I visited York a couple of weeks ago. I had been staying at my parents’ house and decided to take the train. I’m sick of driving, sick of car culture, car anxiety, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover how swiftly the train would get me there: 43 minutes. To my mind, back when I used to live in York, in the mid-1990s, my birth county of Nottinghamshire was several whole planets away. This is what happens as the years progress: geographical distance somehow reduces, much like your concept of time. What is Three Months Ago, now? Three Months Ago is the last time I saw a particular close friend, the last time I had a proper meal out, the last time I listened to a favourite record. Three Months Ago is last Wednesday. But the three months I spent living in York, in late 1995, was forever.

I suppose the fact that I had been unhappy couldn’t have helped. Not depressed exactly, just a little lost, with that strange hollow deep-stomach feeling that can often accompany being alone in a completely new place and having a rug of familiar and comforting things you hadn’t previously realised were familiar comforting things pulled from beneath you. That summer had been a good one: the fanzine I’d been editing for the previous two years had been selling well, introducing me to musicians and readers thousands of miles from the provincial, insular place where I lived. Using the money I’d earned from working temporarily in a factory I upped the print quality. The legendary DJ John Peel had called my house to enthuse about the zine, then recommended it on BBC2’s What The Magazines Say. I was convinced, in a quietly, fluffily arrogant way, that if I kept working hard on it I’d get a job reviewing records and gigs for the Melody Maker. But my girlfriend was off to Newcastle University, I didn’t fancy the strain of a long distance relationship, and I was aware that my family wanted me to take advantage of opportunities for a higher education they’d not had. My grades were an archetypal everydosser rattlebag of underachievement: nothing better than a C at GCSE, zero A-levels of any kind, a sort of okayish BTEC National Diploma in a course that could never make its mind up about what it was, but during clearing I enthused my way onto an American Studies degree at what was then called the University of Ripon and York St John. I missed meals so I could afford to buy limited edition lo-fi seven-inch singles. I expanded my knowledge of early 1970s rebel cinema in the library. I made three or four friends. I woke up to the sound of traffic. I wandered around, my head in a far away universe where nothing really meant much unless it involved a guitar that sounded like it had been recorded in a dirty cellar. Surprisingly, I got decent grades for my essays. By Christmas, I was gone. 

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