When I was 7 (around 1975) I wrote a story called ‘Martian Maroons’. It was (as you can no doubt tell from the title!) about some people being stranded on Mars. My teacher Miss Hodgson asked me what a maroon was. I said it’s someone who is marooned somewhere. She said that’s not a real word, and she crossed out my title and called it ‘Marooned on Mars’.
I said 'Miss, you may have made it grammatically correct, but you’ve also ruined it. It sounds all wrong now. You can’t just put words in any order, you know, they have to sound right!'
Despite ruining my story, she did also say to me ‘When you grow up, you should become a writer’. My oldest friend Shelagh from primary school is always telling me that too.
Last Saturday in the year 2023, I went to my friend Morag’s 50th birthday party. She’s a friend from the running club. I went there with other running friends (Kerrie, Megan, Chris, James, Eleanor amongst others) It was the swankiest party I’ve ever been to. It wasn’t so much a party as a trip to another world. I was having trouble following the sat nav on the way there and I think I must have accidentally gone down a portal into another dimension.
Morag said there was a tee-pee in the garden. That sounds small to me. When I arrived, it was less a tee-pee, not even a marquee, it was as if the circus had come to town. It was the kind of big top you can see for miles around.
Earlier on Saturday, I’d got myself in a mental tangle trying to organise something which didn’t need organising. A trip to York parkrun. I kept getting stressed about the logistics of getting 10 grown-ups from Leeds to York and having breakfast after. As if I was playing 3D chess.
Anyway, I may have used up all my nervous energy in the morning trying to be in control of something which didn’t need controlling, because I felt quite relaxed by the evening.
I dressed in a Hawaiian shirt given to me by my brother, which I’ve never worn, I had some flowers for my hair, and some glasses with yellow lenses. Morag also had a box of hats. With the yellow glasses on instead of my own, and in a fancy shirt and wearing a Mexican hat or a policewoman’s hat, or a red sparkly bowler hat, I suddenly felt like I’d accessed a different version of myself. The boring person I think I sometimes am with my not very interesting job and my self-consciousness about the way I move was hidden behind a disguise. And the songs were mostly by Abba, so I know the words. Songs that are mostly from the 70s, like an earlier version of me also is.
For one night only, those things I think about myself; having a boring job, and being anxious, they were just concepts. Mental constructs I’ve acquired. Stories I tell myself about who I am. But on Saturday, I was someone else entirely.
Through the fake glasses, I couldn’t see properly, so I couldn't properly analyse other people's facial expressions. If anyone had a look on their face saying ‘Look at that idiot’, I had no way of knowing.
At one point, Kerrie told someone that I was miles out of my comfort zone, and I thought ‘Yes I am’, but that’s because the people I want to be with are here. And if I don’t go, I won’t see them. The next day Megan said maybe my comfort zone is expanding.
Morag introduced me to a few people, but when she did, she mostly described me in the context of things I’ve written. And it occurred to me later, ‘who you are isn’t your job, it’s what you’re known for’. Other people throughout the night came up to me and said ‘I loved that blog post you wrote about the Otley Run’. James told me how relatable he’d found it reading something I wrote about joining the running club.
I always think of myself as failed potential, as someone who was supposed to be a writer but who has never had the discipline to do it, as someone who was supposed to do lots of things but hasn't, And as someone for who, the things I did instead of the things I should have, didn’t always work out. But all that is just mental projections. Who I am really is maybe not for me to say.
I don’t write for a job, I don’t even write all that often. I only do it when ‘I can’t NOT do it’. When there are things that happen to me in life that I have to share, because keeping them inside would make me burst. Because I think I’ve seen an aspect of something that no-one else can.
Anyway, I had a dream last night. I was back in primary school. It was the 70s again, and I was back in West Garforth Junior School. The old wooden building, the one that doesn't exist anymore because it got burnt down in the 80s, the one that existed before the school that's now called Strawberryfields.
Shelagh was there, and so was Miss Hodgson. At this point, Morag hadn’t long ago been born, and some of my other friends were a long way off their parents even meeting.
In the dream, I’d just written a story called ‘Martian Maroons’. Miss Hodgson said 'I’m not sure you can call your story that’. I said ‘You know that Mars is the Red Planet? Well, in the light there, the astronauts space suits look dark red, a colour not unlike Burgundy. Because of that colour, they've decided to call themselves Maroons'
“Oh I thought it was because they were marooned there?” She said.
'No, that's just a coincidence'.
'I like it', she said. 'When you grow up, you should become a writer'.
I was so excited I could barely get my reply out.
‘But I did, Miss, I did!’
'I did grow up, and when I did, I went to a party at my friend Morag’s. In the year 2023. It was the fanciest party you could ever imagine. And she introduced me to her other friends and told them about all the things I’d written. This Jonathan that’s here now, that’s Jonathan 1.0. In the future, I’m going to be a writer, and I’m going to go running and to parties with friends, I’m going to wear silly hats and glasses I can’t see through, and I’m going to dance like no-one is watching. I’m going to be Jonathan 2.0.
Miss Hodgson said ‘That sounds a lot like a dream’.
And I said ‘Some dreams come true, Miss!’
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