Reunions don't have the best reputation. Any film I've seen about a “Class Of 19--!” get together of middle aged people involves a fight, several emotional breakdowns, an unrequited crush that results in ten minutes of toilet cubicle sex followed by both parties sharing pictures of their families and realising they'd just imploded their lives over a memory, and the weird competitive, 'So, what are you doing now? Profitable is it?' kind of conversations that curdle the will to live. The prospect of asking and answering the same questions over and over again whilst clutching a warm glass of wine would fill anyone with a weary dread.
What a cunt. It was never going to be like that with the Bretton Hall (Arts section of Leeds University) Theatre Arts, graduating year 1996, and I should have known better.
I was expecting us all to have aged, but no one had. We all still looked twenty. To each other.
In the three years between '93 and '96 we had all imprinted on each other some fundamental part of ourselves that would ignite in a strange reverse alchemical way as soon as we were within nodding distance of each other again. And through the lens of this microcosm we had created, we have all been waiting, set in the amber of a chilly autumn morning with leaves on the ground, new books with un-cracked spines on our shelves and a sense of the future being wholly owned by us, our terrible importance, and all of the magnificent things we'd achieve.
The actual future brought marriage, divorce, children, cancer, success, failure and all the human noise and mess of lives lived outside the bubble of a mansion house set in the grounds of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
What did the university look like?
I think I fell in love with Bretton Hall at first sight. My future home – love a bit of Palladian grandeur. A little bit magnificent and magical! The way the more modern buildings clashed with all that in a wonderful wonky way. It felt like special things could happen there. They did. That strange blend of beautiful ancient buildings with the 1950s accommodation blocks staggering up the hill like wonky teeth. It looked cosy, safe, ancient and fresh at the same time. It looked like a beautiful old building in wonderful grounds with a load of scruffy people wandering about. Crusty and Grunge were in at the time. Unworldly. I changed instantly. I wanted to match my surroundings! To be romantic, ethereal, wispy... I remember standing at the top of the path by the gate and saying, 'Wow! That's a long way down!'
(Andy T, Roy, Jonny, Dan, Dom, Chris, Becky, Jane)
For the arrival at the reunion, for the first few hours, what walked into the shitty bargain basement bar of the Holiday Inn Express, Wakefield, was a golden capsule of time suspended friends, whose humour, chemistry and collective energy had been switched back on like a light, as though twenty-five years had been nothing more than a power nap before a big night out.
We belonged to the last hurrah of free education, grants and small year groups. There were twenty-four people on our Theatre Studies course and sixteen of us (plus four friends from other courses) managed to rock up for a reunion that would serendipitously take place at the beginning of term.
If you had to remember that time as a season, what would it be?
Oh fuck off, what does that mean? Ok. Spring and summer. Then it got to the third year and it all got a bit autumnal, when we realised nothing lasted forever. Since then it’s been a relentless bitter winter. Ok. A little exaggeration. Autumn I think, probably because that was when we started and the impression stuck with me as a reference point. I’d go for Spring- there was always something on the boil, lots of life and energy and brightness. Spring, full of hope, expectation, a sense of impending and beautiful change. Spring rain on the concrete and the boozy smells of damp beer mats when you hit the Kennel block. Blossoms and croci poking through and blowing in the wind. Winter. Snowed in. Not getting out and just relying on each other. Ooooh I loved getting snowed in. I love a bit of snow drama! Lazy strolls around the lake and sunny evenings at KB. The growth, the light, the hazy days.
(Dan, Angela, Chris, Becky, Dan, Roy, Jane, Andy T, Dom)
Some bounded through the doors screaming with joy and some entered with more trepidation, but all were welcomed and embraced the same. It is a strange thing in your late forties to walk into a room and find that everyone in it not only knows you quite well on some level but also likes you, and cares about you being there.
I had been talking to my almost husband about friendship the previous week, saying how, as a young idiot I'd always thought it daft when people said you were lucky if you had one good friend in life. But as I got older I'd come to see how that was true. If I had an emergency at 3am there were family members I could call but, at forty-seven, I didn't think there were any friends I could reach out to in an emergency. And even if they said I could I wouldn't, because, honestly? I wouldn't want any fucker calling me at 3am asking for bail or some tarpaulin.
Now, I'm not saying that after two days in the company of my old university friends I'd feel at liberty to hit them up for a loan or anything. But if I was stuck in any one of their home towns and needed a bed for the night I believe I would be welcomed. What a bold and happy thing it is to be able to say that.
All bar two of us were booked into the previously mentioned, Holiday Inn Express, and as Big Gay Roy so succinctly put it, “The place looks like Beirut circa 1981, but it's cheaper than the fine for vomiting in a taxi.”
As people trickled in, what should have been a quick drink before hitting the town, turned into three hours of overlapping orders and banter until the bar woman, with a fixed smile on her face, gave me the shit eye and said, “You lot were going to leave after the last round.”
I speak to Mike C who has been with Jane since uni and he says, 'God, I'm feeling quite tearful now, I didn't know what to expect.' And I talk to Jo R. She and I were friendly but not close at Bretton but I feel an immediate connection to her and I know I want to see her again, after this. She hasn't changed and everyone tells her so, and that they hate her for it. Emma S who wasn't on our course shows up with Shelley whom I only knew through Roy and we have a gleeful time catching up, Emma's Manc twang undiminished by time as she insists we need to get hold of Magnesium Pills from Holland and Barrett if we ever want a great nights sleep again. That woman was always recommending pills. It is a joy to see her huge grin again.
We finally pour out into the early evening streets of an unrecognisable Wakefield to find a pub. Andy T, who had been five years older than us at uni and forever after called 'Pops', had arrived a day before us and found a pub that did karaoke on a Friday night and we marched to it, five drinks in, ready to rock the locals worlds. When we entered the Talbot And Falcon there was a firm collective agreement that we'd just have one here and move on. I had barely put my order in at the bar when the DJ calls out, 'Can we please have Roy to the stage!' Before he takes his pint he nudges me, 'I've put you down for Patsy Cline's Crazy.' And off he goes. We took over that pub and made it our own student union, and after an initial period of suspicion and eye rolling the locals embraced us and joined in the party. The two remaining friends that would join us that evening staggered their arrivals and Will said he was overwhelmed but also felt like he'd walked into a Covid party and everyone was invited. Chris had the time travel experience of walking in as the entire pub sang 'Don't Look Back In Anger' and when I look at the video footage that Angela took I can see everyone singing their hearts out with Chris moving amongst them getting hugged and kissed.
What kind of music were you into back then?
I did very well to hide my shit taste in music in the early days. I was into mainstream indie and only had a very limited musical knowledge. People talked about the Pixies, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave- I had no idea who they were. Most of my music tastes were then influenced by Will. To sum up each year in an album it would be- 1st year- Underworld Dubnobasswithmyheadman, 2nd Year- Portishead Dummy, 3rd Year Pulp Different Class. I loved dancing to whatever was playing but I couldn’t tell you any of the tunes or who made them. All my Manchester bands but I had started to open my eyes to so much more- Lenny Kravitz, Underworld, Primal Scream, the Orb, orbital, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Mazzy Star. One of the best things about university was rummaging through other people's music collections and then my musical interests broadened without a single look back. Oh, please! It was always Prince. You fuckers tried to introduce me to Leftfield's 'Leftism' and I put my head in the oven. Love it now – I'm so retro. Weird and wobbly stuff. Massive Attack, Portishead, Moby, Bjork. I was, and still am, a pop princess. Tanya loved the Fugees...(Just had to change that cos predictive text changed it to 'refugees') so we listened to them...ALOT.
(Chris, Dan, Roy, Jonny, Becky, Jane)
Angus and I head out for a fag and he mentions that just like five hours ago, he's still starving, so we sneak off to a restaurant and eat the worst meal of our lives before staggering back to our hotel rooms.
This reunion came about, in part, because I wanted to write an essay about our halcyon days and had sent a group message to the ten or so people I was still friends with on social media. I asked if they'd be willing to fill in a questionnaire about their time at Bretton and as agreements trickled in, people added others whom I had lost contact with until we were more or less all present, plus a few who were honorary because we'd been good friends with them even though they weren't marvellous actors like us. The group message took on a life of its own as people shared memories and photo's and over the following couple of weeks I'd receive filled out questionnaires via email, each one a treat to be savoured with a cup of tea and a fag. The longest one came from Jane, a Liverpudlian with a sunny nature and an infectious laugh. Considering she and her bestie, Tanya U, had been drunk for the best part of three years, her memory was outstanding and, like all the answers I received, provided me with the joy of moments I'd forgotten or not been present for.
Can you remember any first impressions?
I'm sorry, I don't do impressions. But first ones like a lot of my memories were the smells of the halls. That first night as I was sorting my room came there a knocking on my door and Emma, who I'd met in a club in Manchester, asked me if I wanted a smoke. We got baked, listening to tunes and talking about Manchesterrrr music and the Manchester music scene. Also the bird who was in charge of looking after we freshers took us to the bar where I got a bit handy and they all fucked off to bed early. I remember walking back through the September night thinking this place is fucking ace. It was dark and badly lit but I didn't care, I had arrived. I had met Andy C at the audition interviews. I remember looking around when the whole of the first year students were in New Theatre and waving to him, he looked at me with his sideways glance and gave an awkward ‘who are you' wave. In the first few weeks I spent a lot of time with other people that I then later didn’t have any connection with. I suppose that once we (TA's) got to know each other, my main relationships were with people on the course. It looked grim! (Smirthwaite) But the natural way a close little community formed there. Arriving at the 'estate' and thinking it was rough as fuck. Everyone seemed a bit common except for Tanya. I met Jo and Becky on our first day in and thought they were lovely and we kinda stuck together. I remember thinking Tanya was very posh. I was sure I wanted to spend the next three years here.
(Dan, Chris, Jonny, Dom, Roy, Jane, Andy T)
The first two people to suggest a reunion were Becky and Will. Becky just said it would be wonderful to see everyone and Will already had plans to take his son up there in August so maybe we could all tag along? Plans started in March with Dan looking at hotels, August was abandoned, and finally October was settled on. A big part of me thought it wouldn't happen and then people started booking accommodation and the bizarre dream of a twenty-five year reunion became a reality.
On Saturday morning with various levels of hangover we all reconvened at the main hotel to bundle into the cars and head back to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Bretton Hall closed its doors in 2007, eleven years after we left, and when we arrive the main building is surrounded by fencing and, in places, quite derelict. It's a windy, rainy, morning as we head off. Fairly quickly, Dom finds a gap in the fence and we all clamber through and head down into what was our outdoor Greek theatre. There's a huge plaster cast of a white theatrical mask, now grey, lying abandoned in the middle of the weeds, between columns I can remember prancing through in a production of The Bacchae. The door to Experimental Theatre is slightly ajar to the left and so, feeling like naughty kids, we sneak in to have a look. The room where so many plays, rehearsals and unforgivable pretentiousness went on, isn't so much a ghost, as a corpse of its former self. The ground is bare, cracked concrete, rubble really. And the walls are peeling paint and rot. Jonny heads up on to the surround balcony to take a photo of us. We stand huddled together, staring up, some curious, some wanting to get out, all of us having a concrete visual of what visiting the past looks like. Jonny takes the picture, stares at us all for a moment, and says, 'I feel a bit emotional.'
He then wanders off to the library, sets off the alarm, and we leg it back into the park where we're allowed to be.
How reliable do you think your memories are from that time?
So so so clear and considering that booze, the drugs and the distance of them I know they are so incredibly special and will stay with me for ever. Those memories are undeniably rose-tinted...but still not too far from the truth I think. What I can remember is quite clear. If I can’t remember it, I either wasn’t there or not paying attention. I was stoned quite often, but even then, I think that my memory remained intact. Well, considering I blank out a lot when I'm drunk I'm surprised I remember anything! But there's no denying the love and the laughs. An acute sense of everything being so present that it barely got consigned to memory. It's almost like I remember it happening to someone else.
(Dan, Jonny, Chris, Jane, Dom,Becky)
The YSP is five hundred acres of fields, hills, woodland, lakes and formal gardens and it's a beautiful place (despite the hideous Damien Hirst sculptures dotted around like so much shite). We decide to walk around part of the lake, and with the rain drizzling down we wander, take pictures and swap people to talk to. It's peaceful and I spend most of it with Jonny or Angela talking about then and now and some of the stuff in between.
Tell me one anecdote that you wouldn't mind being shared.
Just the one of me and Angus being caught red handed by the Bretton security guard and we had forced, folded and man handled the 12 foot papier mache Tiger into Swithen three. We might have had a few too many ales. Ok, so drunkenly rehoming a 10ft paper mache tiger from its the sculpture park to outside Owen Tribes room in Swithen. On the first night in our new rental in Painthorpe, Dan and I enjoyed a bottle of wine and looked around at our new pad. A little girl opened the letterbox and wanted to know if we’d pay for a blow job. At the student union where everyone was buying everyone drinks, unbeknown to me I’m being bought doubles and triples. After a few hours I’m in the toilet crouched around the bowl. No idea how long I was gone for but my housemates found me and decided to take me home. Due to being crouched for so long (plus the alcohol!) I couldn’t work my legs properly. Apparently I walked like John Wayne all the way to the car, being held up by my friends. I remember the journey home as I had my head resting on the door with the window down and all I could see was the lines on the road rushing by.When I had my first go at taking magic mushrooms, I think I had too much. I didn’t know what to expect, didn’t feel anything, so had some more. Shortly afterwards I climbed into my wardrobe. Wandering around campus later on, Will was talking to me. I understood him, I replied. All that came out of my mouth for some period of time was the word ‘Joop’. Pops taught me a lot but I think he was taking the piss when we were talking about chorizo and he said “No, sorry, no idea what you're talking about.” He worked in an Italian restaurant! Eventually he said, “Oh! You mean 'Choritho!” My how I love Pops!! Teabag testicles. Punching Seta in the face because she couldn't fucking concentrate on a task and got distracted by a rogue hair! There is no joy more profound than drinking and laughing with people who make you happy, and my college years were the perfect distillation of that. I miss them.
(Dan, Angus, Angela, Chris, Jane, Roy, Andy T)
There's a gallery with a fancy canteen on the site now. Very different to the canteen we used to have on campus where you could get a full english for a quid and regret every moment of it. When we've had enough of nature (one hour forty minutes, standard) we head in to meet Andy C who has just arrived and the poor sod has to make his way around us one by one as we all stand grinning at him and his reactions to faces he hasn't seen in over twenty years. We get some food and spend some time in the canteen before bundling back into cars to head back for a nap or a wander before our early bird special dinner at an Italian restaurant at 5.30pm.
I head back with Roy and though we haven't seen each other in ten years we end up laughing so much I find it hard to breathe and he considers pulling the car over so that we don't both die in a massive pile up.
I try to have a nap back at the hotel but being so wholly present makes it hard to switch off so I crawl out of bed, throw some make up on and head back into town to meet people for a drink at the Old Print Works next to Prego where we're having dinner. Dan is wearing a shirt with skulls and roses on it. The previous night his shirt had butterflies on. He looks beautiful. He was always the cool kid, the stylish Mancunian, quick to laugh, full of love.
The meal is loud and chaotic and I pity the waiters. One young waitress opens a bottle of Prosecco and the cork shoots out and hits her in the face. Obviously we were all concerned for her and we expressed that as well as we could over the sound of Roy howling with laughter. I also pity the two women who have been cruelly sat upstairs with us and don't have a chance in hell of holding a conversation over their lasagna.
We swap seats between courses at Pop's suggestion and I spend the first half with Tanya and the second with Andy C, and the chat is so easy, so familiar. At some point I feel Roy stroke a finger down my back and my muscle memory kicks in and I hand him the Prosecco without breaking conversation.
We force Pops to deal with the bill and head off to find a bar which we manage pretty swiftly. Becky has to leave after a drink because she has a wedding to attend the following day. She runs away without a word and sends us a voice mail on the group message;
“I don't think I have ever loved a group of people the way I love you and I'm so sorry I keep bursting into tears. And I'm even more sorry that I've just run away like a dirty thief, but the idea of having to say goodbye to you all is just far too traumatic, I just wanted to go. So, please, please, please don't hate me. I've just had the best 48 hours with the most remarkable bunch of people and I love you all dearly.”
Would you change anything?
Not a sausage. I'd maybe suggest Paul Bond consider changing the shape of his beard but nothing else. That perfect time is scorched on my memory forever and I am now smiling at the ridiculous good fortune that we were we in that utterly divine moment of all of our lives. I’d often thought about the idea of being able to go back and do it again with the confidence and knowledge I have about the uni experience now. I’d definitely tell myself not to be homesick and just throw myself into it all.Comedy-Why the fuck didn’t we create a massive comedy group and call it ‘Headlamps’ and take it to Edinburgh and global domination. We were all so funny and really had fun. I try to make a point of not losing a minute in regret. That way madness lies. Not a thing. No! But perhaps on reflection I could have found out where the library was. Not really. I still feel blessed for having three amazing years there and for it kindling the flame of the person I became.
(Dan, Angus, Chris, Andy T, Roy, Jane, Jonny)
Becky was the first to cry, when she saw Dan. She is the same small, blonde, wholehearted darling that she was back then, and all of us listen to her message at different times and absorb it without too much chat.
We spend that last night in and out of a huge bar, smoking, drinking, catching up with those we hadn't yet had a chance to. Jono decides to drink Martinis and start smoking again and I spend a wonderful couple of hours tucked between him and Will having proper no nonsense conversations. As the night absorbs us, darker tales are told, funnier ones too, and it starts dawning on people that this is nearly over. All the planning, all that excitement and it's nearly time to leave. But before we do, Tanya C, Gareth, Faye, Amy, Andy L, I hope you can join us next time, you were missed and talked of well and often.
No one wants to be back in 1993. For the most part everyone is happy in their lives now, or dealing with necessary change, but we're not yearning to be twenty again with an illusion of a future in which we take centre stage. We're just happy to have found each other again and to be able to say, without expectation or qualification; I love you, I always will.
Did you fall in love with anyone during those three years?
At the time nobody. After twenty-five years I can honestly say I am in love with everyone from the TA course. No, I fell out of love and it oddly felt good. Yes!! My first love was Tanya! I fell in love with her and couldn't bear it when we were apart. I felt very 'disintorionated' when she wasn't there.! (Spelt wrong deliberately...we always said it like that) I also fell in love with Robin...I adored him! I fancied Chris and went out with him for about three weeks. He was gorgeous but I don't think it was meant to be. Some unrequited obsessions. Flingettes. DANIEL SHAW STANLEY – I fell in love – not a romantic love – although I loved the sound and look of him! But him. This boy. This cheeky beautiful soul. Charismatic, charming and so full of life. You tell me. I probably said I did and, on reflection, I might nearly have done. I was too closed off and didn’t open up enough. I wasn’t the best boyfriend material back then. I had three -four main relationships and never let myself get too attached. I regret that. I was told the same thing by different people- that I didn’t open up. I did fall in love with my friends, though, if that counts? I fell in love with so many people in such a way that I have not experienced since. And there are those that I would still die for. In that moment, that epoch, there was something special in our group and ...you couldn't help but fall in love. Stanislavski said, 'you must fall in love with something new everyday' and it is at Bretton where I learned to put that into practice. It was vivid, all consuming, a great adventure.
(Roy, Angela, Jane, Jonny, Becky, Chris, Dan, Angus)
