My unedifying bildungsroman

... I was also given a copy of Graham Parker's 'Carp-fishing on Valium' for Christmas (hint: the title of the book is a hyperlink but I am having trouble making it look like one). A rock musician who toured with Dylan in the 80s, Parker grew up very close to where my parents now live and went to school with my Dad. Although he sent birthday wishes this year, he rarely answers my letters and the book is, primarily, of interest to me as a kind of bildungsroman, only one set not in a city or a northern mining town but the very military/commuter hinterlands of the habitable with which I am so familiar. At last a book that mentions such obscenities as Farnborough, Camberley, Aldershot and the Basingstoke Canal without so much as (the literary equivalent of) a blush.

Although, as I hasten to point out to that infinitesimally small community of the interested, I was not actually born in Aldershot, (the first few years of my life were set all of ten miles away in 'proper' Hampshire, with a garden that overlooked fields) I am probably as South-west Surrey as anyone else around here. Still, I seem to spend every spare moment subverting this stifling non-identity and will probably continue to do so onto death. Perhaps this is why I feel such a degree of common ground with the central character in Parker's book: Brian may be a coke-addled, rock 'n' rolling also-ran but, at heart, he is one of the disenfranchised children of the overspill, just like Parker and I. Brian attempts to find his salvation in music and drugs. Parker goes with a similar method, as well as adding further emancipation with his escape to the U.S.A where he is now resident...

I... well I haven't done such a good job of escaping... yet! My life in South London isn't particularly fulfilling; that it is an area of South London that encompasses Surrey's former County Town doesn't help matters much either. I have often tried to trace the origins of my dissatisfaction with every little thing within 50 miles but, so far, have very few answers. My Mum may have been born in North London and, briefly, lived in the Midlands but she settled in Guildford and my Dad, as I have hinted already, is from nearby Woking... it's in my blood.

Sometimes I pretend it is the small portion of Irish Catholic in me. I had a subtly different faith background from a fair few of my contemporaries- going the whole hog, too: first communion, guild of St. Stephen, confirmation- and, when I got to 18, was so enamoured of all things Irish that I pushed off and lived there for a few months. I can't help regarding all this last as a symptom of my discontent and not a cause, however.

In the end, I am forced to conclude it is not such an uncommon a malady, although it may manifest itself in others in different ways. The teenagers loitering around by the canal with cans are as maladjusted as I am, I just seek airy-fairier ways to express my feelings on the matter.

Some of us get out! Some of us don't! ... And it's not just round here, it's all over the country! Again, there are places where it is more acceptable, even romantic, to express dissatisfaction with one's formative circumstances and others, like Surrey, where it is difficult to seem more than the whiny little shit you are! In these places, like Graham, the best method is to go off and be judged by the merits of your own output (his critically acclaimed album 'Squeezing out Sparks' is a little-known gem from the 70s that eclipses all of Costello's stuff put together and could give the present mockney 'indie' brigade a run for their money. My favourite example of his work is off the following album: 'The Up Escalator' however, a song called 'Empty Lives'... hint, this title is also a hyperlink).

If I, like GP, had toured with Dylan, I guess I would stop getting so hung up about Surbiton, Aldershot and my supposed 'cultural Catholicism'. I'm off to see him (Dylan, that is) at the O2 in April so I guess that's a start...