Meeting My Younger Self for Coffee 

I slide into Starbucks on the Lower Ground floor of the Shires shopping centre, Leicester, in the drizzle of the February half-term, knowing that she’ll be here – unless she’s gone up to London to have coffee in the Starbucks on the top of Wardour Street, and kill time in Foyles. Will she have a little HMV bag, a 2-for-£10 deal? Did she pick up a single in Rockaboom Records and get a green plastic bag? That’s all I really remember doing in those days, acquiring things; buying books and films and music and creating a list of things to see and read and hear that’s so long I still have not, nigh-on twenty years later, got around to them all yet. But I suppose they have been writing new books this whole time. 

She sidles up the back stairs of Waterstone’s. She hasn’t bought anything, but she still likes to look, and look down on, and investigate, and kill time – I don’t remember how much she knows or where she learns, but there is so much out there and she must sift through and find what’s interesting to us somewhere. She’ll come sit next to me, at the counter that looks out on the Shires, with her small-skimmed-milk-late-with-sugar-free-hazelnut-syrup-and-an-extra-shot. It’s £2.20. 

“It was the right call to dump that guy, by the way.” 

“What?” 

How old is she? That’s core to understanding how this would go; or maybe it isn’t. Perhaps ‘younger’ is any age between sixteen and eighteen; maybe I ought to have set this in London, in the elevator at the Birkbeck library or on the top deck of the 76 bus where she took selfies before we decided that the internet is not somewhere we need to plaster our face. How did she have £2.20 for coffee and £10 for HMV before being sixteen, when she was a lifeguard? I honestly don’t remember, and I think that would bore her so I don’t ask. All this to say – I hope she’s already dumped him, or I’m in for an awkward half-hour. I don’t remember ever thinking that one was permanent, though. 

“Is there anything you want to know?” 

The recognition is slow to come, but I see it dawn on her face. She takes me in: the glasses, the clothes, the ring on my left hand. She’s tactful enough not to think too hard about the weight gain. 

“You live in London, right?” Oh, girl. That dream of yours has been nagging at me for years. 

“I moved for uni, of course, and then we – I – are these your decisions yet? I stayed. We’re still there. In a neighbourhood you’ll like.” 

“How is it?” 

“Expensive. Your friends are cool, you don’t see them enough. You spent all your money on education and now you’re saving up again so you don’t get out much – but the ache to see everything hasn’t gone.” 

“So what do you do?” 

“What do you do in your room by yourself now?” 

“… we lie on the floor and listen to Jefferson Airplane records in the dark at thirty?” 

“Well, not quite. But we still watch a lot of youtube – less makeup, these days, and more stationary reviews or cooking – and we write and we read and… we do still lie on the floor and listen to music. Emo died – ” 

“What? No!” 

“Yeah, sorry. And you’re gonna be worried your hair looks too dated and emo for the rest of forever, I think. But Franz Ferdinand are still going! And Lana del Rey, and Bruce Springsteen is literally still playing stadiums with the band.” 

“OMG did we go this year?” 

“No, it was too expensive. But I did see Lloyd Cole last year with mum!” Yep, there’s the eyeroll. “Listen you lil punk kid…” 

“You don’t talk like that. I can hear it from your cadence, and also I think it sounds stupid.” 

“Yeah, ok, no I don’t, but calling you a little shit doesn’t have the same slight ring of irony to it. Anyway, you’re being a little shit to your mum – and I get it, she is incredibly annoying in a way that is hard to articulate, and she doesn’t understand you.  But some stuff is gonna happen that recontextualises her for you, and you’re going to have the kind of relationship where you have a nice time going to a gallery once a month or whatever. And she’s super generous. But she probably should be on facebook less. This is not a fatal flaw, and maybe you should look at her like a human person.” 

“I would not hang out with her if she were anybody else, she watches too much sport. Also I think it’s reasonable to complain that she makes me walk a lot, I hate walking from my school to hers.” 

“Get a pair of headphones and learn to enjoy the peace. You hate driving with her more.” 

She sulks into her coffee for just a moment, and I get a sense of how much growing she has left to do. I can see her thinking of another question, grasping at something that won’t ruin what’s yet to come. Possibilities are in her eyes that are long gone from my life, and I would like to keep them there for a good while yet. 

“Can I look at your iPod?” 

“The ipod died too, sweetie. It’s all online now, and downloaded to my phone.” 

I hand it over, and her thumb unlocks it, naturally. I show her how to navigate to Spotify and she flicks through my wedding playlists, since they seem safe and representative. 

“Why is it all classical?” 

“My husband wanted a tasteful wedding. I picked it all, that’s why so much of it is from films you like. Try the ‘getting ready’ one.” 

“Brandon Flowers has a solo album?!!” She flicks effortlessly, taking it in. “I don’t know a lot of these. But the ones I do know are good. Wait, Harry from 1D?” 

“Yeah he’s a fashion icon now.” 

“I don’t get it.” 

“Eh, he listens to a lot of Bowie and that comes through.” 

She takes another drink and looks out through the partition to the shopping centre. I look and think seriously about what I want to tell her, what seems important in the context of a whole life. What lessons I know she would learn without the necessary context, what heartbreak I could spare her. There’s not a lot of it – most things in my life that have been in my control are not things I would lose even if I could. 

“Don’t trust landlords and housemates.” I settle on. She looks at me quizzically. “And work harder on getting organised.” There’s that eyeroll again. “Do you want to see the folders I made for uni?”  

“I do not want to see your folders. But I did always know we were organised inside and people should stop bothering us about it.” 

“It is a fight every day, my friend, and people still bother you about it. And I understand why now, and it still annoys me.” 

“OK, so, what else. Should I be proud to have become you?” 

“I think so. We work with books – in fact, we’re a double book professional, because I’m a librarian AND a postgrad. I work hard. And you can be proud of how much all of the things we love are just a part of your life.” 

“And what do you miss about being me?” 

“The noodling. The satisfaction in what you’re doing. Once the iPhone becomes ubiquitous it goes downhill for my attention span, and my ability to amuse myself. I wish I could still wear eye makeup without giving myself a psoriasis flare-up. I miss not needing as much sleep, and my physical fitness.” 

“That one feels like it’s in our power.” 

“Yeah, a nightly yoga would not kill me.” 

She pulls a face. “Yoga?” 

“Do you want to go for a run?” I know she does not, because she wants it about as much as I do. 

“Why not just join a gym?” 

“I cannot express how little time I have spare, and how unlikely I am to spend that on the gym.” 

We take in-sync sips of our lattes. Mine is decaf, and I don’t know how to articulate the other myriad differences that go into making me this, the same person but for the passage of time. Am I her anymore? Would I change my past? I don’t want to tell her not to cry, to stay offline, to work harder for a byline, because in truth none of those are things I’d change about the past tense of my life. It’s the future I want to change – to spend my 30s building my resilience in my body, working on the goals that she doesn’t know she has yet, making vague dreams from back then concrete. I must be the same person as this slip of a girl in a t-shirt and jeans tucked into her riding boots, but I don’t know that I feel it. I definitely don’t look it. I liked her life, but all its trappings are in storage somewhere, and on a daily basis they’re not things that I miss, not the books nor the CD singles nor the coveted Louboutin heels that she worked a whole summer to afford.

Well. Maybe there is one thing that I miss, one materiality that would improve my life immeasurably. 

“Can I have your BlackBerry?” I ask. “I’ll swap it for a 2020 iPhone.”  

On This Topic: 

• The post I read in Vogue because I don’t do socials and didn’t know this was a trend. 
• I think Rockaboom Records is still going – shop there if you can. 
• I’m not the only introspective millennial – try the original if you’re interested.

To-Do: 

• Find a way to switch to a dumb phone (vintage blackberry?). I am so sick of being chained to a smartphone. 
• Plan a call with D this weekend. 
• Get ready for meeting with H & A.

Today’s Culture: 

• Shopping for a new sketchbook – I’ve almost finished this one and will need a new journal. I have one in mind but it’s £40 so I don’t want to pull the trigger. 
• Chappell Roan is striding around PFW like it’s her natural habitat and I love it. 
• Pokémon TCG app has a stranglehold on me and it is not healthy. But also not having a fucking Mamoswine yet is statistically unlikely and it is annoying me.