Tag: Creative Writing

Failing to pack

By Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle

I am packing my second-year room. I feel nostalgic for everything that was, for every piece of fabric, small paper note, mismatched earring. 

I chance upon old objects I barely touched: a red notebook I brought in France and didn’t have the time to fill; the toothpaste my ex bought me whose taste I hated that I stashed in a drawer; the yellow poncho my mum thought I would need that I never took out of its plastic wrapping.

Piles of newer objects too, summer piles, from days after exams when time flows differently. Days spent laying on the grass, chatting. The Grantchester pile – towel darkened by river mud, bathing suit, sun scream. Five-pound bright pink cap I wore once. 

Flowers on the road to Grantchester.

The pile of dresses I wore this June, when the weather softened and putting together outfits felt like too much effort.  

On shelves, high-heeled boots, neatly aligned below my favourite books. The Hemingway novels I read in Lent when descriptions of Spain, paved streets, and whiskey felt like a nice escape from claustrophobic Cambridge. My favourite Romain Gary, La vie devant soi, the most touching description of love I have ever read. Social outcasts huddled in a small, stinking Paris appartement, and when one dies the other covers her in perfume and makeup, until he is forced out of the appartement, into a world where she – the prostitute that brought him up – can no longer protect him.

A lot of objects I wouldn’t have bought were it not for lockdown. Memories of being in Cambridge in Lent: a calmer, sweeter rhythm, less to do, more cooking, kitchen chats, and walks. The chequered board I would bring to hall when I got weirdly obsessed with chess.  

A large French press I used once this year when we had breakfast on a Selwyn rooftop. Blanket spread out, fear of porters, sticky pastries. Memories of my friends smoking on that rooftop, extending the break; memories of watching the morning melt into the afternoon. 

Too many clothes, given I wear the same ones all the time. Hard to decide which ones to take home, which to leave in storage.

By now, my room’s floor has disappeared under open suitcases. I have lost all concentration. I end up on messenger.

I don’t know what to do. I have too much stuff. 

In Lent, one of my friends got weirdly into minimalism (her own chess). She was watching documentaries, reading articles, and talking about the class privilege that comes with selecting what belongings one keeps, but also, the mental peace that it brings about.

Surrounded by stuff, I understand her fascination. It feels like none of these clothes or books matter. It feels like this year, this stuff, helped me grow, and now I can live independently from it – like they are crutches I no longer need.

I know I have to pack, and then put the boxes in the Selwyn storage, and then go to London and not miss my Eurostar.

But I have stopped packing, because packing feels too tedious and strangely emotional, like being forced to close off a part of my past I am not ready to let go of.

I leave my room to go join my friends. It is 1AM, so if we stay up until 4AM, we’ll hear the birds; at 5AM, we’ll see the sunrise. Then I can pack, then I can leave.

View from Castle Mound that morning, 5:02AM.

I don’t want to spend the night reminiscing about my second year, about the different terms, the habits I took on and then shed, the essays, the people, the nights out. Trying to figure out what mattered, to remember the highs, the lows. 

I don’t want second year to be over.

I want to see one last Cambridge sunrise before I leave the country. 

Make one last memory.

Header image by author – ‘View from my room’

Snow Poem

By Katie-Alice Constant

Quarantine had formed its skin

Over my house 

Until snow cracked through its epidermis,

Like hermits we tentatively step out. 

Snow under my feet

And then down my back

Laughing and screaming 

The dog bounding, kicking and rolling,

Memories fall thick and fast;

Of snow days and time off work.

Now we have ourselves another great day 

To get away from sticky hands

That bind, run and numb up with the weather,

Hours that are glued, plastered and moulded together. 

Joyous hollers can’t be dumbed or gobbled by quarantine’s rough edged tongue.

Snow

By Ceci Browning

I am wearing my mum’s wellies. They are navy blue with thick white stripes. They are also far too big. Between them and my feet there are three pairs of socks, and yet there is still an inch of empty space at one end. But my gloves and my coat and my scarf match perfectly. They are all navy too. I couldn’t wear my own wellies because the left one has a sizable hole. And it has snowed.

I’ve ventured outside. It’s still early, hours until lunch, but the streets are already full of footprints, dark shapes in the white landscape. Every few minutes I pass herds of small children or wet dogs without their leads or booted hatted grown-ups like me. Good morning, they smile. Hello, they chirp. Everyone seems to be friendlier in the snow. Perhaps it is because nobody can go anywhere. Nobody is in a rush to do this or that. Nobody has anyone to see or anything to get to.

I have always liked snow. 

The previous day I had been looking forward to seeing a friend of mine. Well, a ‘friend’. A friend that isn’t really just a friend, but also isn’t quite anything else yet, and probably won’t be. Someone I like, a lot, someone I particularly enjoy the company of, but someone who isn’t the kind of someone that means when your aunt or your friend or your godmother asks, have you met anyone, you say yes. I’d say no. I’d definitely say no. Because while he isn’t just anyone, he’s also not really that kind of someone. 

Anyway, we had plans, Mr Someone and I. I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks and I was looking forward to catching up with him. I wanted to hear what he’d been up to. I wanted to ask how his Christmas was, and his new year, and everything in between. Because while I didn’t really care, I cared quite a lot. Sadly, however, Mr Someone had other things on. I wasn’t top of his to do list that day. An hour or so before when he was due to pick me up I got a text. He wasn’t going to make it. Another time, he says. Sorry, he adds. I remind myself I’m not really supposed to be disappointed.

The next morning, with my feet sliding around inside my wellies, I’m still thinking about him. I’m thinking about how everything seems to have slowed to a halt at the moment. Everything has given up, spluttered to a stop. And I’m thinking about how the things that haven’t stopped are awfully complicated. I sigh, and my breath forms a small cloud in front of my face. 

In the daytime I’m studying for my degree from home, with my dad in the next room hitting his keyboard in a way that makes it sound like he is chopping wood. My brothers are both upstairs, talking loudly to their teachers, tapping out long messages to their classmates. They are doing their very best to educate themselves from their bedrooms. My friends are miles and miles from where I am. At the end of the phone, yes, one call away, perhaps, but it’s not the same. And Mr Someone? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Young people are meant to be striding forward into the sparkling most exciting parts of their lives. Together. In pairs and in groups and as a generation. Twenty-somethings are all hovering at the precipice of something brilliant, the days that should someday be looked back on as the glory days, but have been stripped of the time and the energy and the space to leap over it. We all appear to be going backwards.

I turn the corner, an almost hairpin bend around a fir tree, and the hill rolls out ahead of me, white and glistening in the sunshine. My mouth drops open into a little o shape, like a penny.

Tiny coats of all colours race down the hill. Raspberry pinks and rubber duck yellows, pea greens and postbox reds. Parents in khaki green and dark blue with black rucksacks and sensible shoes chase after them, tripping over their feet, and each other. Bobble hats wobble and then plastic sledges tip over into the snow. Giggles and shrieks and yells drift up from the bottom of the slope, where a row of misshapen snowmen stand to attention. Teenagers scrape the thick branches of low trees with gloveless hands and hurl snowballs at unsuspecting siblings. There is laughing, there is hugging, there is joy.

For months and months, I have not seen so many people all in one place. But most of all, for months and months, I have not seen this many people having fun. Families are staying apart from one another, socially distancing as they should be, but it is still glorious. I have forgotten quite how important this coming together of strangers is. This is what Christmas was missing last year. This is it. This is what we, collectively, all of us, thought we had to leave behind forever, when in fact this is the thing that matters most. 

We are not going backwards. Of course we’re not. We are still pushing on into the future, however uncertain it may be. It’s simply that we are not moving in a straight line. Like the sledges of the children on the hill in all their bright colours, we are swaying and wavering and stopping and starting, but we are still moving forward. I will get my degree. I will see my friends again. Have a pint with them, watch a film with them, cook dinner with them. And who knows what will happen with Mr Someone? Maybe we’ll see each other. Maybe we won’t. Either way, I’m sure I’ll get to where I’m meant to be going. We all will.

Photo taken by the author.