|
Birth to Adolesence
"It's life Jim but not as we know it"
or so The Firm would have us believe. Bizarrely they weren't talking about me but
some sci-fi crap from the 70's. Anyway my own life as Andrew Deegan began on 10th December 1974. To
be honest the first 16 or so years are a bit of a blur which is probably best considered
how dire Arsenal were for most of that time. However, I did learn a few fundamental
lessons for life:
-
Don't get rusty nails stuck in your foot
-
How to fall over (this would become useful for those times when I have drunk more
than a half of shandy)
-
How to spend years do nothing of any particular consequence
-
Getting the fluid from a burst blood vessel in the knee drawn off with a very, very,
very big needle can be a tad painful
-
If music is the food of love then punk must be a deep fried Mars Bar at an orgy
After masterfully failing a bunch of GCSE's and eventually being managing to pass
a few a year later I went back to school where I managed to fail A levels in art,
classical civilizations and geography. Sometime in the middle of this I went on a
week long geography field trip to Betws-y-Coed in North Wales where I met a girl from
Huddersfield called Sally who was to become the bane of my life. After several months
of attempting a long distance relationship I suddenly received a telephone call from
her telling me she was pregnant and that she was getting married to a punk called
Andy. Against my better judgement I went to the registry office wedding which was
one of the most surreal days of my life thanks to Sally dying the front of her blonde
hair a snot shade of green and Andy having a jet black mohawk coupled with a leather
jacket with a picture of Ren & Stimpy on the back. I made it back up to Huddersfield
later that summer for an insane few days involving sitting in a pub full of old school
punks opposite a police station and seeing then U.K. Subs for the first time. To make
matters more worse when I got back (only 3 days late) I found out that Kurt Cobain
had had an interface with the wrong end of a shotgun! Such is rock n' roll.
After managing to fail my A-levels and spending a couple of months couple of months
basically doing sod all that didn't involve copious amounts of alcohol, I had a brain
wave at about 2am while at a club and decided to do A levels in different subjects
at a 6th form college in the notorious red-light district of Kings Cross. Eventually
I decided on courses in politics & government, psychology and sociology for which
I got grades that shocked everyone that knew me (especially as I had been clubbing
3-4 nights a week during the whole 2 years).
The Uni Years (Part 1)
For some reason
the suckers at the University of Surrey accepted me to do a BSc (Hons) Psychology.
To be honest the first two years were academically boring but this was more than compensated
for by some of the people I met. Among these were the No Wave posse which included
Eulalia (a.k.a. Doolally), Jane, the Bazzmeister, Lawrence, Samad (later of Trayscrape
fame), Jenni, Ali, Helen, Ian, Simon and Dan 'The Man' Trubridge. Highlights of the
first year included people thinking I had been run over by a moped from Dominos Pizza
on my birthday (sorry Ali!) and starting to DJ for No Wave (the University of Surrey's
alternative music society).
 |
(L-R: Eulalia, Ali, Lawrence, Dan, Simon, Jane, Me, Helen)
|
My second year at uni unfortunately failed to live up to the promise of the previous
year thanks to a combination of living in the middle of nowhere (apparently on maps
they have incorrectly named it as Farncombe) and lecturers trying to interrupt my
social life with work (but never let it be said that I have ever allowed an essay
to interfere with a 12 hour drinking session). During this time I lived with the incomparably
cool Matt (later to be known as Tiger M) and a bloke named Andy (henceforth to be
known as Andy the complete and utter wanker or some other suitably derogatory name)
who actually managed to get sacked my McDonalds as well as leaving me and Matt to
pay his council tax bill. During this year I was also Chairman of No Wave as well
as unofficially being the treasurer, secretary, publicity officer and basically doing
whatever it took to keep the society going. I also started doing a weekly radio show
with my flatmates on the campus radio station (with a transmission range that struggled
to get outside the studio) this year where I discovered my ability to fuck up a show
by playing songs at the wrong speed on the wrong side or forgetting to transmit in
true John Peel style.
The Uni Years (Part 2)
By September 1998 I was back in London where I was working a project assistant on
a piece of research looking into the beliefs of people who hear voices. This turned
out to be a remarkable year filled with remarkable levels of stress but it was also
one of the most rewarding experiences of my life (so far). For the 12 months that
I worked at Springfield Hospital in Tooting I set up databases at the beginning of
the project, found people to be included in the research and eventually got to interview
some of the participants. Some of the people I met during this time were among the
bravest that I have had the fortune to meet and I will forever be in the debt of my
supervisor, Ian Petch, who gave me the opportunity to work with such an amazing group
of people.
After completing an exhausting year at Springfield hospital I returned to darkest
Surrey (with Playstation in tow) to face the final year of my degree. Thankfully I
had done much of the work on my dissertation (The Role of Social Cognition on Beliefs
About Voices) whilst I had been on my placement year. Thanks to this I was able to
focus on my four core modules (developmental psychology, health & clinical psychology,
neuropsychology and social psychology) and the two things I truly excel at: drinking
and sleeping. However, before I knew it it was Easter again and I had my finals looming
but thanks to the help of my friend Helen's notes and weeks of walking around muttering
to myself I somehow managed to scrape the mark that I had been aiming for the whole
time, a 2:1. But for 4 years work what did I get? A bloody piece of paper!
The CHI Years
After sitting on my increasingly rotund backside for a few months andnot gettinga
single job offer despite applying for approximately 60,000 assistent psychologist
posts, the suckers at the Commission for Health Improvement took pity and offered
me a job (technically making me a city analyst!). Contrary to urban myth this didn't
just involve me burning MP3s to CD although it was a significant part of my job. After
about 18 months of being part of the big happy family known as the clincial governance
analysts i managed to blag my wayy into the techie-geek Performance Team under the
tutelage of ther Big H. this proved to be the beginning of my dowbfall as I learned
SQL and entered the abyss of nerdom. However, this was to be the least of my concerns...
The 'Stow Years
Although i had made innumerable mates at CHI (click here to find out who was my best
mate) one person was increasingly becoming the cream among the chaff - the one and
only Julie S. Nolan (unfortunately I am not at liberty to comment on whethere the
"S" stands for Satan). After months of meeting for drinks after work and escorting
Julie home we fianlly became a fully fledged CHI couple©.
|