Mike Lockley: Joe settles into uni life.. after finding Countdown on TV

Oct 4 2009 by Mike Lockley, Sunday Mercury

THE incessant drum and bass muzak has, after four years, stopped.

The satellite TV channels that polluted our living room with foul-mouthed gangsta rap have finally fallen silent.

There is, for the first time in an eternity, no-one in the bathroom when I want to use it.

The phone is free.

The only sound is the gentle sobbing of my wife.

Yes, after 18 years, our son has flown the nest.

We took him yesterday to a university in mid-Wales, where, hopefully, after three years he will garner enough qualifications to become a PE teacher.

Our PE teacher, Mr Stott, simply stood by the school gates and hit smokers and fat kids who failed to give their all during cross country with a knotted towel.

Will it really take our son three years to learn how to hit fat kids with a towel? I doubt it.

He will also study something called ‘sports science’ which, presumably, shows would-be PE teachers where to hit fat kids with towels, and what damage it will cause.

My wife has taken our son’s departure badly. She wept during the journey to university, wept as she unpacked his belongings in the cell-like dorm that will be his home for a year, and is still weeping.

I fear she may slip into a coma through salt deprivation.

This morning she fretted because he wasn’t answering her calls and hadn’t gone ‘online’. It was 7.30am. During his time at home, he didn’t rise until 11am and couldn’t string a coherent sentence together until noon.

I, on the other hand, have calculated how much we’ve got to give the youth each week and divided it by how much he ate and how much petrol was used ferrying him about.

We’re quids in.

“I can’t believe our baby has left,” whimpered Julie this morning. ‘Our baby’ - all 6ft 5ins of him - lived on Domino pizzas and drank enough cider to strip Somerset of apples.

I think he’ll move seamlessly into student life. He’s almost there already – he’s already discovered what time Countdown comes on telly.

“I’m worried he won’t be able to cope?” the wife fretted.

Judging by the rag-tag bunch of students, swigging beer and smoking roll-ups, who greeted us at the university, he’s in very good company.

The countdown to our son’s departure has been a palaver. While other ‘freshers’ arrived with a couple of suitcases, my wife armed Joe with five large containers of food.

If he started eating now and grazed continually during the three-year duration of the course, he wouldn’t get through it all.

Other parents thought we were university caterers. Two tried to buy a sandwich off me. One asked if I was collecting for the Red Cross.

There were also two large holdalls of clothes, a kettle, laptop, towels, a mirror... families have moved house with less boxes: very large families at that.

“We forgot the cheese!” shrieked Julie. We could always post it, I suggested sarcastically.

Today we posted it, which is a shame – it was the only edible thing left in our cupboard.

I was worried we wouldn’t complete unpacking the stuff before term finished.

Julie kept the tears at bay by busying herself transforming the lad’s cramped dorm.

I gave him a slice of manly advice. “You’re surrounded by students and the Welsh,” I warned, “maybe even some Welsh students. It’s going to be tough.”

But once she was in the car, my wife blubbed uncontrollably. “He’s left home,” she sobbed. I know. I suffered a hernia lugging his stuff. “He may never come back. It’s the end of an era. He’s not my little boy anymore.”

I put my arm around her, explained the lad was only two hours away and was going to have the time of his life.

“There will always,” I announced grandly, stealing a line from the Great War poets, “be a corner of that bedroom that is forever Joe.”

“Why?” she sniffed.

“Have you seen the state of those mouldy pizza boxes? I’m not touching them – it’s a job for Environmental Health.”