Weddings, Watershed and Worry

A trip home was in order. We had been invited to two weddings at either end of the Jubilee celebrations and it only seemed good and proper to give the festivities their due and holiday away from the responsibilities of work and adult life for a week.

First stop, Lynton in Devon for a tip-top traditional shindig of a wedding. There we were sat in our glad rags on the plane at seven in the morning trying desperately hard not to crumple any inch of fabric and therefore look like we’d been on a plane at seven in the morning. I think we pulled it off with a certain amount of dignity. Which was all to be ruined when we turned up respectfully early in Lynton (we weren’t going to repeat the awful time when we had to run around the punctual bride of a previous wedding whilst she stood waiting in the church porch; when we rushed in through the creaking door the whole congregation turned around expecting the blushing bride, only to find two bedraggled and very shame-faced friends with a lot still to learn about proper wedding guest practice!) and deciding to appease our rumblin’ tummies with plates of pasties, beans and chips. Very classy.

I would have been completely oblivious to all things Jubilee if it hadn’t been for the happened-upon honeymoon tea dance in Lynton village hall the day after the wedding. The bride and groom weren’t dashing off  immediately so, with a hoard of hung-over hangers-on to entertain, were planning on going to the beach. Suffice the say that the weather Britain was treated to over the Jubilee was not compatible with frollicks on the sand so, having seen flyers around the town, it was decided that a tea dance would provide us not only with shelter but with refreshment. The WI ladies of Lynton did the Queen proud. Their cupcakes and sandwiches, loaves and freshly-baked scones all in red, white and blue made a dainty dish to set before the Queen (and her loyal, hungry, servants too). It wasn’t all pillaging, I promise. Those of us with enough bottle jumped up to do a few turns. Our waltzes weren’t up to the Lyntoners’ standard but I think we provided a good source of gossip for the locals.

After a very wet and wind-swept night spent in a tent on the top of a grassy hill we made our way back to good old Bristol to thaw out at the hearthside of some of our greatest friends.

After far too long (due to her gallivanting in America) Megan and I were re-united and planned to make the most of our two and half days together before my presence was required at another wedding, a family affair this time. We squeezed every drop out of the Watershed’s 30^th birthday celebrations – totalling a mighty ten hours spent eating gorgeous food and cakes, watching Stand and Stare collective’s wonderful Theatre Jukebox, getting in on some of the thirty hours of free cinema and dancing our socks off at the party - but I began to realise that most of our conversations were characterized by our growing worry about what both of our future’s hold.

It seemed governed by fate when we got two return tickets to a sold out special preview of Bristol-made film ‘Eight Minutes Idle’. The story centres around Dan, an unassuming guy who gets kicked out of his family home by his murderous mother and is forced to sleep on the floor of his call centre office. Although it is a comedy the film focuses on a group of fractious, bored, unfulfilled young adults who get caught up in the petty dramas of their office but, when the going gets tough, grow to realise that stability and meaningful relationships are preferable to the madness.

Megan and I are usually able to lose ourselves in dangerous doses of charity shopping, copious cake consumption and beautiful people watching for days on end. However, worry seemed to loom large over everything we did and all of our conversations on this trip. As the sticky-toffee apple voice of Ray Lamontage once sang: ‘Oh worry, worry, worry/sometimes it feels like this worry is my only friend.’ Some friend.

Worrying about the future, careers, happiness, fulfilment, helping others and making the most of life takes up most of my brain space at the moment.  I share this fiendish friend with almost all of my real-life friends (and I’m sure with most other graduates and twenty something year olds who are still in the odd no-man’s’-land between teenage and adulthood). For a lot of us direction, encouragement and structure has been supplied by our parents and then by school, college and university. I’ve finally started to realise that it isn’t very surprising that me and my friends are limping around like lost little lambs at the moment because, for the first time in our lives, no one is providing us with entertainment, education, friends and the chance to develop further as people. We have to provide that FOR OURSELVES now and it is one scary, mammoth, often crippling task.

I seem to have said time and again on Cameo that I am going to go out there and get my dream job with so much determination and confidence that quickly turns into de-moralization and a sense of futility. I am still determined but it takes a heck of a lot of self-confidence and energy to keep slogging away at job applications, hobbies and classes and maintaining a happy home life and relationship.

These are, of course, ‘first world problems’, and often I think to myself; ‘you are so privileged to have time to worry about fulfilment and happiness and a high-flying career when so many millions of people are only able to think about where their next meal will come from and finding somewhere safe to sleep at night.’ These thoughts make me both even more grateful for what I have got at the moment and also make me feel greedy for wanting anything more. But one sense seems to conquer all of these mixed emotions. It is the sense that I am so lucky to have been born into the family, the country and the opportunities that I have and to waste that would be inexcusable when I have the chance to become someone who uses their education and opportunities to help other people. If I can also be happy and fulfilled I will be in a better position to spread that to others. I don’t know if I can live up to this, and the process is completely daunting. But as a wise man once said ‘I like the process’ (however worrying life can sometimes be it is all part of the process). So, hold on in there people of my generation. We can make the world a better place. For real.