Back to Uni for my Brother

We took my brother up to London today, to get him moved into halls for his second year at Roehampton. This will be the first year that we're both at university at the same time, and my parents will be living by themselves for the first time since I was born, more than 24 years ago. They'll have to do all the washing up themselves now! Though my brother's only 2 and a half years younger than me, he started university five years after I did because I have a spring birthday and he an autumn one* so he's actually three school years below me, then after his GCSEs he did a year long vocational course (in Public Services- for people thinking of going into the police, army, or coastguards) which led him to realise that wasn't what he wanted to do at all, and so decided to do A-levels. Then he was delayed another year because one of his A-level choices, Graphics, turned out to be a bit of a disaster and he started Psychology instead in his second year of A-levels, so it took one more year to finish that. So though I've lived away from home before, at university and when I was in Japan, he was at school or sixth form college all that time, and when he was away last year I was at home- I didn't have the money to go and live by myself, and luckily I get on well with my parents.

There was solid traffic for a long way on the last part of our journey, right up to the university gates and beyond, so we didn't get there till after two. By the time we'd taken all his stuff up to his room, sorted out his insurance, and gone shopping (to give him a couple of extra pairs of hands to help manage the large amount of stuff that's always necessary on the first shop- we would have made things even easier by going in the car but the road was still one long traffic jam, especially in the direction we'd have to come back), it was something like five, and, as I thought would be the case, in the kitchen the fridge space had been entirely staked out and the best cupboards were gone. Not that it bothered my brother that much; he tends to be laid back about things that I would get worked up about, whilst things that I would not even consider could be a problem worry him quite a bit. But I made a mental note to get there early next week and arrive with the necessary to reserve my fair share of fridge and cupboard- because trying to live for nine months without enough space to keep everything cool, and having to keep your pans in your room and cart them down to the kitchen every time you want to cook because they won't fit there is not fun.

It's getting very soon now, and I find it a very strange thought that just a week from now I'll be living with people whom I not only have not as yet met, but whose names, ages, nationalities, genders, and even number I'm not aware of, and yet by the end of the year I won't be able to imagine not knowing them. Sometimes I'm excited, but now it's so close sometimes I'm a little reluctant at the thought of going to live somewhere else and having to re-establish my comfort zone and make new routines and generally put in a lot of effort before everything becomes second nature. But however I feel now, I know that once I've been there a couple of weeks I won't be able to understand how I could live so long back at home, when compared to the relative independance of halls... So though I don't always feel that the prospect is a good one, rationally I know it is, and my rational self explains all that to my emotional side.

First, though, I've got an awfull lot of packing to do...

*11th September in fact, though of course (strange as it is to think now) for the first 17 years of his life the date had no significance except that it was his birthday. Apparently it doesn't really feel wierd to be born on that day- I asked him. My mother works for someone born on 7th July, to take the coincidence a little further. Incidentally, on that memorable 11th September, I was picking up the keys for the first house I ever rented with the friends I was sharing it with, and found out about what had happened when, after a long discussion in our new and very pink rather cold front room about what happened with getting gas and electricity connected and so on, and who needed to do what, one friend got a call on his mobile from someone asking if he'd heard the news, which the friend then passed on to the rest of us. I scarcely believed it till I got back home and found out from the radio and TV and so on. But that's neither here nor there.