Saturday evening, from my notes:

Kingston Hill is gorgeous in the late summer evening. This is how I remember it, when I think of it, and I think of it more often than you might expect. This is the point when the world reminded me it was out there, in so many ways and on so many levels. Not only had I just left school, full of notions of my own grown-up-ness, with the all the confidence and arrogance of a teenager, but I knew what I wanted and how to get it.

God, it makes me laugh, looking back. And it looks like you can go back again, but only to look around. There’s not a lot different more security, but there are still squirrels everywhere, and the air has that early autumn chill to it. The need to smoke Marlboro reds and listen to Alanis Morisette is suddenly very strong indeed. It’s time to wander away, but there’s part of me left thinking “what if…?”

What if I’d never gone to Edinburgh? What if I’d never met the people I did after leaving Kingston? What if I was still in touch with the people I knew at Kingston. Aside from sporadic e-mail exchanges with Claire, there’s no-one I’m still in contact with from Kingston. It’s a dead part of my life. The only person I still see that I first met during that phase of my life is Andrew, and I met him totally separately from the rest of it…

God knows how I’d have turned out. But still, it’s interesting to come here, and surround myself with the ghosts of what might have been.

Back to the real world. The barbeque is calling me. My friends are there, and there’s only so long you can spend in self-induglent imaginings of your other selves. Here’s to yesterday, and to all the tomorrows that never happened. I hope they’re doing well.