to try and watch the sun rise over the sea, wrapped in a sleeping bag. Unfortunatley the sea view wasn't to the west and it was a slightly dreary morning. We got a few sniggers on the way back, wrapped up and bleary eyed... i got on with his lass anyway so there was never a problem with me going out with her chap.

One Friday night he called me and set he wanted to get away from here, did I fancy going off? I did and so with a couple of sleeping bags and probably a bit of food too, off we went. He took me too Avebury. We parked up in the dark in a layby near Silbury Hill. It was dark as the moon either hadn't risen or was new but clear. We climbed Silbury Hill.

Afterwards he lit his parafin lamp and we played crib. Unfortunatley the lamp was pumping out some nice fumes. We realised after a little while and spent some time outside....

The following morning, nice and early we went up to the barrow. We discovered a new age type who had slept in the barrow overnight. He had very minimal gear. We got talking and gave him a lift into Avebury. He had a ratty deck of cards, all dirty and creased with no pictures. He had the names of animals on them and he got us to draw a card for our totems. I was an otter and my friend was a deer. My friend was a little cynical about such things...

We then wandered around he stones before returning home.

It is over a decade ago and the memories are thin, as if I have not taken them out often enough and refreshed them. I wish I had had a blog back then because then i could go back and see. This blog is my rememberance of the things I do. I wonder how much I have forgotten... This night though still shines in my memory... But Silbury Hill in the dark shines the brightest...